Plexus

by Henry Miller

  This language was ever bright and clear to me. The language of reason, which is not even the language of common sense, spelled gibberish. When God lets go the arm that holds the pen the author no longer knows what he is writing. Jacob Boehme used a language all his own, a language direct from the Maker. Scholars read it one way, men of God another. The poet speaks only to the poet. Spirit answereth spirit. The rest is hogwash.

  A hundred voices are speaking at once. I am still on the Nevsky Prospekt, still toting the brief case. I could as well be in limbo. I am most assuredly “there,” wherever that may be, and nothing can derail me. Possessed, yes. But by the great Manitou this time.

  Now I’ve gotten below the rambla. I’m approaching the old Haymarket. Suddenly a name juts out from a billboard, cuts my eyeball just as clean as a razor blade. I have just passed a theater which I thought had been torn down long ago. Nothing remains in the retina but a name, her name, an utterly new name: MIMI AGUGLIA. This is the important thing, her name. Not that she is Italian, not that the play is an immortal tragedy. Just her name: MIMI AGUGLIA. Though I keep walking steadily ahead, and then round and about, though I keep scudding through the clouds like a three-quarter moon, her name will draw me back punctually at 2:15 P.M.

  From the celestial realm I slide to a comfortable seat in the third row orchestra. I am about to witness the greatest performance I shall probably ever witness. And in a language of which I know not a word.

  The theater is packed—and with Italians exclusively. An awesome hush precedes the rising of the curtain. The stage is semidark. For a full minute not a word is spoken. Then a voice is heard: the voice of Mimi Aguglia.

  Only a few moments ago my head was seething with thought; now all is still, the great swarm gathered in a honeycomb at the base of the skull. Not even a buzz issues from the hive. My senses, sharpened to a diamond point, are fully concentrated on the strange creature with the oracular voice. Even were she to speak a language I know, I doubt that I could follow her. It is the sounds she makes, the immense gamut of sound, which enthralls me. Her throat is like an ancient lyre. So very, very ancient. It has the ring of man before he ate of the tree of knowledge. Her gestures and movements are mere accompaniments to the voice. The features, monolithic in repose, express the most subtle modulations with her ceaseless changes of mood. When she throws her head back, the oracular music from her throat plays over her features like lightning playing over a bed of mica. She seems to express with ease emotions which we can only simulate in dream. All is primordial, effulgent, annihilating. A moment ago she was sitting in a chair. It is no longer a chair; it has become a thing, an animated thing. Wherever she moves, whatever she touches, things become altered. Now she stands before a tall mirror, ostensibly to catch her own reflection. Illusion! She is standing before a gap in the cosmos, answering the Titan’s yawn with an inhuman shriek. Her heart, suspended in a crevice of ice, suddenly glows—until her whole being shoots forth flames of ruby and sapphire. Another instant and the monolithic head turns to jade. The serpent confronting chaos. Marble returning in horror to the void. Nothingness.…

  She is pacing back and forth, back and forth, and in her wake a phosphorescent glow. The very atmosphere thickens, impregnated by the impending horror. She is unveiling now, but as if in warm oil, as if still drugged by the fumes of the sacrificial altar. A phrase gurgles from her tortured lips, a strangled phrase which causes the man beside me to groan. Blood oozes from a burst vein in her temple. Petrified, I am unable to make a sound, though I am screaming at the top of my lungs. It is no longer theater, it is the nightmare. The walls close in, twisting and twining like the dread labyrinth. The Minotaur is breathing upon us with hot and evil breath. At precisely this moment, and as if a thousand chandeliers had been shattered at once, her mad, fiendish laugh splits the ear. She is no longer recognizable. One sees only a human wreck, a tangle of arms and limbs, a mass of twisted hair, a gory mouth, and this, this thing, gropes, staggers, grapples blindly, suddenly, towards the wings.…

  Hysteria sweeps the audience. Men with jaws locked are hanging limp in their seats. Women scream, faint, or tear their hair convulsively. The whole auditorium has become like the bottom of the sea—and pandemonium struggling like a crazed gorilla to remove the heavy liquid stone of fright. The ushers gesticulate like puppets, their shouts smothered in the screeching roar which gradually swells like a typhoon. And all this in total darkness, because something has gone wrong with the lights. Finally from the pit comes the sound of music, a blare and a blast, which is met by an angry roar of protest. The music fades out, silenced as if by a hammer. The curtain rises slowly to reveal a stage still in darkness. Suddenly she comes forth from the wings, a lighted taper in her hand, bowing, bowing, bowing. She is mute, absolutely mute. From the boxes, from the balconies, from the pit itself flowers rain down upon the stage. She is standing in a sea of flowers, the taper burning brightly. Suddenly the theater is flooded with light. The crowd is screaming her name—MIMI … MIMI… MIMI AGUGLIA. In the midst of the uproar she calmly blows the taper out and walks swiftly back to the wings.…

  With the brief case still under my arm I start ploughing through the rambla again. I feel as if I had come down from Mt. Sinai by parachute. All about me are my brothers, humanity, as they say, still marching on all fours. I have an overpowering desire to kick out in all directions, speed the poor buggers into Paradise. Just at this “precise chronological moment” when I’m fizzing like champagne, a man tugs at my sleeve and shoves a dirty post card under my nose. I keep walking straight ahead with him clinging to me, and as we move on, trancelike, he keeps changing the cards and muttering under his breath: “A honey, what! Dirt cheap. Take the whole pack—for two bits.” Suddenly I stop dead in my tracks; I begin to laugh, a frightening laugh which grows louder and louder. I let the cards slide from my fingers, like snow cakes. A crowd begins to gather, the peddler takes to his heels. People are beginning to pick up the cards; they keep crowding in on me, closer and closer, curious to know what made me laugh so. In the distance I spy a cop approaching. Pivoting round abruptly, I yell: “He’s gone in there. Get him!” Pointing to a shop near the corner I push forward eagerly with the crowd; as they press forward and ahead of me I turn quickly and walk as fast as my legs will carry me in the opposite direction. At the corner I swing round, moving like a kangaroo now, until I come to a gin mill.

  At the bar two men are in the midst of a violent dispute. I order a beer and make myself as inconspicuous as possible.

  “I tell you he’s off his nut!”

  “You’d be too if you had had your balls cut out.”

  “He’ll make you look like a horse’s ass.”

  “The Pope’s ass he will!”

  “Look, who made the world? Who made the stars, the sun, the raindrops? Answer me that!”

  “You answer it, since you’re so bloody learned. You tell me who made the world, the rainbows, the pisspots and all the other cocksucking devices.”

  “You’d like to know, lad? Well, let me say this—it wasn’t made in a cheese factory. And it wasn’t evolution made it either.”

  “Oh no? What was it then?”

  “It was the Almighty Jehovah himself, Lord of Creation, Begetter of the Blessed Mary, and Redeemer of lost souls. That’s a fair answer for you. Now what have you to say?”

  “I still say he’s nuts.”

  “You’re a dirty infidel, that’s what. You’re a pagan.”

  “I’m not neither. I’m Irish through and through. And what’s more, I’m a Mason… yeah, a bloody Mason. Like George Abraham Washington and the Marquis of Queensbury.…”

  “And Oliver Cromwell and Bloody Bonesapart. Sure, I know your breed. It was a black snake that horned you and it’s his black venom you’ve been spreading ever since.”

  “We’ll never take orders from the Pope. Put that in your pipe and light it!”

  “And this for you! You’ve made a Bible out of Darwin’s crazy preachings. You make
a monkey of yourself and you call it evolution.”

  “I still say he’s nuts.”

  “Can I ask you a simple question? Can I now?”

  “That you can. Fire away! I’ll answer anything that has sense to it.”

  “Perfect! … Now what makes worms crawl and birds to fly? What makes the spider spin his crazy web? What makes the kangaroo…?”

  “Hold it, man! One question at a time. Now which is it—the bird, the worm, the spider or the kangaroo?”

  “Why do two and two make four? Maybe you can answer that! I don’t ask you to be an anthroposophagist, or whatever the devil they’re called. Plain arithmetic … two plus two equals four. WHY? Answer that and I’ll say you’re an honest Roman. Go on, now, give it to me!”

  “Bugger the Romans! I’d rather be a monkey with Darwin, b’Jasus! Arithmetic! Bah! Why don’t you ask me if red-eyed Mars ever wobbled in her funicular orbit?”

  “The Bible answered that long ago. So did Parnell!”

  “In the pig’s ass he did!”

  “There isn’t a question but was answered once and for all—by somebody or other.”

  “You mean the Pope!”

  “Man, I’ve told you a hundred times—the Pope is but a Pontifical interlocutor. His Holiness never asserted that he was the risen Christ.”

  “Lucky for him, because I’d deny it to his treacherous face. We’ve had enough of Inquisitions. What the sad, weary world needs is a bit of common sense. You can rave all you like about spiders and kangaroos, but who’s going to pay the rent? Ask your friend that!”

  “I told you that he joined the Dominicans.”

  “And I said that he was nuts.”

  At this point the bartender, thinking to quiet them, was about to offer drinks on the house when who walks in but a blind man playing a harp. He sang in a tremulous falsetto which was woefully false. He wore dark-blue glasses and over his left arm was slung a white cane.

  “Come give us a bawdy song!” cried one of the disputants.

  “And none of your shenanigans!…” cried the other.

  The blind man removed his glasses, slung the harp and cane over a peg in the wall, and shuffled to the bar with an alacrity that was amazing.

  “Just a wee drop to wet the palate,” he whined.

  “And a bit of brandy,” said the other.

  “Give him a drop of Irish whiskey,” he whined.

  “To the men of Dublin and County Kerry,” said the blind man, raising both glasses at once. “Down with all Orangemen!” He looked around, bright as a bobolink, and took a swallow from each of the tumblers.

  “When will you get any shame in you?” said the one.

  “He’s wallowing in gold,” said the other.

  “It’s loike this,” said the blind man, brushing his lips with his sleeve, “when me owld mother died I promised her I’d never do another stroke of work. I’ve kept to me bargain, and so has she. Every time I pluck the strings she calls to me softly; ‘Patrick, are you there? It’s grand, me boy, it’s grand.’ Before I can ask her a question she’s gone again. The fair grounds, I call it. She’s been there for thirty years now—and she’s kept to her bargain.”

  “You’re dotty, man. What bargain?”

  “It’s long to explain and my throat’s parched.…”

  “Another brandy and whiskey for the scoundrel!”

  “You’re kind, the two of you. Gentlemen, that’s what you are!” Again he raises both glasses. “To the Blessed Mary and her prodigal sons!”

  “Did you hear that now? That’s blasphemy or I’ll eat me hat.”

  “It’s not either. Tush tush!”

  “The Blessed Mary had only one son—and by the holy Patrick he was no prodigal! He was the Prince of Paupers, that’s what he was. I’ll take an oath on it.”

  “This is no court. Easy with your oaths! Go on, man, tell us of your bargain!”

  The blind man pulled his nose meditatively. Again he looked about—bright and merry, chipper as could be. Like an oily sardine.

  “It’s loike this …” he began.

  “Don’t say that, man! On with yer! Out with it!”

  “It’s a long, long story. And me throat’s still dry, if yer don’t mind me saying so.”

  “Get on with it, man, or we’ll be fleeing your bottom!”

  The blind man cleared his throat, then rubbed his eyes.

  “It’s loike I wuz sayin’… Me owld mother had the gift of sight. She could see through a door, her gimlicks were that strong. Wanst, when the dadda was late for supper.…”

  “Your dadda be damned! You’re a creepy old counterfeiter!”

  “I am that too,” screeched the blind man. “I’ve every little weakness.”

  “And a throat that’s always parched.”

  “And a pocketful of gold, eh, you rascal!”

  Suddenly the blind man became terrified. His face blanched.

  “No, no!” he screamed, “not me pockets. You wouldn’t do that to me? You wouldn’t do that.…”

  The two cronies began to laugh uproariously. Pinning his arms to his sides, they went through his pockets—pants, coat and vest. Dumping the money on the bar, they piled it neatly in bills and coins of every denomination, putting the bad money to one side. It was a stunt they had evidently rehearsed more than once.

  “Another brandy!” called the one.

  “Another Irish whiskey—the best!” called the other.

  They dished out some coins from the pile, and then a few more, to make a generous tip for the barman.

  “And is your throat still parched?” they asked solicitously.

  “And what will you have?” says the one.

  “And you?” says the other.

  “My throat’s getting dryer and dryer.”

  “Aye, and so is mine.”

  “And did you ever hear about the bargain Patrick made with his owld mother?”

  “It’s a long story,” says the other, “but I’ve a mind to hear it to the end. Would you tell it now, while I down a goblet to your health and virility?”

  The other, raising his goblet: “I could tell it till the Day of Judgment, it’s that good. A corkin’ yarn. But let me wet me throat first.”

  “They’re a bunch of thieves, the three of ’em,” said the barkeep, as he filled my glass. “Would you believe it, one of ’em was a priest once. He’s the biggest faker of the lot. Can’t put ’em out—they own the building. See what I mean?”

  He busied himself with the empty glasses, rinsed them, wiped them, polished them, lit himself a cigarette. Then he ambled over to me again.

  “All shandygaff,” he mumbled confidentially. “They can talk sense, if they want to. They’re as smart as steel traps. Like to put on an act, that’s all. Beats me why they pick this place to do it in.” He leaned backward to spit a gob in the spittoon beside his feet. “Ireland! They never saw Ireland, none of them. They were born and raised a block away from here. They love to put it on.… You’d never think it, would you, but the blind fellow was a great little fighter once. Until he got knocked cold by Terry McGovern. He’s got the eyes of an eagle, that bird. Comes in here to count his money every day. It burns him up to get wooden money. You know what he does with the bad coins? Passes them off on real blind men. Ain’t that nice?”

  He left me a moment to beg them to quiet down. The champagne was beginning to have its effect.

  “Know what the big news is now? They’re planning to hire a hansom and take a ride through Central Park. Time to feed the pigeons, they say. How’s that for you?” He leaned backwards again to use the cuspidor. “That’s another one of their acts—feeding the pigeons. They throw out some crumbs or peanuts, and when they’ve collected a crowd they begin throwing away the wooden money. Gives them a great kick. After that Blind Ben does a little number and they pass the hat around. As if they hadn’t a cent in the world! I’d like to be there sometime and put a nice lump of shit in the kitty.…”

  He looked a
round to eye them disdainfully. Turns back to me again and starts spouting.

  “Maybe you thought they were really arguing about something? I’ve listened time and again to find out how it begins—but I never can. Before you know it they’re in the thick of it. They say any old thing—to get wound up. It’s gab they like. The argumentation is just dirt in the eye. The Pope, Darwin, kangaroos—you heard it all. It never makes sense, no matter what they’re talking about. Yesterday it was hydraulic engineering and how to cure constipation. The day before it was the Easter Rebellion. All mixed up with a lot of horseshit—the bubonic plague, the Sepoy mutiny, Roman aqueducts and horse feathers. Words, words.… It drives me nuts sometimes. Every night I’m arguin’ in my sleep. The hell of it is I don’t know what I’m arguin’ about. Just like them. Even my day off is ruined. I keep wondering if they’re goin’ to show up somewheres.… Some people think they’re funny. I’ve seen guys split their sides laughing at ’em. It ain’t funny to me, no sir! By the time I finish here I’m standing on my head.… Listen—I did a stretch once—for six months—and a colored guy had the cell next to mine.… Can I freshen it up for you?… He sang all day long, and nights too. Got me so mad I wanted to throttle him. Funny, hah? Shows you how sensitive you can get.… Brother, if I ever get out of this racket I’m headin’ for the Sierra Nevadas. What I need is peace and quiet. I don’t even want to look at a cow. It might go MOO-ooo-ooo—see what I mean? Trouble was, when I got back my wife was gone. Yeah! Ran out on me—and with my best friend, of course. Just the same, I can’t forget that month of peace and quiet. It was worth everything that happened afterwards.… You get sensitive, working like a slave all day long. I was cut out for somethin’ else. Never could find out what. I’ve been off beat for a long time.… Can I freshen it up for you? It’s on the house, what the hell! You see… now I’m talkin’ a blue streak. That’s what happens to you. You see a sympathetic puss and you spill the beans.… I haven’t told you anything yet.” He reached up and took down a bottle of gin. Poured himself a thimbleful, a good one. “Here’s how! And let’s hope they get the hell out of here soon. Where was I? Yeah, the bad news.… What do you think my parents wanted me to be? An insurance agent. Can you beat that? They thought it was refined like. The old man was a hodcarrier, you see. From the old country, sure enough. A brogue as thick as mulligatawney. Yeah, the insurance racket. Can you picture me goin’ through a routine like that? So I joins the Marines. After that the horses. Lost everything. Then I take up plumbing. No go. Too clumsy. Besides, I hate filth, believe it or not. So what? Well, I bummed around a bit, got wise to myself and borrowed a little from the old man so as I could open a hash joint. Then I make the mistake of gettin’ hitched up. A battle royal from the day we were spliced. Except for that vacation I was telling you about. So help me God, one experience wasn’t enough. Before you know it, I’m hooked up with another one—a cute little bitch too. Then the real agony starts. She was a screwball, this last one. She got me so bitched up I didn’t know whether I was goin’ or comin’. That’s how I landed in the clink. When I came out I was that low I was ready for religion. Yes sir, those six months in the clink put the fear of Christ in me. I was ready to toe the line.…” He poured himself another thimbleful of gin, spat again, and resumed where he had left off. “Listen, I was that careful you could have offered me a gold ingot and I wouldn’t touch it. That’s how I got inter this business. I asked for somethin’ to keep me busy. It was the old man who got me the job.” He leaned over to whisper the words: “He coughed up five hundred clams to get me this break! That’s kindness, what!”