Cain’s Book

by Alexander Trocchi

  “Where’s that nickel you owe me, Geo?” Lou said from where he stood at the draining board of the sink. With Lou looking at Geo the razorblade was immobile over the little heaps of powder on the mirror.

  I saw a flash of annoyance come into Fay’s yellow eyes.

  “Lou, put enough in that spoon for a fix for me. You can take it out of mine later,” she said to him.

  “Why you motherfucker!” Geo said to Lou. “I made the run. I was entitled to a third. How many fixes have I laid on you?”

  “Fuck that,” Fay said, nudging Lou. “The spoon. Put some in. Would you shut up for a minute, Geo?”

  Lou stood at the sink, not even looking at Geo now, but down at nowhere, smiling his private smile.

  “Hello Harriet, hello Joe,” Mona said. We were all bunched up at the end of the room (a kind of ground-floor passage or long cellar) which was the kitchen, near the stove, near the sink. Then, as she herself wasn’t going to fix, she turned her perplexed attention to some ad or other which Lou had pinned to the wall. A girl was saying to her mother: “Mom... couldn’t you get Daddy to stay upstairs when John comes?”

  “Look baby,” Geo said to Fay, “you still owe me a ten-dollar bag. And what about the three bucks I laid on you last night?”

  “Everything he says is irrelevant,” Lou said from behind his smile.

  Fay grunted as she heated the spoon over the gas flame.

  “All this arithmetic,” Willie said, choosing sides.

  “Gimme some more, Lou,” Fay said. “I won’t even feel this.”

  “Sure you will! It’s a dirty spike!” Jody said.

  Mona moved quietly to the other end of the room, sat down, and opened a magazine. Geo followed her unconcernedly with his eyes and then said to me: “Will you tell these motherfuckers to get off my back?”

  “Man, I told you before I don’t want you all coming to turn on here,” Lou said to Geo. “This pad’s getting too hot.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Geo said, grinning. “You talk about me being irrelevant? Anyway, you turned on often enough at my pad.”

  “Shut up for a minute, Geo,” I said. “For God’s sake, Lou, if you’re turning on next start cooking up.”

  “Yeah,” Jody said, “Lou’ll turn on next if Fay ever stops booting it.”

  Fay’s thick, dark, purplish-red blood rose and fell in the eye-dropper like a column of gory mercury in a barometer. A word that failed to materialize spluttered out of the corner of her blue mouth in an outward thrust of inarticulate indignation – what? Accuse Fay? – her eyelids drooping, mumbling, “Not... sure... got... a... hit...”

  “Yeah, looks bad Fay, you’re wounded,” I said.

  “She’s going to give Lou a transfusion,” Jody said.

  “What’s your blood type, Fay?” Lou said.

  “Has anyone here got the time?” Mona said from her end of the room. To get him off the hooks, I told Geo I would give him a taste. Inspired by that good office he performed the same for Mona, telling her it was ten past two.

  “I’ll give Willie a taste,” Lou said.

  “Don’t give him much, Joe,” Jody said.

  Harriet took the baby’s bottle out of the pot of hot water and squirted a jet of milk against her wrist to test it. The baby accepted the nipple eagerly.

  “Wow! Dig his habit!” Willie said.

  We all shot up, except Mona. – Why don’t you turn her on, Geo? “No. She doesn’t use it,” he would answer piously, as though it were self-explanatory.

  Tom Tear arrived with a hurt look and tried to find out if anyone had any shit left. Only Fay had, and she explained it in a vague and unregenerate way as some stashed away from yesterday and subsequently found. I always felt Fay’s was a peculiarly unvenomous treachery though she seldom took much trouble to cover her duplicities, compensating for this impertinence with the added impertinence of a ready indignation – What? Accuse Fay?

  I remember Mona a few hours later. You couldn’t complain about her patience. Or you could complain. You could say to her: “Geo turned on an hour ago. Do you think it’s a bloody virtue to be so patient?” But Mona smiled at you, about as (un)ambiguously as her namesake in the Louvre, her slightly cross-eyed smile, worried, with no condemnation in her attitude. She would probably have turned on if it hadn’t been for Geo. He was like a man defending his wife against swearwords. Doncherknowtheresladiespresent?

  Geo was saying to Lou in the manner of Tertullian: “What I mean is I don’t care whether you prove I’m an evil mother, you’re lying!” and Mona said to the room at large: “Isn’t he insane?”

  Harriet looked demure.

  “I thought you said you didn’t have any,” Tom said to Fay.

  Fay didn’t say anything. Working silently at the sink like Dr Jekyll brewing his potion, she had no doubt hoped to go in this her second fix unobserved. Her hand trembled as she held the match to the spoon.

  “Oh man!” Tom said, seeking allies.

  Fay still said nothing. She drew the liquid into the eye-dropper.

  “Come on, give me a taste, Fay!”

  “I’ll leave you a taste in the spoon,” Fay grunted.

  Tom came alive in a way he sometimes did.

  “Man, I knew you’d make it!” Geo jeered.

  “Up yours, Geo,” Tom said.

  “He’s right, Geo,” Lou said, his eyelids fluttering momentarily as he stood swaying near the sink. “You’re an impertinent mother.”

  “Geo, I’m going now,” Mona said. “I can take a taxi so it’s OK, you needn’t come. You stay if you want.”

  Geo looked pained. “Oh baby, can’t you stay a half-hour longer?”

  “Sure,” Mona said unhappily. “It’s just that there’s nearly an hour between trains at this time of night. You know how it is.”

  “OK,” Geo said, “but I’ll go with you as far as the station anyway.”

  “The family that kicks together, sticks together,” Lou said elliptically, swaying.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Just a minute for Christ’s sake, see who that is!” Lou said, going near the door. Tom removed the spike neatly from his vein, squirted a jet of water through it, and stashed it among the knives and forks.

  “Who is it?” Lou said loudly, his shoulder against the door.

  “He thinks he’s Horatio defending the bridge,”25 Geo said. “If it’s the Man they’ll trample him underfoot. You know the time they busted me they came in with their guns out and I’m standing there with a fucking spoon. Now, if it’d been a flame-thrower!”

  “Shut your fat mouth!” Lou hissed at him in an undertone.

  A voice from the outside said “Ettie!”

  “It’s OK, Lou, it’s Ettie,” Fay said.

  “Fuck Ettie!” Lou said. “This pad’s becoming like Grand Central Station. I don’t want the whole fucking world coming here!”

  “Is Fay there?” the voice said in singsong.

  “Let her in, man,” Fay said. “She’s probably got some shit with her.”

  Ettie came in.

  Ettie was a thin Negress who shot up ten five-dollar bags a day. One time she wanted Jody and me to move in with her. Ettie pushed everything, clothes and other valuables she’d boosted, shit, her own thin chops, and speculated with the minds and bodies of her friends. “Last night I had a scene with the Man,” she said to Jody and me once as she opened an oilskin pouch on the bed and disclosed half an ounce of badly adulterated heroin. “Bastid had his hand on my leg right near my own sweet self. With that I can deal. I’ll show that boy!”

  “She will too,” Jody said to me.

  “He might bite your ass,” I said to Ettie.

  Ettie wanted us to move in with her, the two of us; Jody could hustle again and I could be the man about the place. “Then you git all the shit you want, no hassle.”

  “No hustle?” Jody said drily.

  “I didn’t say anything about that, babydoll. What are you anyway? An
idealist? You know well what you kin do, Jody. You kin manipulate those soft pink fats of yours. That’s Greek.”

  “No kidding?” Jody said.

  “Man, it’s a hassle what you do,” I said to Ettie, “peddling around town all day with the heat breathing down your neck.”

  “He kin breathe right up my vagina, dear, jist so long as he don’t bust me,” Ettie said.

  “What’s this?” Ettie said now as she came in. “I’ve never seen so much evil in one room. If my mother could see me now! Hi there, Jody! Are you straight?”

  “Joe gave me a taste,” Jody said. “But I didn’t get anything. Have you got some shit on you, Ettie?”

  “You think I come all the way downtown just for the ride?” Ettie turned to Lou who had locked the door behind her. “Mind if I get straight here?”

  Lou hesitated. I could see his point. He might as well have opened up a shop. Finally he said: “OK, but I want a taste.”

  “That might be arranged,” Ettie said, and, a few moments later, after a few incredibly quick motions with spoon and eye-dropper, she was probing with the needle at her thin black thigh.

  Jody leant near her.

  As Ettie withdrew the needle she looked up at Jody and said: “I know what’s comin’ and the answer is no. First there’s that nickel you owe me from last week. That’s yours there, Lou.” She pointed to a small heap of powder in a spoon.

  Harriet, after shrugging her shoulders at Ettie’s entrance, had retired to the bed where she was now lying, playing with the baby. Willie was stretched out near her.

  Fay was talking urgently with Geo. Mona, now seated stiffly in an upright chair near the door, looked on disapprovingly.

  “Man, I’ve only got a nickel,” Geo was saying to Fay.

  “Anyone wants anything, say so now,” Ettie said.

  Lou, who had just fixed again, continued to sway near the sink, the dropper with the needle on it still in his right hand.

  “Aw, for God’s sake, Ettie!” Jody said, “I’m gettin’ some bread tomorrow, honest!”

  “What about her?” Fay said to Geo. She meant Mona.

  Geo groaned and looked pleadingly at Mona who appeared to be at the end of her tether.

  “Look, Mona, you could lay ten on me tonight, and I could give it back out of that thirty.”

  “I thought you were going to buy a suit?” Mona said.

  “Don’t forget you owe me a nickel, Geo,” Lou said, swaying, his eyes closed.

  “Who needs a suit?” Fay said to Tom.

  I was looking at Mona. She had already taken a ten-dollar bill from her purse. Geo took it and said to Fay in a hard voice: “Anyway I don’t see what you’re gettin’ so excited about. I didn’t even say I’d give you a taste.”

  “I got her down here,” Fay said.

  “You got her down here,” Geo mimicked.

  “That’s correct, she did,” Ettie said and turned back to Jody. “Honey, I jist can’t understand what it is you think you’ve got between your legs that’s valuable. It’s jist lyin’ idle and meanwhile you ain’t even got a nickel to git straight with.”

  “Yeah, it’s not so easy,” Jody said. “Look, Ettie, tomorrow...”

  “I’m going now, Geo,” Mona said.

  Geo was interrupting Jody. “For Christ’s sake shut up for a minute, will you?” He turned to Ettie. “How much for fifteen? A sixteenth?”

  “I don’t know about any sixteenth,” Ettie said. “You git three five-dollar bags for fifteen.”

  “Oh, don’t come on, man!” Geo said. “I can go uptown later myself and get a full sixteenth!”

  “I came downtown,” Ettie said.

  “That’s right, Geo, she did,” Fay said.

  “I’m not buying any five-dollar bags,” Geo said. “I’ll score later.” He turned away from Ettie and Mona said: “I’m going now, Geo. If you want to come to the station with me you’ll have to come now.”

  Geo hesitated and then said: “OK, baby, I’m coming now. See you all later,” he said to the rest of us.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Geo,” Lou said, lurching out of a comatose state. “You’ve got to lay that nickel on me. I need it to score.”

  “You really think I owe you that nickel, don’t you, Lou?”

  “Man, you’re not impressing anyone!” Lou said.

  “Come on,” Fay said, “you owe him a nickel. We need it. Give it to him.”

  “Will you hurry up and shut that door?” Harriet called from the bed.

  Mona was already outside.

  Lou chuckled, his face suddenly becoming friendly. “You know, you don’t always have to argue, Geo. You never win anyway.”

  With a look at Fay, Geo gave Lou a five-dollar bill. “I don’t know,” he said as he went out.

  “That bastid,” Fay said when he was gone.

  “Fuck you, Fay,” Lou said, smiling at her.

  “She’s right,” Tom said. “Sometimes Geo’s too much.”

  “Sure,” Lou said, “but he’s never refused you a fix.”

  “He’s refused me offen,” Jody said contemptuously.

  “An I’m refusin’ you now, baby,” Ettie said. “Now, does anyone want to do business? I got to be at 125th in an hour.”

  “We’ll share a bag, eh Lou?” Fay said, moving at once over to the sink.

  “OK,” Lou said, and paid Ettie. “Do you want a taste, honey?” he said to Harriet.

  “Yeah, leave me a taste,” she said. She was playing with the baby’s fine hair. “It’s just like silk,” she said to Willie.

  “Are you going to score, Joe?” Jody said to me.

  “I’ll get a bag and we’ll split it,” I said to her.

  “Half of one of her bags is nothin’,” Jody said sulkily.

  I didn’t answer. I intended to keep a nickel so that I wouldn’t be stranded on the scow.

  I divided the bag in two and shot up my share. Three of us were shooting up at once, each working silently and efficiently. Somehow Tom got some, and Willie. As soon as I withdrew the spike Jody accepted it from me.

  “You want I should call on you Friday?” Ettie said to Lou. “I’ll be in the neighbourhood.”

  “No, man,” Lou said.

  “Why don’t you make it across to my place?” Tom said.

  “Around what time?”

  “About nine.”

  “See you all,” Ettie said, “and you, baby, you take your mother’s advice,” she said to Jody as she left.

  Fay sat on a low chair and began to nod.

  Harriet moved quietly over to the sink and Lou gave her a shot. They went back over to the bed together.

  “Will you people get out of here as soon as you can?” Lou said to the rest of us.

  Jody raised her hand quickly to her mouth and dropped the needle back into the water glass.

  “Where are you going now, Joe?” she said to me. “Can I come along?”

  “No, baby. I’m going back to Perth Amboy.”

  This time I know where I am going, it is no longer the ancient night, the recent night. Now it is a game, I am going to play. I never knew how to play, till now. I longed to, but I knew it was impossible. And yet I often tried. I turned on all the lights, I took a good look all round. I began to play with what I saw. People and things asked nothing better than to play, certain animals too. All went well at first, they all came to me, pleased that someone should want to play with them. If I said, Now I need a hunchback, immediately one came running, proud as punch of his fine hunch that was going to perform. It did not occur to him that I might have to ask him to undress. But it was not long before I found myself alone, in the dark. That is why I gave up trying to play and took to myself for ever shapelessness and speechlessness, incurious wondering, darkness, long stumbling with outstretched arms, hiding. Such is the earnestness from which, for nearly a century now, I have never been able to depart. From now on it will be different. I shall never do anything any more from now on but play. No, I must not begin wi
th an exaggeration. But I shall play a great part of the time, from now on, the greater part, if I can. But perhaps I shall not succeed any better than hitherto. Perhaps as hitherto I shall find myself abandoned, in the dark, without anything to play with. Then I shall play with myself. To have been able to conceive such a plan is encouraging.

  – Samuel Beckett26

  I ALWAYS FELT IT WAS strange that the butcher Abel should be preferred to the agriculturist Cain.

  Abel waxed fat and rich breeding sheep for the slaughter while Cain tilled. Cain made an offering to the Lord. Abel followed suit with his quaking fat calves. Who’d have gruel rather than a T-bone?

  And soon Abel had vast herds and air-conditioned slaughterhouses and meat storehouses and meat-package plants, and there was a blight on Cain’s crop. And that was called sin.

  Cain stood and looked at the blight on his crop. And his spade was useless against it in his hand.

  And it came to pass that Abel was trespassing there where Cain would carry his spade, which is where land is to be tilled and not where sheep pasture.

  And Abel saw his elder brother and he was thin and with a starved look and held the spade to no purpose in his hand. And Abel approached his brother, saying: Why don’t you give up and come to work for me? I could use a good man in the slaughterhouse.

  And Cain slew him.

  If I say to you “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”, be vigilant.

  I fell asleep last night over this document. When I woke up this morning around eight I found I was the last scow in a tow of four moving like a ghost ship in fog. I say “a tow of four” because last night there were four of us. Actually I cannot even see the scow ahead of me. I know we are moving because the wrinkled brown water slides like a skin past my catwalk. I threw an empty can overboard. It bobbed in the wake of my stern for a few seconds and then, like something removed by a hand, it was out of sight. I suppose I can see in all directions for about fifteen feet. Beyond that, things become shadowy and at the same time portentous, like the long swift movement of the log which floated by a few minutes ago.