by Henry Miller
He examined the work carefully. There was a great superabundance of vitality in it. He scrutinized it meticulously, as if it were the very first time he had looked upon it. . . .
It represented a female nude, with Nile-green hair, squatting on her haunches. The interstices made by the junctions of her arms and legs were outlined by black triangles, some isosceles, some scalene. The one which a casual observer would notice first was a daring scalene, within the boundaries of which the artist had traced her initials. For the most part, the stuff of which this nude was made was nothing more than the untouched pasteboard. The crayon had been employed most liberally for the highlights and the luminous shadows of her contours, the artist being of the opinion of Mallarmé, whose dictum it was that “to name is to destroy, to suggest is to create.” If one looked more closely at these innocent highlights fantastic shapes emerged: the hostile poise of a cobra along the right forearm, a penguin airily traced along the shinbone of the left leg, and an Achilles heel (Milka insisted it was “Achilles”) on the visible breast, a great Amazonian breast that seemed chiseled in marble. The nipple of the breast was a bright drop of blood. It was the brightest spot, with the possible exception of the lips, in the entire conception. Despite the railway curves of her crouch, the subject revealed more straight lines than the human figure can be said to boast. One such line was made of the top of the right hand, which might conveniently have supported a card tray, only Milka had seen fit to rest on it a cumulus cloud through which a wild goose was flying. Milka had insisted it was a wild goose, though it was so conventionalized, and had such a rigidity, that everyone said it resembled a roast turkey. However, if the artist saw a wild goose, a wild goose it must have been. . . . The reader must be aware, at this point, that Milke was untrammeled by academic canons. . . . Irritation was likewise often expressed by the liberties that Milka had taken with the right knee of the nude. The knee had been sacrificed to the imagination, owing to the enormous length of the upper leg, which which would have been cramped in the narrow confines of its pasteboard frame. When Milka was taken to task for this desecration, she observed in her quaint way that only a master could do justice to the knee of a virgin. But surely the nude had two knees? Absolutely! (Milka had not borrowed her subject from a Coney Island freak show.) But the other knee was hidden, you understand, and very skillfully, too, by a huge pendant breast which forever threatened to be metamorphosed into a cataract of human gore. . . . There was one other object, in the foreground, which deserves mention. It had no other reason for existence than the artist’s will. What it was can only be conjectured. Milka styled it a geranium without a flower pot. She never said simply—a geranium. It was always a geranium without a flower pot, as if some mystic import were to be attached to the naming of an invisible object. It sounded very much as if one were to say—“Beethoven without a hat.”
Supposing you were in the habit of placing your cane in a certain corner of the office, and then one day you were to march in absentmindedly, like a proofreader, and place it in the spittoon. Now the same incongruity applied to this Amazon’s breast. It was as importunate as a harelip. ... As Moloch concentrated his powers upon it his mind raced back to another Amazon ... a buxom, two-breasted Amazon by the name of Cora. There was a time when to have possessed Cora would have meant his soul’s salvation.
But Cora is out of the picture. . . .
“Can a man by taking thought add a cubit to his stature?” He pondered that as if the words were stuck under his nose in six-inch Goudy type.
“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Aye, he pondered that, too.
When a man takes to feeling deeply he is apt to let the Bible go to his head; he is apt to forget that the love his wife bears him is a caldron of hate which she delights in heaping anew each day upon his head. For what did her love—their love—amount to? It was nothing less than an unholy antagonism that had reached such bounds as to resemble more the celebrated Darwinian struggle than a bed of roses. If his wife embraced him it was only to ask: “Whom do I remind you of now?” If he touched her familiarly, as a husband will, she bristled and said: “All you think of is sex.”
In his exalted spiritual condition much of the bitterness had dropped out of his soul. When a person loses the power of sight in one eye the other eye makes up for the deficiency ... compensates, we say. So it was with these two. What he lost in powers of hatred Blanche supplied. No longer did he get up in the morning, draped in an old-fashioned nightshirt, and dance about her like a zany. It was disgustingly true that very often in the past he had carried on in a gross, buffoonish manner. It was true, also, that he had done so with the express purpose of irritating her. To rid his wife of that devastating glacial stare he had been capable, in the past, of resorting to any licentious prank. Better to see her rage than to withstand the cold, piercing hostility of the women. Sometimes, prompted by an inexplicable diabolism, he would stand before his wife, making abscence grimaces, pelting her with vile epithets that made her wince and blanche. Why? To goad her into behaving like a human being. To befoul her, if necessary, in order to get that “reaction” Prigozi always spoke about. You see, he had already committed himself to that belief that he was dealing with a type of pathologic abnormality. He never defined the type; he was satisfied to call her a “diseased soul.” Blanche, in turn, made her own diagnoses. She used the word “hypersexed.” No matter what the argument was about, no matter what turn the quarrel took, Blanche always ended up with “hypersexed.” She flung it at him as if it were a red-hot poker. Later, when he had time to reflect, and devoted his attention to analyzing her conduct, he found refuge behind such phrases as “vicious slut,” “ingrown Puritanism,” etc. And of all the afflictions that humanity was heir to, he was ready to swear that Puritanism was the worst. There was something leprous about that condition of the soul. Its ravages brought a stench to the nostrils. . . .
But this evening all such behavior, all the wanton, vicious thoughts which he was able to summon on the slightest provocation, vanished. He could scarcely wait for Blanche to appear. Never again was she to suffer for any deviltry of his ... not even if she ridiculed him and taunted him. He looked back upon his cruel, senseless behavior with abhorrence. “By God!” he swore. “This madness must come to an end!”
He reviewed kaleidoscopically the stormy course of their marital career. A conviction began to steal over him that his had been the blame, his entirely. Thinking back to one quarrel upon another, he could put his finger on the root of every one ... himself.
Oh, if Blanche would only walk in now, this very minute, that he might sweep away all her hatred, all her profound disgust, and prostrate himself at her feet. “Blanche,” he murmured aloud, “Blanche, my poor little dear, it is I who am guilty ... I, I, I.”
At that moment he imagined himself another Raskolnikov, another assassin waiting for the words of a Sonya: “Go to the marketplace and kneel before the multitude. Go and confess your sins. Speak to God in the public square; pray to him on your knees, so that every one may hear....” He got down on his knees. He made his appeal to the Almighty. No snout-faced moujik ever prayed more lustily. His prayers were woven in the strands of her hair, in the letters of her name.
And, even as he did so, the door opened gently. Blanche stood there listening.
Her first temptation was to laugh. Never had she seen a more grotesque object than this figure, this obscene bedmate of hers, huddled in an attitude of reverence. She had a wanton desire to laugh outright—a spiteful, mocking laugh that would chill the very marrow of his bones. But the prayerful babble from his blasphemous lips, the earnest flood, so unlike the scoffer she had known, silenced her. She heard the sound of her name as she had never heard it before. For the instant she was touched; her hatred was at the point of melting before this devout furnace. But, at that very moment when, overwhelmed by this example of sincerity, she was about to throw herself at his feet and pour out her affection so f
iercely withheld, a morbid, blighting suspicion entered her brain. With a blinding radiance the idea flashed through her mind that he was . . . yes, that he was jealous.
The knowledge that he loved her increased her bitterness. Her faint lease of gladness was despoiled by the swollen floods of resentment that welled up in her and urged her impulsively to wrest from him the last drop of servitude. . . . Hitherto his jealousies had been the sullen, fitful fires of a vengeful spirit. They were of short duration and but added fuel to the flames of discord. Never had she witnessed such an attitude of contrition ... the more convincing, too, since her arrival was unanticipated. Was it, though? She indulged in a fleeting perplexity, as if to diagnose from past performances the cause of this abject surrender.
When he realized her presence in the room, in spite of himself, a chill came over him. He had in mind, when this moment should arrive, to throw himself at her feet... and evacuate his emotions. He had imagined that when the door should open, and the miracle of his deliverance rend him, all the pent-up agonies of his shameful ways would bubble over and flood her in a glamorous spate of words. Now they stood face to face, each trying to pierce the veil which separated them. She was mute, impenetrable, unapproachable. And yet a passion stormed through her blood, took possession of her heart, and leaped with the turbulence of a freshet to the fastness of her lips. A wistful expression gathered between her eyes, like a low-hanging fog pressing against two arc lights. She no longer remembered that her soul had been smashed to bits on their Procrustean marriage bed; she was aware only of a gathering ache that clutched with tenacious fingers and hollowed her with groans.
Moloch had left his wife that morning the image of a hopeless slattern. Her tiny Cupid’s mouth, which he kissed perfunctorily, had seemed a trap geared with invisible wires and pulleys that caused it to open and shut with a mechanical cadence that at once fascinated him and repelled. When the hinge moved, and the trap fell open, he could see the taut filaments of her geranium-colored tongue. It wagged like a poodle dog’s tail, her tongue. It never ceased wagging. When the trap opened the tongue fell out and lapped against a full lower lip or slid reptilewise along a bank of lace-pearl molars. That very morning he had restrained an insane notion to leap at her and bite the damned thing out of her mouth.
Now he stood gazing helplessly at the tremulous corners of her pursed lips. He expected them to open and utter mysterious language. They did open. They parted sweetly on these words:
“Jim Daly came to town. I just left him. We spent the evening together.”
“Then you didn’t go to the theater?” He was left open-mouthed, speechless.
She expressed surprise that the news should affect him so strangely. If the long-heralded Messiah had made the long-promised terrestrial descent it could not have affected him more.
“Are you . . . hurt?” she asked.
He shook his head slowly, sorrowfully. He was too overcome even to throw out a monosyllable.
She flew on in a light, gossipy vein.... “I would have brought him here only he had to return on the midnight train. He sends you his warmest regards. It was just a flying visit... to see how we were getting along, he said.” She paused. “Do you know, he acts as if he can’t believe that I’m still married to you. I guess he’s still waiting for me. . . .” She paused again, to study the effect of her words. Had she said enough?
“Poor Jim,” he said suddenly. “I can’t help liking him. He was a brick. ... He was the one you should have taken, Blanche.”
A mirthless laugh gurgled from her tiny Cupid’s mouth.
“A pity you didn’t think of that before. A fine time to tell me what a mistake I made.”
He started to speak again. She was gazing at him in utter amazement.
“You remember the night we stayed at the Claridge Hotel ... just a week before we were married? You remember telephoning your aunt the next morning from the hotel? You recall that she told you Jim Daly was on his way to New York to see you . . . that there was a telegram for you?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, looking at him bewilderedly. “I remember everything ... everything, very distinctly. I stayed at the hotel all that day, and Jim met me there.”
“He came to see you on a very important mission, didn’t he?”
Blanche hesitated. “Ye-e-s,” she faltered.
Moloch pressed on. He reminded her of the events that followed upon that meeting, their little banquet at the Café Bous-quet, the discussion they carried on, the way Jim and he took to each other immediately, the strangeness of that mutual admiration.
Blanche was getting impatient. “I know all that. What of it?”
“Well, after I took you home that night, and you told me you had refused Jim your hand, I went back to the Claridge and went to bed with Jim.”
“You did?” she gasped. “You never told me that!”
He paid no attention to this exclamation.
“Yes, I went back to your lover and told him everything, I was so touched that I volunteered to remove myself, and let him have you.”
“You told him everything?” she cried, ignoring the remainder of his speech. “God, I detest you for that! Who gave you the right to do such a thing? You’re a brute! The idea of torturing him that way . . .”
Moloch smiled. “I don’t believe he felt tortured. He liked it—I mean the dramatic qualities of the scene. He took a great fancy to me. Really, we became excellent friends—just on account of my actions, I believe. Oh, it was a regular Alphonse and Gaston scene, all right. We never slept a wink all night.”
“You think it quite a joke, don’t you?” Her voice had become hard and bitter again.
“No, I don’t,” he replied at once. “Of course, it does seem a trifle ridiculous now. But at the time it was very real, very tragic, for both of us. You must remember, we were genuinely in love with you ... then.” (He was sorry he had added that “then.”) “It was no light resolution on my part to relinquish you. For once I was capable of forgetting myself and my own selfish desires. Perhaps it was because I wanted you so much that I could understand and share his agony. I’m sure he understood my motives. He realized that it wasn’t just a bit of playacting. . . . What will you say if I told you that we shed tears over you? We lay there like a couple of schoolgirls, raving about you, gloating over your beauty, admiring the charm of your character, weeping about you as if you were some lost princess. . . .”
“And my figure ... my beautiful breasts ... what did Jim have to say to that?”
“Your figure? Your breasts?” He stared at her confusedly. At the same time he was aware that her figure had changed ... for the worse.
“Yes,” said Blanche, “I mean my body ... since you discussed everything.”
He was taken back. He didn’t know whether to ask her or not.
“You mean,” he began timidly, reluctantly, “you mean that you thought I told him about ...”
“Why not? You said a moment ago that you had told him everything.”
“Blanche,” he said, and his voice dropped, “do you mean that you believe I would say—? You thought me capable even then . . .?” It was impossible to get it out.
“Oh, God!” she exclaimed. “How can I believe you? You lie to me so. . . . Are you sure, Dion? Are you certain?”
He hung his head. He was ashamed of her, of himself, of the whole god-damned business of love and what it had brought them to.
Blanche went over to him impulsively. She threw herself in his lap, and begged him to forgive her. She realized now that she had been mistaken. ... He said nothing. He let her talk. Blanche clung tight. She poured a flood of strange, tender words in his ear. It was a new kind of joy for her. He took down her hair and buried his lips in the soft silky mass that hid her face.
At last he spoke. His voice was soft and suasive.
“Tonight, dear . . . what did you tell Jim?”
“Not now,” she pleaded. “Don’t ask me now. Nothing is changed.”
“Bu
t what do you think . . . about Jim, I mean?”
She crumpled up in his arms and closed her eyes that he might not see the tears which were streaming down her cheeks. “I . . . I don’t know what to think,” she murmured.
He pressed her no further. Her limbs were trembling violently. Thus the earth trembles when fear-crazed buffalo stampede. . . .
Gently he brushed the tangle of hair from her brow, and placed his tender lips upon her eyelids. Her peppery breath, like the odor of sandalwood, left him careening through a dizzy vortex. The room was a Pompeian fresco of sound and space. Through every spore and interstice of his palpitant flesh the elixir of her veins penetrated and drugged him. Outside, in the night, a whorl of glinting pinpoints studded the expensive dome of a ravaged universe. His thoughts, gushing like a geyser, fled quivering into the night. “Just love, just love,” he repeated to himself, transfixed by the swell of her abdomen, which rose and fell like a sea.
“You do love me, then, Dion?” Her voice was a torn veil.
He answered with lowered eyes, blinded by the milky hues of her thighs.
Somewhere in North Africa the baobabs were rustling in the keen night wind. A wave of passion engulfed him as a Spahi is caught in a simoom.
The mask with which she met the world fell from her as a yashmak is lifted to admit the gaze of a lover. Her body became a lovely, sacred vessel, such as it once had been. The sweeping contours rose in velvet undulations. The skin was cool and chaste to the touch. It reminded him of a Cretan urn, diapered with splintered jewels, carved with handles of rare ivory.
All the lies, the counterfeits, the baseness of his past was transmuted by her love into a gospel of devotion. The parched infidelities, like a barren soil in which they had struggled and starved together, promised to blossom and flower under the rivulets of this reawakened passion. Deep down in the rich subsoil of love hope took root.
A pale finger of light invaded the room upstairs. They undressed in tense silence, shy and oppressed by the heavy gloom in which the room seemed to float. In the dark nuptial loam which they had rediscovered their desires expanded and fructified. Scalding tears trickled down the white of his flesh and caressed him. They were her tears. They burned into the lymph and tissue of his organism until they were identified with the adulterous specters of forgotten loves. . . .