by Henry Miller
During this new burst of frenzy the walls have been redecorated: the place looks like Madame Tussaud’s now. Nothing but skeletons, death masks, degenerate harlequins, tombstones and Mexican gods—all in lurid colors.
Now and then, whether from excitement or from their frenetic exertions, they get vomiting spells. Or the trots. One thing after another, as in The Ramayana.
Then one day, disgusted with all this senseless activity, a bright idea visited me. Just for the hell of it, I decided I would get in touch with Mona’s brother—not the West Pointer, the other, the younger one. She had always described him as being very sincere, very straight-forward. He didn’t know how to lie, that’s how she put it once.
Yes, why not have a heart to heart talk? A few plain facts, a few cold truths would make a pleasant parenthesis in the steady stream of phantasy and clabberwhorl.
So I call him up. To my astonishment, he is only too eager to come and see me. Says he has long wanted to pay us a visit but Mona would never hear of it. Sounds bright, frank, altogether sympathique over the phone. Boyish like, he tells me that he hopes to be a lawyer soon.
One look at the freak museum we inhabit and he’s aghast. Walks around in a trance, staring at this and that, shaking his head disapprovingly. So this is how you live? he repeats again and again. Her idea, no doubt. God, but she’s a queer one.
I offer him a glass of wine but he informs me that he never touches liquor. Coffee? No, a glass of water would do.
I ask if she had always been this way. For answer he tells me that no one in the family knew much about her. She was always on her own, always secretive, always pretending that things were other than they were. Nothing but lies, lies, lies.
But before she went to college—how was she then?
.College? She never finished High School. She left home when she was sixteen.
I insinuated as tactfully as I could that conditions at home were probably depressing. May be she couldn’t get along with a step-mother, I added.
Step-mother? Did she say she had a step-mother? The bitch!
Yes, I said, she always insists that she couldn’t get along with her step-mother. Her father, on the other hand, she loved dearly. So she says. They were very close.
What else? His lips were compressed with anger.
Oh, a lot of things. For one thing, that her sister hated her. Why she never knew.
Don’t say any more, he said. Stop! It’s the other way round. Exactly the opposite. My mother was as kind as a mother can be. She was her real mother, not her step-mother. As for my father, he used to get so furious with her that he would beat her unmercifully. Chiefly because of her lying … Her sister, you say. Yes, she’s a normal, conventional person, very handsome too. There never was any hate in her. On the contrary, she did everything in her power to make life easier for all of us. But no one could do anything with a bitch like this one. She had to have everything her own way. When she didn’t she threatened to run away.
I don’t understand, said I. I know she’s a born liar, but … Well, to twist things absolutely upside down, why? What can she be trying to prove?
She always considered herself above us, he replied. We were too prosaic, too conventional, for her taste. She was somebody—an actress, she thought. But she had no talent, none whatever. She was too theatrical, if you understand what I mean. But I must admit, she always knew how to make a favorable impression on others. She had a natural gift for taking people in. As I told you, we know little or nothing of her life from the time she flew the coop. We see her once a year, maybe, if that often. She always arrives with an armful of gifts, like a princess. And always a pack of lies about the great things she’s doing. But you can never put a finger on what it is she is doing.
There’s something I must ask you about, I said. Tell me, aren’t your people Jewish?
Of course, he replied. Why? Did she try to make you believe she was a Gentile? She was the only one who resented being Jewish. It used to drive my mother crazy. I suppose she never told you our real name? My father changed it, you see, on coming to America. It means death in Polish.
He had a question now to put me. He was puzzling how to frame it. Finally he came out with it, but blushingly.
Is she giving you trouble? I mean, are you having marital difficulties?
Oh, I replied, we have our troubles … like every married couple. Yes, plenty of trouble. But that’s not for you to worry about.
She’s not running around with … with other men, is she?
No-o-o, not exactly. God, if he only knew!
She loves me and I love her. No matter what her faults, she’s the only one—for me.
What is it, then?
I was at a loss how to put it without shocking him too deeply. It was hard to explain, I said.
You don’t have to hold back, he said. I can take it.
Well … you see, there are three of us living here. That stuff you see on the walls—that’s the other one’s work. She’s a girl about the same age as your sister. An eccentric character whom your sister seems to idolize. (It sounded strange saying your sister.) Sometimes I feel that she thinks more of this friend than she does of me. It gels pretty thick, if you know what I mean.
I get it, he said. But why don’t you throw her out?
That’s it, I can’t. Not that I haven’t tried. But it won’t work. If she leaves, your sister will go too.
I’m not surprised, he said. It sounds just like her. Not that I think she’s a Lesbian, you understand. She likes involvements. Anything to create a sensation.
What makes you so sure she might not be in love with this other person? You say yourself you haven’t seen much of her these last few years…
She’s a man’s woman, he said. That I know.
You seem awfully sure.
I am. Don’t ask me why. I just am. Don’t forget, whether she admits it or not, she’s got Jewish blood in her veins. Jewish girls are loyal, even when they’re strange and wayward, like this one. It’s in the blood…
It’s good to hear, I said. I only hope it’s true.
Do you know what I’m thinking? You should come to see us, have a talk with my mother. She’d be only too happy to meet you. She has no idea what sort of person her daughter married. Anyway, she’d set you straight. It would make her feel good.
Maybe I’ll do that, I said. The truth can’t hurt. Besides, I am curious to know what her real mother looks like.
Good, he said, let’s fix a date.
I named one, for a few days later. We shook hands.
As he was closing the gate behind him he said: What she needs is a sound thrashing. But you’re not the kind to do it, are you?
A few days later I knocked at their door. It was evening and the dinner hour was past. Her brother came to the door. (He was hardly likely to remember that a few years ago, when I had called to see if Mona really lived there or if it was a fake address, he had slammed the door in my face.) Now I was inside. I felt somewhat quaky. How often I had tried to picture this interior, this home of hers, frame her in the midst of her family, as a child, as a young girl, as a grown woman!
Her mother came forward to greet me. The same woman I had caught a glimpse of years ago—hanging up the wash. The person I described to Mona, only to have her laugh in my face. (That was my aunt!)
It was a sad, care-worn looking countenance the mother presented. As if she hadn’t laughed or smiled in years. She had something of an accent but the voice was pleasant. However, it bore no resemblance to her daughter’s. Nor could I detect any resemblance in their features.
It was like her—why I couldn’t say—to come straight to the point. Was she the real mother or the step-mother? (That was the deep grievance.) Going to the sideboard, she produced a few documents. One was her marriage certificate. Another was Mona’s birth certificate. Then photos—of the whole family.
I took a seat at the table and studied them intently. Not that I thought they were fakes. I was shake
n. For the first time I was coming to grips with facts.
I wrote down the name of the village in the Carpathians where her mother and father were born. I studied the photo of the house they had lived in in Vienna. I gazed long and lovingly at all the photos of Mona, beginning with the infant in swaddling clothes, then to the strange foreign child with long black ringlets, and finally to the fifteen year old Rejane or Modjeska whose clothes seemed grotesque yet succeeded somehow in setting off her personality. And there was her father—who loved her so! A handsome, distinguished looking man. Might have been a physician, a chancellor of the exchequer, a composer or a wandering scholar. As for that sister of hers, yes, she was even more beautiful than Mona, no gainsaying it. But it was a beauty lost in placidity. They were of the same family, but the one belonged to her race while the other was a wild fruit sired by the wind.
When at last I raised my eyes I found the mother weeping.
So she told you I was her step-mother? What ever made her say such a thing? And that I was cruel to her … that I refused to understand her. I don’t understand … I don’t.
She wept bitterly. The brother came over and put his arms around her.
Don’t take it so hard, mother. She was always strange.
Strange, yes, but this … this is like treason. Is she ashamed of me? What did I do, tell me, to cause such behavior?
I wanted to say something comforting but I couldn’t find words.
I feel sorry for you, said her mother. You must have a hard time of it indeed. If I hadn’t given birth to her I might believe that she was some one else’s child, not mine. Believe me, she wasn’t like this as a girl. No, she was a good child, respectful, obedient, eager to please. The change came suddenly, as if the Devil had taken possession of her. Nothing we said or did suited her any more. She became like a stranger in our midst. We tried everything, but it was no use.
She broke down again, cupped her head in her hands and wept. Her whole body shook with uncontrollable spasms.
I was for getting away as fast as possible. I had heard enough. But they insisted on serving tea. So I sat there and listened. Listened to the story of Mona’s life, from the time she was a child. There was nothing unusual or remarkable about any of it, curiously enough. (Only one little detail struck home. She always held her head high.) In a way, it was rather soothing to know these homely facts. Now I could put the two faces of the coin together … As for the sudden change, that didn’t strike me as so baffling. It had happened to me too, after all. What do mothers know about their offspring? Do they invite the wayward one to share his or her secret longings? Do they probe the heart of a child? Do they ever confess that they are monsters too? And if a child is ashamed of her blood, how is she to make that known to her own mother?
Looking at this woman, this mother, listening to her, I could find nothing in her which, had I been her offspring, would have attracted me to her. Her mournful air alone would have turped me from her. To say nothing of her sense of pride. It was obvious that her sons had been good to her; Jewish sons usually are. And the one daughter, Jehovah be praised, she had married off successfully. But then there was the black sheep, that thorn in her side. The thought of it filled her with guilt. She had failed. She had brought forth bad fruit. And this wild one had disowned her. What greater humiliation could a mother suffer than to be called step-mother?
No, the more I listened to her, the more she wept and sobbed, the more I felt that she had no real love for her daughter. If she had ever loved her it was as a child. She never did make an effort to understand her daughter. There was something false about her protestations. What she wanted was for her daughter to return and on bended knee beg her forgiveness.
Do bring her here, she entreated as I was bidding them good-night. Let her stand here in your presence and repeat these evil things, if she dares. As your wife, she ought to grant you that favor at least.
I suspected from the way she spoke that she was not at all convinced that we were man and wife. I was tempted to say, Yes, when we come I will bring the marriage certificate along too. But I held my tongue.
Then, pressing my hand, she amended her speech. Tell her that everything is forgotten, she murmured.
Spoken like a mother, I thought. But hollow just the same.
I circumnavigated the neighborhood on my way to the L station. Things had changed since we last made the rounds here, Mona and I. I had difficulty locating the house where I once stood her up against the wall. The vacant lot, where we had fucked our heads off in the mud, was no longer a vacant lot. New buildings, new streets, everywhere. Still I kept milling around. This time it was with another Mona—the fifteen year old tragedienne whose photo I had seen for the first time a few minutes ago. How striking she was, even at that awkward age! What purity in her gaze! So frank, so searching, so commanding!
I thought of the Mona I had waited for outside the dance hall. I tried to put the two together. I couldn’t. I wandered through the dismal streets with one on either arm. Neither of them existed any longer. Nor did I perhaps.
10.
It was obvious, even to a deluded fool like myself, that the three of us would never arrive in Paris together. When, therefore, I received a letter from Tony Marella saying that I should report for work in a few days I took the opportunity to set them straight about my end of it. In a heart to heart talk such as we hadn’t enjoyed for some time I suggested that it might be wiser for them to make the jump as soon as funds permitted and let me follow later. Now that the job had materialized I could go and live with the folks and thereby put aside money for my own passage. Or, if the necessity arose, I could send them a little dough. In my own mind I didn’t visualize any of us leaving for Europe within the next few months. Maybe never.
It didn’t take a mind reader to see how relieved they were that I wasn’t to accompany them. Mona of course tried to urge me not to go live with my parents. If I had to go anywhere she thought I ought to camp out on Ulric. I pretended that I would think about it.
Anyway, our little heart to heart talk seemed to give them a new lease of life. Every night now they brought back nothing but good reports. All their friends, as well as the suckers, had promised to chip in to raise the passage money. Stasia had purchased a little book of conversational French; I was the willing dummy on whom she practised her idiotic expressions.
Madame, avez-vous une chambre a louer? A quel prix, s’il vous plait? Y a-t-il de l’eau courante? Et du chauffage central? Oui? C’est chic. Merci bien, madame! And so on. Or she would ask me if I knew the difference between une facture and l’addition? L’oeil was singular for eye, les yeux plural. Queer, what! And if the adjective sacre came before the noun it had quite another meaning than if it came after the noun. What do you know about that? Very interesting indeed, wasn’t it? But I didn’t give a shit about these subtleties. I’d learn when the time came, and in my own way.
In the back of the street directory which she had bought was a map of the Metro lines. This fascinated me. She showed me where Montmartre was and Montparnasse. They would probably go to Montparnasse first, because that’s where most of the Americans congregated. She also pointed out the Eiffel Tower, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the flea market, the abattoirs and the Louvre.
Where’s the Moulin Rouge? I asked.
She had to look it up in the index.
And the guillotine—where do they keep that?
She couldn’t answer that one.
I couldn’t help observing how many streets were named after writers. Alone I would spread out the map and trace the streets named after the famous ones: Rabelais, Dante, Balzac, Cervantes, Victor Hugo, Villon, Verlaine, Heine … Then the philosophers, the historians, the scientists, the painters, the musicians—and finally the great warriors. No end to the historical names. What an education, I thought to myself, merely to take a stroll in such a city! Imagine coming upon a street or place or impasse. was it? named after Vercingetorix! (In America I had never happened on a st
reet named after Daniel Boone, though maybe one existed in a place like South Dakota.) There was one street Stasia had pointed out which stuck in my crop; it was the street on which the Beaux Arts was located. (She hoped to study there one day, she said.) The name of this street was Bonaparte. (Little did I realize then that this would be the first street I would inhabit on arriving in Paris.) On a side street just off it—the rue Visconti—Balzac once had a publishing house, a venture which ruined him for years to come. On another side street, also leading off the rue Bonaparte, Oscar Wilde had once lived.
The day came to report for work. It was a long, long ride to the office of the Park Department. Tony was waiting for me with open arms.
You don’t have to kill yourself, he said, meaning in my capacity as grave-digger. Just make a stab at it. Nobody’s going to keep tabs on you. He gave me a hearty slap on the back. You’re strong enough to handle a shovel, aren’t you? Or wheel a load of dirt?
Sure, said I. Sure I am.
He introduced me to the foreman, told him not to work me too hard, and ambled back to the office. In a week, he said, I would be working beside him, in the Commissioner’s own office.
The men were kind to me, probably because of my soft hands. They gave me only the lightest sort of work to do. A boy could have done the job as well.
That first day I enjoyed immensely. Manual work, how good it was! And the fresh air, the smell of dirt, the birds caroling away. A new approach to death. How must it feel to dig one’s own grave? A pity, I thought, that we weren’t all obliged to do just that at some point or other in our lives. One might feel more comfortable in a grave dug with one’s own hands.
What an appetite I had when I got home from work that evening I Not that I had ever been deficient in this respect. Strange to come home from work, like any Tom, Dick or Harry, and find a good meal waiting to be devoured. There were flowers on the table as well as a bottle of most excellent French wine. Few were the grave-diggers who came home to such a spread. A grave-digger emeritus, that’s what I was. A Shakespearean digger. Prosit!