The Work Is Innocent

by Rafael Yglesias

  The Work is Innocent

  Rafael Yglesias

  For My Parents

  Throughout his later boyhood and into his earlier manhood the youth is always striving away from his home and the things of it. With whatever pain he suffers through the longing for them, he must deny them; he must cleave to the world and the things of it; that is his fate, that is the condition of all achievement and advancement for him. He will be many times contemptible, he will be mean and selfish upon occasion; but he can scarcely otherwise be a man; the great matter for him is to keep some place in his soul where he shall be ashamed. Let him not be afraid of being too unsparing in his memories; the instinct of self-preservation will safeguard him from showing himself quite as he was. No man, unless he puts on the mask of fiction, can show his real face or the will behind it. For this reason the only real biographies are the novels, and every novel, if it is honest, will be the autobiography of the author and the biography of the reader.

  —William Dean Howells

  Years of My Youth

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  A BIOGRAPHY OF RAFAEL YGLESIAS

  CHAPTER ONE

  He called them the Dark Years. And pictured them thus: he would vomit out his intimate feelings to each person he met (imagining it was his soul he revealed), was quickly humiliated by having done so, and then spat where his vomit lay. All this, and the poor victim was never allowed a response.

  But his judgment was too harsh. His compulsion to confess was not like vomiting, it was like masturbation. The humiliation was real, though it came from the mistake of believing his confession was disgusting; only the anger is accurately described. But this image encouraged him to continue the destructive cycle, since it was romantic. A wonderfully violent character creating altars of vomit and saliva, rather than the truth: a perverse boy producing pools of watery-white liquid.

  The previous spring, when Richard Goodman was thrown out of a New York prep school, he begged his parents to allow him to live in Vermont with his sister, brother-in-law, and niece, and go to school there. He was afraid of being knifed in a New York public high school. Since his parents had decided to move to Vermont permanently, they figured Richard might as well start early in the high school where he would have to finish his last three years.

  He had managed to reach the Christmas holidays without cutting, but in January his addiction to Balzac had resulted in five days of staying home. His parents had warned that failure would mean an immediate summons to New York, so Richard knew what awaited him when his brother-in-law, John, answered the phone and told Richard to come and speak with his father.

  The entire affair seemed so ritualized and predictable that it assumed theatrical proportions causing Richard to imagine that his slow movements to the phone were observed by an audience impressed with the contempt he showed for his fate.

  The kitchen had only one pale yellow light, and it added to the dreariness of the scene. His father was terse, telling him to get on the next flight to New York. Richard asked if he might stay for the weekend and was given permission. That ended the call, not unlike one to a travel agency. Yet after hanging up, an explosion of sweat betrayed his calm and Richard lost himself in that sickly light, harassed and nauseated by the countryside’s loud buzzing silence.

  After waiting for either Naomi, his sister, or John to call out asking what had happened, but getting no such question, Richard sought them out. They were on the living-room couch, John’s arm around Naomi. She looked at Richard with concern, love, and confidence, but John’s eyes asked: “Can you survive this?”

  “Well, the man has called,” Richard said. “I must go.”

  “Really?” John asked.

  “I go Monday. Dad said you should pay for my ticket and he’ll send you a check for it.”

  “They’re going to have you go to school there?” Naomi asked.

  “Didn’t say a word about it.”

  “I’m surprised they did it,” John said.

  “Oh, come on. They had to.” Richard smiled at both of them to communicate his awareness of every move his parents might make. He looked through the doorway to his bedroom and saw the typewriter with page ninety-eight of his novel in it. He realized that his calm came from it. “That’s gonna get me out of this,” he said.

  Naomi looked pleased. “What page are you on?”

  “I think I’m almost halfway done.”

  “Did you tell them about it?” John asked.

  “No. I told you I wasn’t going to tell them about it until it’s done. I mean it’s gonna seem crazy enough to them when I present it finished.”

  “I don’t think it’s gonna seem crazy,” Naomi said. “It’s really good.”

  “No, no. I don’t mean that. I mean letting me drop out of school because of my writing it will seem crazy.” Richard watched them. They had read his novel almost page by page since he had begun it three months before and they had told him it was terrific. But he never tired of checking. “You know I think Mom and Dad are gonna like it,” he said, playing the coquette.

  John nodded. “Oh yeah. I think it’ll really give them pause.”

  Richard was delighted. “That’s what I wanna give them. Pause.” He laughed. “You know, if I can pull them inside my life. That should be heavy for them. For the world.”

  John made a noise. “Uh. Little Richard’s gettin’ carried away with himself.”

  “Well, I have to feel that way, right? I mean I couldn’t write if I thought about it like it’s a cute hobby.”

  “No, that’s cool,” John said earnestly. “But the world’s gonna give you a little fight on that. They’re not just gonna concede it to you.”

  Naomi disengaged herself from John. “But that’s not important, is it?” she asked. “I mean you’re doing what you want to do. Most people can’t, you know?” She looked at Richard plaintively. “It doesn’t matter what the world says.”

  “Oh yes, it does!” He smiled briefly to impress her with the importance of being realistic. “Unless the world relates to it I won’t be published or make money.” This didn’t seem to convince Naomi. “I mean how do you go on writing when you’re broke?”

  “Oh, that’s such bullshit. I’m sorry but that’s nonsense. Plenty of writers have had a job while writing. Most of them have. Haven’t they?”

  Richard laughed. “First you say so, then you ask. Tolstoy didn’t, Dickens didn’t, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Eliot—”

  “Richard, you can’t bring up those people all the time. I mean today. There are very few writers who earn a living—”

  “Yeah, they have a job. They teach a fuckin’ English course for thirty-thousand a year.”

  “I don’t mean those people. That’s not who you want to be.”

  “I’d like to,” John said.

  “No, I don’t want to be them,” Richard said. “But that’s unusual.”

  “Richard! Why are you being so silly?” Naomi was flushed. “You can’t expect Mom and Dad to support you while you write.”

  “Who said I expected them to?”

  “Then you’ll have to get a job. And it won’t be in a college.” She was suddenly sorry for her vehemence. “Right? I mean. You know what I mean.”

  “Okay, so I have to get a lousy job. What’s the point?”

  “There’s no point!”

  Richard looked at John, exasperated. “Then what are you saying to me,” he yelled.

  “Whoa,” John s
aid. “Everybody be cool.”

  “Oh, God!” Naomi jumped up from the couch. “What’s the matter with everybody?” She was naturally thin and nervous, and anger seemed too strong a feeling for her body to support. “I just mean that you shouldn’t believe that bullshit that you have to be pampered in order to write. You can write holding a lousy job.”

  The baby wailed from the other room. Naomi glanced in its direction fiercely. “I’ll handle it,” John said. He moved past her, but she stopped him by taking his arm. “No,” she said, and Richard was amazed by the tones she put in the word: anger, frustration, apology, and love. Richard’s niece upset him with desperate, choking cries. Naomi stood still, her eyes blank and staring. She scratched an eyebrow thoughtfully until she seemed calmer and then went inside.

  John picked up the graph paper on the table in front of him and went into the kitchen. Richard followed him. John said, “What was that about?”

  Richard said, “I don’t know,” but he felt that dulled depression which followed certain kinds of arguments with his family. Naomi loathed the cynicism of literary people and believed real artists were strong, honest persons who had to forsake the ease and decadence of middle-class New York life, who should purge themselves by living among poor and working-class Americans.

  She had left home at eighteen when Richard was only seven years old, and he remembered the fearful bulletins his mother had received: she was hitchhiking across the country, working as a waitress in greasy spoons; she was in Mississippi with the civil rights movement when the three whites were murdered and redneck night patrols taking potshots were common.

  He envied her courage; he was stunned she could give up a comfortable bed, much less risk her life. And he had no contempt for her still maintaining those principles now that she was married and had a child, living in a house on one hundred acres of beautiful land.

  But he had kept guiltily guarded his amendment to her views: he believed goodness in people was achieved by such sacrifice, but he knew that literary genius required only egotism and talent. In life great writers were fools or scoundrels.

  John followed the evening routine. He cleared the table for his designs, sharpened the pencils, and poured himself a glass of wine. He had managed to develop an excellent reputation as a designer and builder, though he had had no formal architectural training. Richard wondered at the meticulous drawings, never able to picture the structures they represented. He watched John’s reflection in the old lead-glass windows: John’s full black beard and his plump English face were ghostly against the shimmery background.

  When Richard poured himself a glass of wine, John looked up with a smile. “I thought you weren’t going to drink any more.”

  “Well, I’m leaving. You know, celebration. Why? You don’t want me to?”

  “Oh no. I’m glad. I like to have company.” He leaned back and scratched the sides of his beard. “How’s the book going?”

  “Fine. I’m almost at the end of that day.”

  “Oh, I meant to tell you. That was good having them feel sleepy. It reminds you that it’s all been one day.” He sipped his wine and looked at Richard appraisingly. “How come you thought of doing it that way?”

  “Because of The Idiot. Dostoevsky’s novel. The first two hundred pages of it are one day. In a conventional narrative. ’Cause avant-garde people do like ten minutes for a thousand pages. Anyway, his thing was fantastic so I thought I’d make the first half just action when life is exhilarating for the main character.”

  John grunted and nodded. Richard knew that reserve was typical of John, but he always feared that he had made a fool of himself when it occurred.

  Richard tried to drink the sour wine without losing his sense and talking wildly. John remained calm no matter how much he drank, at worst becoming sluggish, but never hysterical or incoherent. He worked patiently, even smoking his cigarettes with deliberate smooth motions.

  “What do you think are its chances of being published?” John asked without warning, hunched over his work. Richard knew that he would look up in a moment, his eyes evaluating without malice.

  “Well, since it will have nothing to do with quality the only question is whether or not it will seem commercial to them.” John nodded and Richard smiled at him. “So? It’s written by a fifteen-year-old about a kid who drops out and smokes dope, right? Only thing I’m missing is sex.” John opened his mouth in a silent laugh, a cloud of cigarette smoke escaping with it. “In life and in the novel. But I really don’t know what its chances are. It’s supposed to be impossible to publish a first novel.”

  “You’re not really worrying about it?”

  “How can I?”

  “No. You shouldn’t. It would probably just be confusing to think about. You know?” John looked into his eyes. “I really think it’s good.”

  “Yeah?”

  John sipped his wine and returned it to the table. “Yeah.” Richard knew this was high praise and he was pleased.

  Naomi came in with Nana in her arms. Richard’s niece looked at him with puffed, drugged eyes and gladly gave herself up to John’s embrace. Naomi held herself stiffly and stared at Richard. “Do you know what I meant?” she asked, as if there had been no interval.

  The men laughed. “When is it, uh, going to get to the boot- throwing exhibition?” John asked.

  “Come on, John,” Naomi said, sounding dangerous.

  “It wasn’t a boot,” Richard said. “It was an ashtray that she threw at me.”

  “I was down in the cellar and it sounded as if it was more than one thing.”

  “Yeah, I threw Cousine Bette at her. A literary argument.”

  “You don’t understand the relationship Richard and I have, John.” Naomi had relaxed but she was still serious. “We were always the fighters in the family. Right?”

  “Yeah,” Richard agreed. “You think that’s good?”

  “Oh yeah! Sure. It’s just because we’re being honest with each other.”

  “Okay. So then what was your question?”

  John got up, stroking Nana’s arm. He said, “I’d better get out of the way of the honesty.” He walked out slowly while Richard giggled.

  “I don’t want to fight,” Naomi said.

  “Neither do I.”

  She looked at him earnestly. “I just meant—you know—I wanted you not to get into thinking you can’t survive unless you go to school.”

  “I want to drop out. How can you say that to me?”

  “Wait! Or—I don’t know. I mean you can work, you know? You don’t have to be pampered.”

  “I agree with you.”

  “Are you sure? What if Mom and Dad—well, what if your novel doesn’t get published? You know you can’t expect it to. You plan to get some shitty, shitty job like you’ll have to get?”

  “Yeah. I’ll have to.”

  “You think you could do that?”

  “Why couldn’t I?”

  “I think you can. But you’ve never done it before.”

  “I’ve never written a novel before.”

  “Come on! There’s a difference.”

  “Yeah, there’s a difference in how much I enjoy it. But writing isn’t easier than doing work. I think one can assume if I’m capable of writing, then I’m capable of working.”

  “That’s a myth!” Naomi was on her feet suddenly, enraged. “It’s bullshit that writing is more difficult than work.”

  “I didn’t say that! I didn’t say it was more difficult. I was saying they were equal.”

  She looked at him, puzzled for a moment. “Okay,” she said, her anger gone. “But that’s the myth everyone believes. That some bullshit intellectual is doing something more important or difficult than a carpenter. Aaron”—her voice rose, Richard knowing what was to follow on hearing his father’s name—“will talk about an intellectual he doesn’t even admire as if he’s doing something more important than working people. Unless they have what he calls ideas, they’re not a human bei
ng. That’s so sickening.”

  “I agree with you.” His tone begged her to stop. He had heard this before and took it seriously. Richard had also suffered indignation at his father’s statements: though Aaron attacked intellectuals for ignoring oppressed people, he held them up as models for Richard’s career. It had been good to hear Naomi reject it. But with repetition he felt it was wrong. “I agree with you,” he repeated quietly, reining her in. “But you confuse everything with the generalizations you make. You’re not talking about intellectuals, you’re talking about academicians. Real intellectuals you admire. Beckett is an intellectual.”

  “Oh, that’s wrong!”

  “That’s not wrong. Intellectual means someone who concerns himself with ideas, and Beckett does that. Dad isn’t an intellectual. What has he ever said that could be classified as a philosophy? What has he ever said—in ideas—about man’s condition on earth? Zero. Dad’s a playwright. Playwrights aren’t intellectuals. They can be, but not necessarily so. Just because society has called anyone not doing shit work an intellectual doesn’t mean you should confuse those terms also.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Richard.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s bullshit. I don’t care if you call them different things. I don’t care who is or isn’t an intellectual. Beckett may be concerned with ideas, but that’s not what I like him for.”

  “What do you like about him then?”

  “Because—” Naomi paused while her anger settled. “I can’t describe it.”

  “Try and tell me anyway.”

  “It’s not an idea, some kind of philosophy. It’s what he says about Time—”

  “That’s an—”

  “I don’t mean as an idea. He does it the way it feels and that’s not some crappy intellectualism. Or the way they speak in Godot, that’s exactly the way people talk when they’re really, really stoned. And that doesn’t have to do with any shit about man—”

  “Naomi! More than any other playwright, Beckett’s form is suited—is created with the sole idea of allowing philosophical ideas to exist as characters. He’s the most obviously intellectual playwright I’ve ever read. You know that. Just because you use the word and it’s implanted in your mind as meaning nonsense, you won’t admit that someone you like is an intellectual.”