Not long after this I was obliged to leave Paris for a few months. I thought of Max only rarely, and then as though it were a humorous and pathetic incident in the past. I never asked myself—“Is he alive? What can he be doing now?” No, I thought of him as a symbol, as something imperishable—not flesh and blood, not a man suffering. Then one night, shortly after my return to Paris, just when I am searching frantically for another man, whom do I run smack into but Max. And what a Max!
“Miller, how are you? Where have you been?”
It’s the same Max only he’s unshaved. A Max resurrected from the grave in a beautiful suit of English cut and a heavy velour hat with a brim so stiffly curved that he looks like a mannikin. He gives me the same smile, only it’s much fainter now and it takes longer to go out. It’s like the light of a very distant star, a star which is giving its last twinkle before fading out forever. And the sprouting beard! It’s that no doubt which makes the look of suffering stand out even more forcibly than before. The beard seems to have softened the look of absolute disgust which hung about his mouth like a rotten halo. The disgust has melted away into weariness, and the weariness into pure suffering. The strange thing is that he inspires even less pity in me now than before. He is simply grotesque—a sufferer and a caricature of suffering at the same time. He seems to be aware of this himself. He doesn’t talk any more with the same verve; he seems to doubt his own words. He goes through with it only because it’s become a routine. He seems to be waiting for me to laugh, as I used to. In fact, he laughs himself now, as though the Max he was talking about were another Max.
The suit, the beautiful English suit which was given him by an Englishman in Vienna and which is a mile too big for him! He feels ridiculous in it and humiliated. Nobody believes him any more—not in the beautiful English suit! He looks down at his feet which are shod in a pair of low canvas shoes; they look dirty and worn, the canvas shoes. They don’t go with the suit and the hat. He’s on the point of telling me that they’re comfortable nevertheless, but force of habit quickly prompts him to add that his other shoes are at the cobbler’s and that he hasn’t the money to get them out. It’s the English suit, however, that’s preying on his mind. It’s become for him the visible symbol of his new misfortune. While holding his arm out so that I may examine the cloth he’s already telling me what happened to him in the interim, how he managed to get to Vienna where he was going to start a new life and how he found it even worse there than in Paris. The soup kitchens were cleaner, that he had to admit. But grudgingly. What good is it if the soup kitchens are clean and you haven’t even a sou in your pocket? But it was beautiful, Vienna, and clean—so clean! He can’t get over it. But tough! Everybody is on the bum there. But it’s so clean and beautiful, it would make you cry, he adds.
Is this going to be a long story, I’m wondering. My friends are waiting for me across the street, and besides, there’s a man I must find . . .
“Yes, Vienna,” I say absent-mindedly, trying to scan the terrasse out of the corner of my eye.
“No, not Vienna. Basle!” he shouts. “Basle!”
“I left Vienna over a month ago,” I hear him saying.
“Yes, yes, and what happened then?”
“What happened? I told you, Miller, they took my papers away from me. I told you, they made a tourist out of me!”
When I hear this I burst out laughing. Max laughs too in his sad way. “Can you imagine such a thing,” he says. “I should be a tourist!” He gives another dingy chortle.
Of course that wasn’t all. At Basle, it seems, they pulled him off the train. Wouldn’t let him cross the frontier.
“I says to them—what’s the matter, please? Am I not en règle?”
All his life, I forgot to mention, Max has been fighting to be en règle. Anyway, they yank him off the train and they leave him there, in Basle, stranded. What to do? He walks down the main drive looking for a friendly face—an American, or an Englishman at least. Suddenly he sees a sign: Jewish Boarding House. He walks in with his little valise, orders a cup of coffee and pours out his tale of woe. They tell him not to worry—it’s nothing.
“Well, anyway, you’re back again,” I say, trying to break away.
“And what good does it do me?” says Max. “They made me a tourist now, so what should I do for work? Tell me, Miller! And with such a suit like this can I bum a nickel any more? I’m finished. If only I shouldn’t look so well!”
I look him over from head to toe. It’s true, he does look incongruously well off. Like a man just out of a sick bed—glad to be up again, but not strong enough to shave. And then the hat! A ridiculously expensive hat that weighs a ton—and silk-lined! It makes him look like a man from the old country. And the stub of a beard! If it were just a little longer he’d look like one of those sad, virtuous, abstract-looking wraiths who flit through the ghettos of Prague and Budapest. Like a holy man. The brim of the hat curls up so stiffly, so ethically. Purim and the holy men a little tipsy from the good wine. Sad Jewish faces trimmed with soft beards. And a Joe Welch hat to top it off! The tapers burning, the rabbi chanting, the holy wail from the standees, and everywhere hats, hats, all turned up at the brim and making a jest of the sadness and woe.
“Well, anyway, you’re back again,” I repeat. I’m shaking hands with him but he doesn’t drop my hand. He’s in Basle again, at the Jewish Boarding House, and they’re telling him how to slip across the border. There were guards everywhere and he doesn’t know how it happened but as they passed a certain tree and since no one came out it was safe and he went ahead. “And like that,” he says, “I’m in Paris again. Such a lousy place as it is! In Vienna they were clean at least. There were professors and students on the bread line, but here they are nothing but bums, and such lousy bums, they give you bugs right away.”
“Yes, yes, that’s how it is, Max,” and I’m shaking his hand again.
“You know, Miller, sometimes I think I am going mad. I don’t sleep any more. At six o’clock I am wide awake already and thinking on what to do. I can’t stay in the room when it comes light. I must go down in the street. Even if I am hungry I must walk, I must see people. I can’t stay alone any more. Miller, for God’s sake, can you see what is happening to me? I wanted to send you a card from Vienna, just to show you that Max remembered you, but I couldn’t think on your address. And how was it, Miller, in New York? Better than here, I suppose? No? The crise, too? Everywhere it’s the crise. You can’t escape. They won’t give you to work and they won’t give you to eat. What can you do with such bastards? Sometimes, Miller, I get so frightened . . .”
“Listen, Max, I’ve got to go now. Don’t worry, you won’t kill yourself . . . not yet.”
He smiles. “Miller,” he says, “you have such a good nature. You are so happy all the time, Miller, I wish I could be with you always. I would go anywhere in the world with you . . . anywhere.”
This conversation took place about three nights ago. Yesterday at noon I was sitting on the terrasse of a little café in an out of the way spot. I chose the spot deliberately so as not to be disturbed during the reading of a manuscript. An apéritif was before me—I had taken but a sip or two. Just as I am about halfway through the manuscript I hear a familiar voice. “Why Miller, how are you?” And there, as usual, bending over me is Max. The same peculiar smile, the same hat, the same beautiful suit and canvas shoes. Only now he’s shaved.
I invite him to sit down. I order a sandwich and a glass of beer for him. As he sits down he shows me the pants to his beautiful suit—he has a rope around his waist to hold them up. He looks at them disgustedly, then at the dirty canvas shoes. Meanwhile he’s telling me what happened to him in the interim. All day yesterday, so he says, nothing to eat. Not a crumb. And then, as luck would have it, he bumped into some tourists and they asked him to have a drink. “I had to be polite,” he says. “I couldn’t tell them right away I was hungry. I kept waiting and waiting for them to eat, but they had already eaten, the bas
tards. The whole night long I am drinking with them and nothing in my belly. Can you imagine such a thing, that they shouldn’t eat once the whole night long?”
Today I’m in the mood to humor Max. It’s the manuscript I’ve been reading over. Everything was so well put . . . I can hardly believe I wrote the damned thing.
“Listen, Max, I’ve got an old suit for you, if you want to trot home with me!”
Max’s face lights up. He says immediately that he’ll keep the beautiful English suit for Sundays. Have I an iron at home, he would like to know. Because he’s going to press my suit for me . . . all my suits. I explain to him that I haven’t any iron, but I may have still another suit. (It just occurred to me that somebody promised me a suit the other day.) Max is in ecstasy. That makes three suits he’ll have. He’s pressing them up, in his mind. They must have a good crease in them, his suits. You can tell an American right away, he tells me, by the crease in his trousers. Or if not by the crease, by the walk. That’s how he spotted me the first day, he adds. And the hands in the pockets! A Frenchman never keeps his hands in his pockets.
“So you’re sure you’ll have the other suit too?” he adds quickly.
“I’m fairly sure, Max . . . Have another sandwich—and another demi!”
“Miller,” he says, “you always think of the right things. It isn’t so much what you give me—it’s the way you think it out. You give me courage.”
Courage. He pronounces it the French way. Every now and then a French word drops into his phrases. The French words are like the velour hat; they are incongruous. Especially the word misère. No Frenchman ever put such misère into misère. Well, anyway, courage! Again he’s telling me that he’d go anywhere in the world with me. We’d come out all right, the two of us. (And me wondering all the time how to get rid of him!) But today it’s O. K. Today I’m going to do things for you, Max! He doesn’t know, the poor devil, that the suit I’m offering him is too big for me. He thinks I’m a generous guy and I’m going to let him think so. Today I want him to worship me. It’s the manuscript I was reading a few moments ago. It was so good, what I wrote, that I’m in love with myself.
“Garçon! A package of cigarettes—pour le monsieur!”
That’s for Max. Max is a monsieur for the moment. He’s looking at me with that wan smile again. Well, courage, Max! Today I’m going to lift you to heaven—and then drop you like a sinker! Jesus, just one more day I’ll waste on this bastard and then bango! I’ll put the skids under him. Today I’m going to listen to you, you bugger . . . listen to every nuance. I’ll extract the last drop of juice—and then, overboard you go!
“Another demi, Max? Go on, have another . . . just one more! And have another sandwich!”
“But Miller, can you afford all that?”
He knows damned well I can afford it, else I wouldn’t urge him. But that’s his line with me. He forgets I’m not one of the guys on the boulevards, one of his regular clientèle. Or maybe he puts me in the same category—how should I know?”
The tears are coming to his eyes. Whenever I see that I grow suspicious. Tears! Genuine little tears from the tear-jerker. Pearls, every one of them. Jesus, if only I could get inside that mechanism for once and see how he does it!
It’s a beautiful day. Marvelous wenches passing by. Does Max ever notice them, I wonder.
“I say, Max, what do you do for a lay now and then?”
“For a what?” he says.
“You heard me. For a lay! Don’t you know what a lay is?”
He smiles—that wan, wistful smile—again. He looks at me sidewise, as though a little surprised that I should put such a question to him. With his misery, his suffering, should he, Max, be guilty of such thoughts? Well, yes, to tell the truth, he does have such thoughts now and then. It’s human, he says. But then, for ten francs, what can you expect? It makes him disgusted with himself. He would rather . . .
“Yes, I know, Max. I know exactly what you mean . . .”
I take Max along with me to the publisher’s. I let him wait in the courtyard while I go inside. When I come out I have a load of books under my arm. Max makes a dive for the package—it makes him feel good to carry the books, to do some real work.
“Miller, I think you will be a great success some day,” he says. “You don’t have to write such a wonderful book—sometimes it’s just luck.”
“That’s it, Max, it’s sheer luck. Just luck, that’s all!”
We’re walking along the Rue de Rivoli under the arcade. There’s a book shop somewhere along here where my book is on display. It’s a little cubbyhole and the window is full of books wrapped in bright cellophane. I want Max to have a look at my book in the window. I want to see the effect it will produce.
Ah, here’s the place! We bend down to scan the titles. There’s the Kama Sutra and Under the Skirt, My Life and Loves, and Down There . . . But where’s my book? It used to be on the top shelf, next to a queer book on flagellation.
Max is studying the jacket illustrations. He doesn’t seem to care whether my book is there or not.
“Wait a minute, Max, I’m going inside.”
I open the door impetuously. An attractive young Frenchwoman greets me. I give a quick, desperate glance at the shelves. “Have you got the Tropic of Cancer?” I ask. She nods her head immediately and points it out to me. I feel somewhat relieved. I inquire if it’s selling well. And did she ever read it herself? Unfortunately she doesn’t read English. I fiddle around hoping to hear a little more about my book. I ask her why it’s wrapped in cellophane. She explains why. Still I haven’t had enough. I tell her that the book doesn’t belong in a shop like this—it’s not that kind of book, you know.
She looks at me rather queerly now. I think she’s beginning to doubt if I really am the author of the book, as I said I was. It’s difficult to make a point of contact with her. She doesn’t seem to give a damn about my book or any other book in the shop. It’s the French in her, I suppose . . . I ought to be getting along. I just realize that I haven’t shaved, that my pants are not pressed and that they don’t match my coat. Just then the door opens and a pale, aesthetic-looking young Englishman enters. He seems completely bewildered. I sneak out while he’s closing the door.
“Listen, Max, they’re inside—a whole row of them! They’re selling like hot cakes. Yes, everybody’s asking for the book. That’s what she says.”
“I told you, Miller, that you would be a success.”
He seems absolutely convinced, Max. Too easily convinced to suit me. I feel that I must talk about the book, even to Max. I suggest we have a coffee at the bar. Max is thinking about something. It disturbs me because I don’t want him to be thinking about anything but the book for the moment. “I was thinking, Miller,” he says abruptly, “that you should write a book about my experiences.” He’s off again, about his troubles. I shunt it off quickly.
“Look here, Max, I could write a book about you, but I don’t want to. I want to write about myself. Do you understand?”
Max understands. He knows I have a lot to write about. He says I am a student. By that he means, no doubt, a student of life. Yes, that’s it—a student of life. I must walk around a great deal, go here and there, waste my time, appear to be enjoying myself, while all the time, of course, I am studying life, studying people. Max is beginning to get the idea. It’s no cinch being a writer. A twenty-four hour job.
Max is reflecting on it. Making comparisons with his own life—the difference between one kind of misery and another. Thinking of his troubles again, of how he can’t sleep, thinking of the machinery inside his bean that never stops.
Suddenly he says: “And the writer, I suppose he has his own nightmares!”
His nightmares! I write that down on an envelope immediately.
“You’re writing that down?” says Max. “Why? Was it so good what I said?”
“It was marvelous, Max. It’s worth money to me, a thought like that.”
Max looks at
me with a sheepish smile. He isn’t sure whether I’m spoofing him or not.
“Yes, Max,” I repeat, “it’s worth a fortune, a remark like that.”
His brain is beginning to labor. He always thought, he starts to explain, that a writer had first to accumulate a lot of facts.
“Not at all, Max! Not at all! The less facts you have the better. Best of all is not to have any facts, do you get me?”
Max doesn’t get it entirely, but he’s willing to be convinced. A sort of magic’s buzzing in his brain. “That’s what I was always thinking,” he says slowly, as if to himself. “A book must come from the heart. It must touch you . . .”
It’s remarkable, I’m thinking, how quickly the mind leaps. Here, in less than a minute, Max has made an important distinction. Why, only the other day Boris and I we spent the whole day talking about this, talking about “the living word.” It comes forth with the breath, just the simple act of opening the mouth and being with God, to be sure. Max understands it too, in his way. That the facts are nothing. Behind the facts there must be the man, and the man must be with God, must talk like God Almighty.
I’m wondering if it might not be a good idea to show Max my book, have him read a little of it in my presence. I’d like to see if he gets it. And Boris! Maybe it would be a good idea to present Max to Boris. I’d like to see what impression Max would make on him. There’d be a little change in it, too, no doubt. Maybe enough for the both of us—for dinner . . . I’m explaining to Max, as we draw near the house, that Boris is a good friend of mine, another writer like myself. “I don’t say that he’ll do anything for you, but I want you to meet him.” Max is perfectly willing . . . why not? And then Boris is a Jew, that ought to make it easier. I want to hear them talking Yiddish. I want to see Max weep in front of Boris. I want to see Boris weep too. Maybe Boris will put him up for a while, in the little alcove upstairs. It would be funny to see the two of them living together. Max could press his clothes and run errands for him—and cook perhaps. There’s lots of things he could do—to earn his grub. I try hard not to look too enthusiastic. “A queer fellow, Boris,” I explain to Max. Max doesn’t seem to be at all worried about that. Anyway, there’s no use going into deep explanations. Let them get together as best they can . . .
The Henry Miller Reader Page 16