“I dunno nothin’ about shaking spears, but this one’s back at my apartment. it’s called the king in yellow, and it’s got your name written on the inside cover. I thought it might be one of yours – somethin’ you had published back in California.”
I wasn’t sure what puzzled me more, the fact that old Merv had an apartment or that my name was scrawled inside a book I’d never even heard of.
“come back with me, Hank. we’ll have a drink. you can buy the book back off me.”
so that was his game – and was there any other game in town? everybody wanted their bit, money was everything on those streets. but it wasn’t everything to me. I loved art and a good fight in the ring. I craved truth and honour, men with strong hearts and women with soft, warm breasts, but all I got was the scum like Merv, the dirty rotten bastards who were out for whatever they could get. their slice of the pie. their piece of the cake.
“okay, Merv,” I said. “let’s go back to your place for a drink.”
at the very least, I’d get some cheap scotch, maybe even a hand-job from Merv’s old lady – last time I’d seen him, he was with some retired hooker from Chicago, and she had these gnarled, bony hands with strange soft fingers…
Merv’s apartment turned out to be a room somewhere between Canal and 14th Street, about a block from the river. it was filthy- the kind of place even sewer rats would be ashamed to stay. but the roof didn’t leak and the walls were dry. we walked up a rickety steel fire escape stair to get in. Merv climbed through an open window, and I followed him inside. it didn’t strike me as unusual at the time. everybody I knew during that brief time in N.Y.C. was trying to dodge their landlord.
the room had bare walls and a torn linoleum floor. there was a filthy cooker in one corner, with no ventilation anywhere nearby. a dining table and two chairs. pushed up against the wall was a single bed, and curled up on the mattress, clutching a thin cover against her half-naked body, was the Chicago woman with the dockworker’s hands and artist’s fingers. I stared at her fingers at the edge of the blanket. her fingernails were bitten down to the quick.
“don’t mind Annie.” Merv was opening a cupboard. he took out a pint bottle. “she sleeps a lot. I think she might be ill.”
I looked at her again. the covers had slipped down her naked back, baring her spine. the bones there looked weird, like they were bent out of shape. there was a yellow tinge to her skin, like jaundice.
“just leave her. she’ll be fine. He’s just got the fear.”
I shrugged and sat down at the small dining table in the middle of the room. there was a pack of cards on the tabletop, so I started to shuffle them. every card was a joker. this scared me, so I put them back on the stained paper table cloth and waited for Merv to pour me a drink.
as I sat there, watching this lean man with his scruffy face and his smelly clothes pour scotch into two chipped dessert glasses, I thought about Los Angeles. about the big fault line under the town. about how, some day, that fault would open and everybody would fall inside. maybe I should stay in New York, do some more readings for the hip crowd, let them pay me in booze.
“here.”
I reached out and gripped the glass. it felt like all of my energy, everything I had, was focused into that single motherfucking moment. I picked up the glass and took a sip, and the pressure went away, just like always. I pity them, the ones who don’t know that insane magic. what truly impoverished lives they must lead.
“so I was at a party in a squat somewhere up in the Heights, and this weird lady started giving me drinks. she talked about poetry, and I told her I knew a man who wrote that shit – Henry Chinaski, a famous poet from L.A.!”
I laughed at that. it was funny. it hurt, but it was funny too. “fuck you, Merv.”
“no, she was interested, man. she wanted to meet you. but I told her that I didn’t know where you were staying, so she got out this book and said that if I ever saw you again I had to pass it on. like a gift.” he belched, farted, and took another sip of his scotch. “like a gift...”
“so how much do you want for this gift?”
“how much you got?”
“you fuckin’ cockroach. it’s a gift. it’s meant to be for free.”
“like I said, how much you got?”
“all I have is five bucks. take it or leave it.” I had another ten rolled up in my sock, but I was never going to tell Merv that. I might give it to the Chicago whore, whose twig-like hands I couldn’t stop thinking about. those strange soft fingers, stroking me rigid.
“okay, okay...I’ll go get the book.” he stumbled as he left his chair, but I wasn’t going to stand up and help him. Merv was a fucker, a conman, and if he fell and cracked his head on the floor I would fuck his woman and take my book – my gift – and never come back again.
a few tin pots hung like starved suicides from a rail above the cooker. Merv opened a cupboard door, and the hinges slipped. the door hung askew in his hand, like a slipped mask. he set it down on top of the cooker and took a small book from the cupboard. then he turned around and staggered back to the table.
he threw the book on the table in front of me. its cover was ragged and faded, but I could just about make out the title: THE KING IN YELLOW.
“never heard of it.” I reached for the book and opened the cover. the smell of used paper hit me like a drug. sure enough, written inside, on the first page, just below the title, was my own name, in my own handwriting. I’d signed this book but I’d never seen it before.
“see? told ya, didn’t I?”
I wanted to beat the stupid bastard to death with his own pots and pans. I wanted his blood spilled like wine, his eyeballs popping from his skull like chestnuts in a fire.
“what did she look like? this woman?”
“she was wearing a mask – they all were. it was a masked ball, in a fucking filthy basement dive.”
“so what the hell were you doing there? who’d invite a bum like you to a masked ball?”
“it was Annie.” he motioned over to the bed. “some of her whore friends. they were working that night.”
I looked down at the book. “so. the woman.”
“yeah, the woman. she was wearing this white mask – she kept calling it the pallid mask. and she had on a tattered yellow dress. she was tall – I think she might’ve been one of those fifth-avenue transvestites, the ones who’ll blow you for five in a dirty-movie house.”
I turned the book in my hands. the back cover was blank, and there was no illustration on the cover. just that intriguing title. I felt sober for the first time in years – truly sober, like my whole body was being cleansed – so I grabbed the bottle and drank straight from it, needing to drown out these hideous new feelings.
“five bucks.”
I nodded and reached into my pocket. I took out the money and threw it onto the table. “how much for a roll with her?” I tilted my head towards the bed, and the woman who was now stirring.
“hell, Hank,” she said. “after reading that book of yours, I’ll do you for free.”
when I spun around in the chair she was swinging her legs off the mattress. the bed sheets had curled around her waist, but I could see enough to know that free was too high a price to pay for what she had on offer. her tits were small and hard and yellow, like lemons. her belly was soft as modelling clay. I didn’t want to look for long at her face, but she reminded me of my deformed first wife – the way her head sat directly between her shoulders, with no need for a neck. her lips were yellow. when she smiled I could see no teeth, just a kind of dusty darkness.
“hell, no. I just came for my book. and for a drink.”
“fuck you, then, Chinaski.” she rolled back into bed, pulled up the covers, and turned her pale face to the wall. the sheets, as she shifted them, were spotted in yellow dust, like decay or the stuff from moths wings.
“she read the book?” I didn’t know why it had offended me, but for some reason I didn’t like the idea of her eyes
roaming across the pages I was yet to see.
Merv was nodding. but his eyes were closed and his head was hanging low. if he wasn’t sleep, he would be soon. I took my five dollars from the table and put it back in my pocket. then I poured another drink. I looked again at the name I’d signed in the book, and even in the depths of my drunkenness I knew that the handwriting was mine. there was a message written under the name, and I had to strain to read it.
“hello from Carcosa”, it said. I didn’t know what the hell that could even mean.
I finished Merv’s pint and left the room by the window, holding on to the book as I made my way down the fire escape. it was still dark. the moon was a slice of strange fruit in the glass containing the sky. the stars looked like none I’d ever seen before. I couldn’t find the north star.
all the cross streets, alleys and backstreets looked the same. I headed south, towards TriBeCa, just looking for somewhere to be. a place I wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone else. but I was drawn to a place where a brazier burned up against a blackened stone wall. the wash of flame looked like somebody had opened the doors of heaven or hell, and I wasn’t sure which one sounded best. I found a bar that stayed open 24/7 and ordered a drink. then I found a dark corner and started to read the play. I got through the first act before closing the book, and then I ordered another whisky. the five was almost gone. soon I’d be cutting into the stash in my sock.
there was a lot of shit in the play about strange moons and black stars. like gothic fantasy, but deeper, darker. even as I read it, and thought how stupid it was, I felt wheels turning inside me and doors opening somewhere deep down in the pit of my stomach, at the place where even the booze couldn’t reach. when I closed my eyes I saw a woman in a pale mask. behind her stood a man whose face was nothing but a fan of yellow tatters, like old newspapers faded in the sun. the lines of the play – and of the poems I found therein – all seemed familiar, yet they were totally unknown to me. it was like something I’d once dreamt about and then forgotten, or maybe pushed out of mind.
a hidden memory. a repressed event. oh, sweet, sweet Carcosa, why did I seem to know you and recognise your twin suns rising from behind the dark cursed waters of Lake Hali?
when I regained consciousness she was there, standing above me, beside me, with her hands on the table. she wore a featureless white mask and her dress, under the dark overcoat, was yellow. I kept seeing yellow flapping shapes out of the corner of my eye. my cock and balls ached like she was squeezing them and I needed a drink more than ever before.
“I have lots of booze. all you’ll ever need.” her voice was like a song. a sad, corrupt lullaby sung by a weeping barroom madonna or a broken messiah. “come, come with me to Carcosa.”
I couldn’t say no. my body obeyed her like she was pulling my strings and I was just a puppet dancing for her entertainment. I followed her out the door and onto the black street. everything looked different. when I glanced up, at the sky, black stars were rising and strange moons circled through the skies. the drink, the night, the play... Merv’s cheap booze and his feverish whore. it was all too much, or too little. nothing made sense. even the booze seemed like a lie – the biggest one of all, because I already knew that it was faking. all my life I’d known, but still I’d loved it.
we walked along crazy streets, locked in the arms of a crazy night, and the whole world turned to glass. the buildings were made of liquor bottles – tenement windows swam with amber fluid, trash cans were filled with beer. Carcosa was a world of drink and drinking, and I’d been here all along, without even knowing.
she led me along a narrow alley, and then up another fire escape. this was one was shiny, like new, and light as a feather as I heaved my bulk up the glass wall of a building that was filled with black-eyed angels and psychopaths swimming in vast rooms filled with booze. I glanced upward, towards the sky, and saw the clear crenellated towers of this high glass castle, patrolled by drunken soldiers toting weapons of inebriation.
inside the room I was underwater – no, not water, but under liquor. I moved slowly through those whisky depths, but somehow I was able to breathe. Merv sat at the table, his hair moving gently like dark fronds of seaweed. the whore was still in bed, but as she slept she rose above the covers, floating like a small dead whale. the masked woman moved normally, as if she was the only one still on dry land. I swam towards her, reaching out to grab her tits, her ass, her ghostly body. but her form gave way as I touched it, and she flaked apart like spent jism in grimy bathwater...
treading water (whisky?) I managed to turn around, so I was facing the way I’d come in. fist-sized fishes swam through the open window, but they all had the heads of birds. their fins were razorblades and they had teeth like those of b-movie vampires.
I tried to cry out but bubbles burst between my lips and rose slowly past my eyes. I stared at those bubbles, and inside each one was a tiny replica of the image I’d seen only briefly – a man who was made up of gaunt yellow tatters. each of these Russian-doll visions turned to me at the same time, spreading their arms in a welcoming embrace, and as I looked up, and across the room, I saw long, jagged furls of yellow cloth, like the remnants of ruined flags, curling around the window frame. the woman in the mask was wrapped up in those tatters. she was naked now, but she still wore the pallid mask. she floated across the room and was set down in front of me. her body was thin, the bones prominent through her loose, white flesh. She was like a belsen horror, a stick-and bone phantom. but when I touched her she felt soft, like dough; her flesh was like something left soaking too long in water, the bones rubbery as the limbs of a squid.
I had a hard-on like I’d never experienced before, all raging stiffness and urgent need.
so when she grabbed my crotch I kissed her, sucking on her long, thin tongue as it wriggled like a grave worm down my throat. she pushed me down and straddled me, all the time nodding her head and kneading the loose muscles of my arms with her strong hands. my pants came off without me even noticing, and then I was inside her, thrusting as deep as I could and grabbing her ass with my hands to part her cheeks and slip a finger up inside there. her flesh was soft and flabby, despite there not being too much of it. but I did her anyway; never let it be said that Chinaski ever turned down a free ride.
she drifted away when I was finished. she was still wearing that strange blank mask. her arms hung loose at her sides and her gait was lazy, dissatisfied. I’d done my best, but my best was never good enough. I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I could never turn down a free ride. the yellow tatters gathered around her, spinning her like a toy. she was a yellow mummy, a sanctified thing of sex and longing and the sounds of the lost, the lonely, the dying and the already dead. reality was her plaything, and the tattered king was the master of her yearning, the captain of her unfathomable dreams. when the cloth began to unbind her, unwinding like a shroud, it revealed the shape of the king himself, and slowly and deliberately he lifted his torn yellow face towards me...
...and then I was awake again, and sitting at the table in that same shitty little barroom, an empty glass in my hand and the book spread out before me like a big butterfly someone had pinned to the table using six-inch nails. I shut the book and pushed it across the damp surface, trying to get it away from me. then I gulped down the rest of my drink and stood, my legs weak and barely able to support me.
had I been dreaming, or was the vision something else – like a glimpse into a possible future, if I read the entire play? like Merv’s woman, Annie, if I finished the book would my body start to distort, the bones cracking and reshaping, the skin turning the colour of a dying addict’s sweat?
while outside the world kept turning, all the New York needle-babies cried, a dog pissed up against the signpost that pointed towards happiness. the sun vibrated and all the birds in the sky took a shit at the same time.
at the last minute I grabbed that cocksucking book. no matter how much I hated my fellow man, and wished them all dead and
gone and not bothering me, I had no wish to set this curse upon them. so I carried the book from the bar, out into the alley, and headed towards the burning brazier I’d seen earlier, as I entered the place a couple of street bums were huddled around the flames, warming their hands and bullshitting each other with the tuneless songs of their busted dreams.
“what the fuck you doin’” said one of the bums, barely even turning towards me. he rubbed his rough hands by the fire.
“burnin’ books. and you’ll never know how much that hurts me, brother – more than a cutthroat razor across the cheek, or a strong right hook to the sweet spot.”
I paused for a second or two, just to take in the moment, and then I threw the book onto the fire.
when I turned away, trudging like a punch-drunk pugilist along that miserable asshole of an alley, I happened to look up at the name of the bar I’d been in. it was called ‘the yellow sign’.
I don’t know what that means – maybe it was just a bullshit coincidence, or a shitty cosmic joke – but all I know is that I went straight to the bus station and got on the next bus out of the big-rotten-motherfucking-apple.
there’s a bluebird in my heart but it wears a pale mask. it sees me when I’m not looking.
the bus moved off in a cloud of diesel smoke. I was going back to L.A., where the air is warm, the masks are gaudy, and the poems are all hard and bright and brittle as ice. where there’s only one moon in the sky, and the stars are ones that I recognise. the city – my own mythical city of fallen angels – where dim and distant Carcosa is nothing but the memory of a hard night I once lived through and the half-forgotten taste of a bitter drink I once tried.
Finale, Act Two
By Ann K. Schwader
The ebon snows have drifted deep
Along the shoreline of Hali
Assuring that dynastic sleep
A Season In Carcosa Page 7