Desolation Angels: A Novel

by Jack Kerouac

  Four weeks previous, on his bike, he’d gone barreling down the intersection at the foot of the Housing Project hill, right by the Steel Company office building, near the railroad underpass, and blammed into a car and fractured leg—He’s still limping a little bit—He looks up to Cody also—Cody had been most worried about his injury—There are simple commiserations in even the wildest people—“That poor kid, man, he could hardly walk—he was in pretty bad shape for a time—I was really worried about old Lazarus there. That’s right, Laz, more butter,” as tall shambly kiddy Laz is serving us at table and brushing back his hair—very silent, never says much—Simon addresses his brother by his real first name Emil—“Emil, dyou go to the store?”

  “Not yet”

  “What time is it?”

  Long pause—then Lazarus’ deep mature voice—“Four”—

  “Well aint you goin to the store?”

  “Right now”

  Simon brings out insane leaflets that the stores distribute door to door showing the daily bargains, instead of writing out a list of groceries he just arbitrarily rings in some of the bargains, like,

  TYDOL SOAP

  TODAY ONLY 45¢

  —they ring that in, not because they really need soap, but it’s there, offered to them, at two cents saving—they bend their pureblood Russian-brother heads together over the leaflet and make additional rings—Then Lazarus goes uphill whistling with the money in his hand and spends hours in the store looking at science fiction bookcovers—comes back late—

  “Where ya been?”

  “Looking at pitchers”

  There’s old Lazarus frying his potatoes as we all drive up and walk in—The sun is shining over all San Francisco as seen from the long housing porch in back

  84

  The poet Geoffrey Donald is an elegant sad-weary type who’s been in Europe, to Ischia and Capri and such, known the rich elegant writers and types, and had just spoken for me to a New York publisher so I am surprised (first time I meet him) and we go out on that veranda to look at the scene—

  It’s all South Side San Fran of lower Third Street and gas-tanks and water tanks and industrial tracks, all smoky, slimy with cement dust, rooftops, beyond which the blue waters go all the way to Oakland and Berkeley, seen plain, even unto the foothills beyond that start their long climb to the Sierra, under cloud tops of divine majestical hugeness of snow-rosy-tinted at dusk—The rest of the city to the left, the whiteness, the sadness—A typical place for Simon and Lazarus, it’s all Negro families living around there and they are of course well liked and even gangs of children come right in the house and shoot play guns and scream and Lazarus instructs them in the arts of quiet, their hero—

  I wonder as I lean with sad Donald if he knows all this (type) or cares or what he’s thinking—suddenly I notice he’s turned fullface around to stare at me a long serious stare, I look away, I cant take it—I dont know how to say or how to thank him—Meanwhile young McLear’s in the kitchen, they’re all reading poems all scattered among bread and jam—I’m tired, I’m already tired of all this, where will I go? what do? how pass eternity?

  Meanwhile the candle soul burns in our “clasel” brows …

  “I suppose you’ve been to Italy and all that?—what are you going to do?” I finally say—

  “I dont know what I’m going to do,” he says sadly, with sad-weary humor—

  “What does one does when one does,” I say listless witless—

  “I heard a lot about you from Irwin, and read your work—”

  In fact he’s too decent for me—all I can understand is franticness—I wish I could tell him—but he knows I know—

  “We’ll be seeing you around?”

  “Oh yes,” he says—

  Two nights later he arranges a kind of little dinner party for me at Rose Wise Lazuli, the woman who runs the poetry readings (at which I never read, from shame)—On the phone she invites me, Irwin standing by me whispers “Can we come too?” “Rose, can Irwin come too?”—(“And Simon”)—“And Simon?”—“Why certainly”—(“And Raphael”)—“And Raphael Urso the poet?” “But of course”—(“And Lazarus” whispers Irwin)—“And Lazarus?”—“Surely”—so that my dinner party with Geoffrey Donald there with a pretty elegant intelligent girl, turns into a frantic screaming supper over ham, ice cream and cake—which I describe in its place right ahead—

  Donald and McLear go off and we eat some kind of crazy gobble supper of everything there is in the icebox and rush out to Raphael’s girl’s pad for an evening of beer and talk, where Irwin and Simon immediately take off their clothes (their trademark) and Irwin even plays with Sonya’s bellybutton—and naturally Raphael a hepcat from the Lower East Side dont want nobody playing with his chick’s belly, or have to sit there looking at naked men—It’s a surly evening—I see that I have a big job on my hands patching things up—And in fact Penny is with us again, sitting in the background—it’s an old Frisco roominghouse, topfloor, littered with books and clothes—I just sit with a quart of beer and dont look at anyone—the only thing that attracts my attention from out of my thoughts is that beautiful silver crucifix Raphael’s been wearing around his neck, and I mention it—

  “Then it’s yours!” and he takes it off and hands it to me—“Really, truly, take it!”

  “No no I’ll wear it for a few days and give it back to you.”

  “You can keep it, I want to give it to you! You know what I like about you Duluoz, you understand why I’m sore—I dont wanta have to sit here look at naked guys—”

  “O what’s wrong?” says Irwin where he’s kneeling at Sonya’s stool and touching her bellybutton under the little fold of clothes he’s lifted up, and Sonya herself (pretty little thing) is bound to prove nothing will bother her and let’s him do it, while Simon watches prayerfully (holding himself)—In fact Irwin and Simon begin to shiver a little, it’s night, cold, the windows are open, the beer is cold, Raphael’s sitting by the window brooding and wont talk or if so, to call them down—(“How you expect me to let you make it with my chick?”)

  “Raphael’s right, Irwin—you dont understand.”

  But I have to make Simon understand too, he wants it worse than Irwin, all Simon wants is a continued orgy—

  “Ah, you guys,” finally sighs Raphael, waving his hand—“Go ahead, Jack, take the cross, keep it, it looks good on you.”

  It has a little silver chain, I pass it over my head and under my collar and wear the cross—I feel strangely glad—Meantime Raphael has been reading the Diamondcutter of the Wise Vow (Diamond Sutra) that I paraphrased on Desolation, has it on his lap, “Do you understand it Raphael? There you’ll find everything there is to know.”

  “I know what you mean. Yes I understand it.”

  Finally I read sections of it to the party to take their minds off the girl jealousies—:

  “Subhuti, living ones who know, in teaching meaning to others, should first be free themselves from all the frustrating desires aroused by beautiful sights, pleasant sounds, sweet tastes, fragrance, soft tangibles, and tempting thoughts. In their practice of generosity, they should not be blindly influenced by any of these intriguing shows. And why? Because, if in their practice of generosity they are not blindly influenced by such things they will pass through a bliss and merit that is beyond calculation and beyond imagining. What think you, Subhuti? Is it possible to calculate the distance of space in the eastern skies?

  No, blissful awakener! It is impossible to calculate the distance of space in the eastern skies.

  Subhuti, is it possible to calculate the limits of space in the northern, southern, and western skies? Or to any of the four corners of the universe, or above or below or within?

  No, honored of the worlds!

  Subhuti, it is equally impossible to calculate the bliss and merit through which the living ones who know will pass, who practice generosity not blindly influenced by any of these judgments of the realness of the feeling of existence
. This truth should be taught in the beginning and to everybody”.…

  They all listen intently … nevertheless there’s something in the room I’m not in on … pearls come in clams.

  The world will be saved by what I see

  Universal perfect courtesy—

  Orion in the fresh space of heaven

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—

  It ends up a bad night, we go home leaving Raphael brooding and in fact fighting with Sonya, packing to leave—Irwin and Simon and I and Penny go back to the pad, where Lazarus is cooking the stove again, bring more beer and all get drunk—Finally Penny comes in the kitchen almost crying, she wants to sleep with Irwin but he’s asleep, “Sit on my lap baby” I say—Finally I go to my bed and she crawls into it and puts her arms around me right away (tho saying at first: “I just want a place to sleep in this madhouse”) and we go to town—Then Irwin wakes up and then Simon makes her too, there are bumpings and creakings of beds and old Lazarus is prowling around and finally the next night Penny kisses Lazarus too, and everybody’s happy—

  I wake up in the morning with my cross around my neck, I realize what thicks and thins I’ll have to wear this through, and ask myself “What would Catholics and Christians say about me wearing the cross to ball and to drink like this?—but what would Jesus say if I went up to him and said ‘May I wear Your cross in this world as it is’?”

  No matter what happens, may I wear your cross?—are there many kinds of purgatories not?

  “… not blindly influenced …”

  85

  In the morning Penny gets up before anyone else and goes out to buy bacon and eggs and orange juice and makes a big breakfast for everybody—I begin to like her—Now she’s cuddling and kissing me all over and (after Simon and Irwin go off to work, Irwin’s merchant ship is in Oakland, drydocked) Cody walks right in just as we’re cooing (or have cooed again) on the bed and he yells out “Ah just what I like to see in the morning, boys and girls!”

  “Can I go with you, can I follow you today?” she says to me—

  “Sure”

  Cody’s whipping out his race entries and lighting cigar and getting all eager at the kitchen table over the new day’s racing, just like my father long ago—“Just a little bit sugar in that coffee, Lazarus m’boy,” says he—

  “Yes sir”

  Lazarus is bounding around the kitchen with a thousand breads and eggs and bacons and toothbrushes and hairbrushes and book comics—It’s a bright sunny morning in Frisco, Cody and I get high on pot right away at the kitchen table.

  Both of us are talking in loud voices suddenly about God again. We want Lazarus to learn. Half the time we address our remarks to him—He just stands there grinning and pushing back his hair.

  Cody is at his best but I’ve got to make him understand, as he goes “And so it’s true as you do say that God is us”—poor Cody—“right here now, etcet, we dont have to run to God because we’re already there, yet Jack really now and face it ole buddy that sonumbitch trail to Heaven is a long trail!” Yelling it, seriously, and Lazarus smiles lazy at the stove, that’s why they call him “Laz.”

  “You dig that, Lazarus?” I say.

  Of course he does.

  “Words,” I say to Cody.

  “We start out with our astral bodies man and you know the way a ghost’d go when headin out there to that bright black night, go in a straight line—then as he wanders, just astral born and new to the game, he gets to wigglin and a-goin from side to side, that is, to explore, much as H. G. Wells says about a maid sweeps a hall from side to side, the way migrations advance—astral he’ll go migrate out there to the next, or Martian, level—where he bumps into all them sentinels you see, but with that special astral interpenetration speed”—

  “Words!”

  “True, true, but then after—now listen Jack, there was a guy who had such a bad aura of traitorship around him, in fact he was a later entity of Judas, he’d, people’d sense him turn in the street ‘Who’s that betrayer just went by?’—all his life suffering from some curse, people had of him, which was the Karmic debt he had to pay for sellin Jesus for a handful silver—”

  “Words”

  I keep saying words and really mean it—I’m trying to get Cody to shut up so I can say “God is words—”

  But it’s still all words—but Cody insists and bashes to prove that it’s a physical universe, he really believes the body is physically independent form right there in front of you—that then the astral ghost went out: “And when he gets to Saturn certain conditions there may seek, saught, hot, seet to foil him there, he might get to be a rock, or go on—”

  “Tell me seriously, doesnt the entity go to God in heaven?”

  “That it does, after a long trail and trial, you see,” lighting his cigarette suavely.

  “Words”

  “Words as you will”

  “Birds”

  He pays no attention to my “Birds.”

  “Until finally purified and so spotless as to be like the garment that was never rented, the entity does arrive in heaven and back to God. See’s why I say, ‘we’re not there now!’”

  “We cant help being there now, we cant avoid our reward.”

  This blanks Cody a minute, I usually spin words—

  “Heaven so sure,” I say.

  He’s wont to shake his head—there’s something about Cody wont agree with me, if so we get to be ghosts bumping on the same issues on another plane out there (in the distanceless vasts)—But what’s the point?

  “WORDS!!!” I yell, like Raphael yelling “Balls on that!”

  “Dont you see,” says Cody beaming with real gratitude and joy, “it’s all really worked out for us in advance and all we gotta do is pile right on.… That’s why I wanta go to the racetrack today,” Cody goes pilin on, “I got to win that money back and ’sides boy there’s something I want you to know, how many times have I gone to that betting window and asked the man for Number Five, because somebody just then says ‘Number Five,’ and the ticket I’d originally wanted was Number Two?”

  “Why dont you just say give me Number Two, instead of Number Five, I made a mistake. Would he give it back to ya, Numbers?”

  (Raphael and I had also been amazed in the shack yesterday by Cody’s constant talk of numbers, as you’ll see at the races.)

  Instead of answering me would the ticket taker change the deal, he goes: “Because that was a disincarnate entity telling me ‘Number Five’—”

  “Sometimes you just hear them in your head?”

  “This entity may be trying to have me win or lose, with certainly the foreknowledge of the outcome of that race, old buddy, dont you think I dont know why pshaw boy I got and you know Lazy Willie never said he ever you ever deviate from that second choice—”

  “So at least you know the disembodied ghost entities are trying to make you lose—because you say the second choice system cant fail.”

  “Cant”

  “Whaddo they look like?” asks Lazarus from the other room where now he’s been brushing his hair, on the edge of the bed, playing a little music on the box.

  “All kinds of ways, auras, auras say for instance of that betrayer scared everybody down the street, auras showing ogres of the imagination probably—opers anyway.” That’s where Cody plys the Keltic language.

  “Big seedy ghosts amplin down the line—into that endless sky, shit man Cody, wha happens?”

  Oh the frou-frous and fifi-sweets he’ll demonstrate the eye, to show how, jumping up from the chair to wave and talk—The Preacher—Mal was right—Laz comes in to dig Cody dancing like that. Cody’ll lean way down and sock his fist on the floor, and reach up and jump a point about Nijinsky off the floor and come around and bring big muscular Lil Abner’s-15½-year-old brother arms to whisk and wave at your nose, he wants you to feel the Lord’s wind and heat—

  “It’s all one essential light beyond which there can be no further division,” I
essay, and here to add: “Words.”

  “Jesus Christ comes down and his Karma is to know that he is the Son of God assigned to die for the sake of the eternal safety of mankind—”

  “Of all sensing beings.”

  “No—not ants. Knowing it, he does it, dies on the Cross. That was his Karma as Jesus.—Dig what that means.”

  Les onges qui mange

  dans la terre …

  86

  All Cody had to do to get outa that was say “But God is beyond words” but what does he care about words he wants to go to the races.

  “What we’re gonna do now is get in that little car and go see a sweet baby-pussy I want you to see and then we’ll go get your boy Raphael Shmashael there, and we’re ORF!” Like the announcer at the races. He’s banding all his papers and switch keys and cigarettes in the pockets, we’re off, Penny who was combing her hair to go out and taking her time about it now has to run right out with us and into the car, Cody wont wait, we leave Lazarus stranded in the doorway free to goof all day long in the apartment alone—we go barreling businesslike down the steep hill, and around to the right, around again, and around left and right into Third Street and wait at the light then on down just before it changes into the city, Cody wont waste a split-hair of time—“It’s all TIME, m’boy!” he yells—he goes into his theory of time and how we all gottact fast. “There’s no end to the things to be done!” he yells (the motor’s loud)—“If we only had TIME!” he cries almost moaning.