Miss Lonelyhearts / the Day of the Locust

by Nathanael West

  When he arrived at her place, he would probably find Shrike there with her on his lap. They would both be glad to see him and all three of them would go to the movies where Mary would hold his hand under the seat.

  He went back to the bar for another drink, then bought a quart of Scotch and took a cab. Shrike opened the door. Although he had expected to see him, he was embarrassed and tried to cover his confusion by making believe that he was extremely drunk.

  “Come in, come in, homebreaker,” Shrike said with a laugh. “The Mrs. will be out in a few minutes. She’s in the tub.”

  Shrike took the bottle he was carrying and pulled its cork. Then he got some charged water and made two highballs.

  “Well,” Shrike said, lifting his drink, “so you’re going in for this kind of stuff, eh? Whisky and the boss’s wife.”

  Miss Lonelyhearts always found it impossible to reply to him. The answers he wanted to make were too general and began too far back in the history of their relationship.

  “You’re doing field work, I take it,” Shrike said. “Well, don’t put this whisky on your expense account. However, we like to see a young man with his heart in his work. You’ve been going around with yours in your mouth.”

  Miss Lonelyhearts made a desperate attempt to kid back. “And you,” he said, “you’re an old meanie who beats his wife.”

  Shrike laughed, but too long and too loudly, then broke off with an elaborate sigh. “Ah, my lad,” he said, “you’re wrong. It’s Mary who does the beating.”

  He took a long pull at his highball and sighed again, still more elaborately. “My good friend, I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you. I adore heart-to-heart talks and nowadays there are so few people with whom one can really talk. Everybody is so hard-boiled. I want to make a clean breast of matters, a nice clean breast. It’s better to make a clean breast of matters than to let them fester in the depths of one’s soul.”

  While talking, he kept his face alive with little nods and winks that were evidently supposed to inspire confidence and to prove him a very simple fellow.

  “My good friend, your accusation hurts me to the quick. You spiritual lovers think that you alone suffer. But you are mistaken. Although my love is of the flesh flashy, I too suffer. It’s suffering that drives me into the arms of the Miss Farkises of this world. Yes, I suffer.”

  Here the dead pan broke and pain actually crept into his voice. “She’s selfish. She’s a damned selfish bitch. She was a virgin when I married her and has been fighting ever since to remain one. Sleeping with her is like sleeping with a knife in one’s groin.”

  It was Miss Lonelyhearts’ turn to laugh. He put his face close to Shrike’s and laughed as hard as he could.

  Shrike tried to ignore him by finishing as though the whole thing were a joke.

  “She claims that I raped her. Can you imagine Willie Shrike, wee Willie Shrike, raping any one? I’m like you, one of those grateful lovers.”

  Mary came into the room in her bathrobe. She leaned over Miss Lonelyhearts and said: “Don’t talk to that pig. Come with me and bring the whisky.”

  As he followed her into the bedroom, he heard Shrike slam the front door. She went into a large closet to dress. He sat on the bed.

  “What did that swine say to you?”

  “He said you were selfish, Mary—sexually selfish.”

  “Of all the god-damned nerve. Do you know why he lets me go out with other men? To save money. He knows that I let them neck me and when I get home all hot and bothered, why he climbs into my bed and begs for it. The cheap bastard!”

  She came out of the closet wearing a black lace slip and began to fix her hair in front of the dressing table. Miss Lonelyhearts bent down to kiss the back of her neck.

  “Now, now,” she said, acting kittenish, “you’ll muss me.”

  He took a drink from the whisky bottle, then made her a highball. When he brought it to her, she gave him a kiss, a little peck of reward.

  “Where’ll we eat?” she asked. “Let’s go where we can dance. I want to be gay.”

  They took a cab to a place called El Gaucho. When they entered, the orchestra was playing a Cuban rhumba. A waiter dressed as a South-American cowboy led them to a table. Mary immediately went Spanish and her movements became languorous and full of abandon.

  But the romantic atmosphere only heightened his feeling of icy fatness. He tried to fight it by telling himself that it was childish. What had happened to his great understanding heart? Guitars, bright shawls, exotic foods, outlandish costumes—all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust. He should therefore realize that the people who came to El Gaucho were the same as those who wanted to write and live the life of an artist, wanted to be an engineer and wear leather puttees, wanted to develop a grip that would impress the boss, wanted to cushion Raoul’s head on their swollen breasts. They were the same people as those who wrote to Miss Lonelyhearts for help.

  But his irritation was too profound for him to soothe it in this way. For the time being, dreams left him cold, no matter how humble they were.

  “I like this place,” Mary said. “It’s a little fakey, I know, but it’s gay and I so want to be gay.”

  She thanked him by offering herself in a series of formal, impersonal gestures. She was wearing a tight, shiny dress that was like glass-covered steel and there was something cleanly mechanical in her pantomime.

  “Why do you want to be gay?”

  “Every one wants to be gay—unless they’re sick.”

  Was he sick? In a great cold wave, the readers of his column crashed over the music, over the bright shawls and picturesque waiters, over her shining body. To save himself, he asked to see the medal. Like a little girl helping an old man to cross the street, she leaned over for him to look into the neck of her dress. But before he had a chance to see anything, a waiter came up to the table.

  “The way to be gay is to make other people gay,” Miss Lonelyhearts said. “Sleep with me and I’ll be one gay dog.”

  The defeat in his voice made it easy for her to ignore his request and her mind sagged with his. “I’ve had a tough time,” she said. “From the beginning, I’ve had a tough time. When I was a child, I saw my mother die. She had cancer of the breast and the pain was terrible. She died leaning over a table.”

  “Sleep with me,” he said.

  “No, let’s dance.”

  “I don’t want to. Tell me about your mother.”

  “She died leaning over a table. The pain was so terrible that she climbed out of bed to die.”

  Mary leaned over to show how her mother had died and he made another attempt to see the medal. He saw that there was a runner on it, but was unable to read the inscription.

  “My father was very cruel to her,” she continued. “He was a portrait painter, a man of genius, but…”

  He stopped listening and tried to bring his great understanding heart into action again. Parents are also part of the business of dreams. My father was a Russian prince, my father was a Piute Indian chief, my father was an Australian sheep baron, my father lost all his money in Wall Street, my father was a portrait painter. People like Mary were unable to do without such tales. They told them because they wanted to talk about something besides clothing or business or the movies, because they wanted to talk about something poetic.

  When she had finished her story, he said, “You poor kid,” and leaned over for another look at the medal. She bent to help him and pulled out the neck of her dress with her fingers. This time he was able to read the inscription: “Awarded by the Boston Latin School for first place in the 100 yd. dash.”

  It was a small victory, yet it greatly increased his fatigue and he was glad when she suggested leaving. In the cab, he again begged her to sleep with him. She refused. He kneaded her body like a sculptor grown angry with his clay, but
there was too much method in his caresses and they both remained cold.

  At the door of her apartment, she turned for a kiss and pressed against him. A spark flared up in his groin. He refused to let go and tried to work this spark into a flame. She pushed his mouth away a long wet kiss.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “We can’t stop talking. We must talk. Willie probably heard the elevator and is listening behind the door. You don’t know him. If he doesn’t hear us talk, he’ll know you’re kissing me and open the door. It’s an old trick of his.”

  He held her close and tried desperately to keep the spark alive.

  “Don’t kiss my lips,” she begged. “I must talk.”

  He kissed her throat, then opened her dress and kissed her breasts. She was afraid to resist or to stop talking.

  “My mother died of cancer of the breast,” she said in a brave voice, like a little girl reciting at a party. “She died leaning over table. My father was a portrait painter. He led a very gay life. He mistreated my mother. She had cancer of the breast. She…” He tore at her clothes and she began to mumble and repeat herself. Her dress fell to her feet and he tore away her underwear until she was naked under her fur coat. He tried to drag her to the floor.

  “Please, please,” she begged, “he’ll come out and find us.”

  He stopped her mouth with a long kiss.

  “Let me go, honey,” she pleaded, “maybe he’s not home. If he isn’t, I’ll let you in.”

  He released her. She opened the door and tiptoed in, carrying her rolled up clothes under her coat. He heard her switch on the light in the foyer and knew that Shrike had not been behind the door. Then he heard footsteps and limped behind a projection of the elevator shaft. The door opened and Shrike looked into the corridor. He had on only the top of his pajamas.

  Miss Lonelyhearts on a Field Trip

  It was cold and damp in the city room the next day, and Miss Lonelyhearts sat at his desk with his hands in his pockets and his legs pressed together. A desert, he was thinking, not of sand, but of rust and body dirt, surrounded by a back-yard fence on which are posters describing the events of the day. Mother slays five with ax, slays seven, slays nine…. Babe slams two, slams three…. Inside the fence Desperate, Broken-hearted, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest were gravely forming the letters MISS LONELYHEARTS out of white-washed clam shells, as if decorating the lawn of a rural depot.

  He failed to notice Goldsmith’s waddling approach until a heavy arm dropped on his neck like the arm of a deadfall. He freed himself with a grunt. His anger amused Goldsmith, who smiled, bunching his fat cheeks like twin rolls of smooth pink toilet paper.

  “Well, how’s the drunkard?” Goldsmith asked, imitating Shrike.

  Miss Lonelyhearts knew that Goldsmith had written the column for him yesterday, so he hid his annoyance to be grateful.

  “No trouble at all,” Goldsmith said. “It was a pleasure to read your mail.” He took a pink envelope out of his pocket and threw it on the desk “From an admirer.” He winked, letting a thick gray lid down slowly and luxuriously over a moist, rolling eye.

  Miss Lonelyhearts picked up the letter.

  Dear Miss Lonelyhearts—

  I am not very good at writing so I wonder if I could have a talk with you. I am 32 years old but have had a lot of trouble in my life and am unhappily married to a cripple. I need some good advice bad but cant state my case in a letter as I am not good at letters and it would take an expert to state my case. I know your a man and am glad as I dont trust women. You were pointed out to me in Delehantys as the man who does the advice in the paper and the minute I saw you I said you can help me. You had on a blue suit and a gray hat when I came in with my husband who is a cripple.

  I dont feel so bad about asking to see you personal because I feel almost like I knew you. So please call me up at Burgess 7-7323 which is my number as I need your advice bad about my married life.

  An admirer,

  Fay Doyle

  He threw the letter into the waste-paper basket with a great show of distaste.

  Goldsmith laughed at him. “How now, Dostoievski?” he said. “That’s no way to act. Instead of pulling the Russian by recommending suicide, you ought to get the lady with child and increase the potential circulation of the paper.”

  To drive him away, Miss Lonelyhearts made believe that he was busy. He went over his typewriter and started pounding out his column.

  “Life, for most of us, seems a terrible struggle of pain and heartbreak, without hope or joy. Oh, my dear readers, it only seems so. Every man, no matter how poor or humble, can teach himself to use his senses. See the cloud-flecked sky, the foam-decked sea…. Smell the sweet pine and heady privet…. Feel of velvet and of satin…. As the popular song goes, ‘The best things in life are free.’ Life is…”

  He could not go on with it and turned again to the imagined desert where Desperate, Broken-hearted and the others were still building his name. They had run out of sea shells and were using faded photographs, soiled fans, time-tables, playing cards, broken toys, imitation jewelry—junk that memory had made precious, far more precious than anything the sea might yield.

  He killed his great understanding heart by laughing, then reached into the waste-paper basket for Mrs. Doyle’s letter. Like a pink tent, he set it over the desert. Against the dark mahogany desk top, the cheap paper took on rich flesh tones. He thought of Mrs. Doyle as a tent, hair-covered and veined, and of himself as the skeleton in a water closet, the skull and cross-bones on a scholar’s bookplate. When he made the skeleton enter the flesh tent, it flowered at every joint.

  But despite these thoughts, he remained as dry and cold as a polished bone and sat trying to discover a moral reason for not calling Mrs. Doyle. If he could only believe in Christ, then adultery would be a sin, then everything would be simple and the letters extremely easy to answer.

  The completeness of his failure drove him to the telephone. He left the city room and went into the hall to use the pay station from which all private calls had to be made. The walls of the booth were covered with obscene drawings. He fastened his eyes on two disembodied genitals and gave the operator Burgess 7-7323.

  “Is Mrs. Doyle in?”

  “Hello, who is it?”

  “I want to speak to Mrs. Doyle,” he said. “Is this Mrs. Doyle?”

  “Yes, that’s me.” Her voice was hard with fright.

  “This is Miss Lonelyhearts.”

  “Miss who?”

  “Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Lonelyhearts, the man who does the column.”

  He was about to hang up, when she cooed, “Oh, hello….”

  “You said I should call.”

  “Oh, yes…what?”

  He guessed that she wanted him to do the talking. “When can you see me?”

  “Now.” She was still cooing and he could almost feel her warm, moisture-laden breath through the earpiece.

  “Where?”

  “You say.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Meet me in the park, near the obelisk, in about an hour.”

  He went back to his desk and finished his column, then started for the park. He sat down on a bench near the obelisk to wait for Mrs. Doyle. Still thinking of tents, he examined the sky and saw that it was canvas-colored and ill-stretched. He examined it like a stupid detective who is searching for a clue to his own exhaustion. When he found nothing, he turned his trained eye on the skyscrapers that menaced the little park from all sides. In their tons of forced rock and tortured steel, he discovered what he thought was a clue.

  Americans have dissipated their racial energy in an orgy of stone breaking. In their few years they have broken more stones than did centuries of Egyptians. And they have done their work hysterically, desperately, almost as if they knew that the stones would some day break them.

  The detective saw a big woman enter the park and start in his direction. He made a quick catalogue: legs like Indian clubs, breasts like ball
oons and a brow like a pigeon. Despite her short plaid skirt, red sweater, rabbit-skin jacket and knitted tam-o’-shanter, she looked like a police captain.

  He waited for her to speak first.

  “Miss Lonelyhearts? Oh, hello…”

  “Mrs. Doyle?” He stood up and took her arm. It felt like a thigh.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, as he began to lead her off.

  “For a drink.”

  “I can’t go to Delehanty’s. They know me.”

  “We’ll go to my place.”

  “Ought I?”

  He did not have to answer, for she was already on her way. As he followed her up the stairs to his apartment, he watched the action of her massive hams; they were like two enormous grindstones.

  He made some highballs and sat down beside her on the bed.

  “You must know an awful lot about women from your job,” she said with a sigh, putting her hand on his knee.

  He had always been the pursuer, but now found a strange pleasure in having the rôles reversed. He drew back when she reached for a kiss. She caught his head and kissed him on his mouth. At first it ticked like a watch, then the tick softened and thickened into a heart throb. It beat louder and more rapidly each second, until he thought that it was going to explode and pulled away with a rude jerk.

  “Don’t,” she begged.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Oh, darling, turn out the light.”

  He smoked a cigarette, standing in the dark and listening to her undress. She made sea sounds; something flapped like a sail; there was the creak of ropes; then he heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh. Her call for him to hurry was a sea-moan, and when he lay beside her, she heaved, tidal, moondriven.

  Some fifteen minutes later, he crawled out of bed like an exhausted swimmer leaving the surf, and dropped down into a large armchair near the window. She went into the bathroom, then came back and sat in his lap.

  “I’m ashamed of myself,” she said. “You must think I’m a bad woman.”

  He shook his head no.

  “My husband isn’t much. He’s a cripple like I wrote you, and much older than me.” She laughed. “He’s all dried up. He hasn’t been a husband to me for years. You know, Lucy, my kid, isn’t his.”