by Henry Miller
The friend whose house he was taking us to was an artist, he informed us. Being a friend of the great Dr. Kronski that meant an uncommon artist, one who would be recognized only when the millennium had been ushered in. His friend was both a painter and a musician—equally great in both realms. The music we wouldn’t be able to hear, owing to his friend’s absence, but we would be able to see his paintings—some of them, that is, because the great bulk of them he had destroyed. If it weren’t for Kronski he would have destroyed everything. I inquired casually what his friend was doing at the moment. He was running a model farm for defective children in the wilds of Canada. Kronski had organized the movement himself but was too busy thinking things out to bother with the practical details of management. Besides, his friend was a consumptive, and he would have to remain up there forever most likely. Kronski telegraphed him now and then to advise him about this and that. It was only a beginning—soon he would empty the hospitals and asylums of their inmates, prove to the world that the poor can take care of the poor and the weak the weak and the crippled the crippled and the defective the defective.
“Is that one of your friend’s paintings?” I asked, as he switched on the light and a huge vomit of yellowish-green bile leaped out from the wall.
“That’s one of his early things,” said Kronski. “He keeps it for sentimental reasons. I’ve put his best things away in storage. But here’s a little one that gives you some idea of what he can do.” He looked at it with pride, as if it were the work of his own offspring. “It’s marvelous, isn’t it?”
“Terrible,” I said. “He has a shit complex; he must have been born in the gutter, in a pool of stale horse piss on a sullen day in February near a gas house.”
“You would say that,” said Kronski vengefully. “You don’t know an honest painter when you see one. You admire the revolutionaries of yesterday. You’re a Romantic.”
“Your friend may be revolutionary but he’s no painter,” I insisted. “He hasn’t any love in him; he just hates, and what’s more he can’t even paint what he hates. He’s fog-eyed. You say he’s a consumptive: I say he’s bilious. He stinks, your friend, and so does his place. Why don’t you open the windows? It smells as though a dog had died here.”
“Guinea pigs, you mean. I’ve been using the place as a laboratory, that’s why it stinks a bit. Your nose is too sensitive, Mister Miller. You’re an aesthete.”
“Is there anything to drink here?” I asked.
There wasn’t, of course, but Kronski offered to run out and get something. “Bring something strong,” I said. “This place makes you retch. No wonder the poor bastard got consumptive.”
Kronski trotted off rather sheepishly, I looked at Mara. “What do you think? Will we wait for him or shall we beat it?”
“You’re very unkind. No, let’s wait. I’d like to hear him talk some more—he’s interesting. And he really thinks a lot of you. I can see that by the way he looks at you.”
“He’s only interesting the first time,” I said. “Frankly, he bores me stiff. I’ve been listening to this stuff for years. It’s sheer crap. He may be intelligent but he’s got a screw loose somewhere. He’ll commit suicide one day, mark my words. Besides, he brings bad luck. Whenever I meet that guy things turn out wrong. He carries death around with him, don’t you feel that? If he isn’t croaking he’s gibbering like an ape. How can you be friends with a guy like that? He wants you to be a friend of his sorrow. What’s eating him I don’t know. He’s worried about the world. I don’t give a shit about the world. I can’t make the world right, neither can he . . . neither can anybody. Why doesn’t he try to live? The world mightn’t be so bad if we tried to enjoy ourselves a little more. No, he riles me.”
Kronski came back with some vile liquor he claimed was all he could find at that hour. He seldom drank more than a thimbleful himself so it didn’t make much difference to him whether we poisoned ourselves or not. He hoped it would poison us, he said. He was depressed. He seemed to have settled in for an all-night depression. Mara, like an idiot, felt sorry for him. He stretched out on the sofa and lay his head in her lap. He began another line, a weird one—the impersonal sorrow of the world. It was not argument and invective as before but a chant, a dictaphone chant addressed to the millions of unhappy creatures throughout the world. Dr. Kronski always played this tune in the dark, his head on some woman’s lap, his hand dragging the carpet.
His head nestling in her lap like a swollen viper, the words sieved through Kronski’s mouth like gas escaping through a half-opened cock. It was the weird of the irreducible human atom, the subsoul wandering in the cellar of collective misery. Dr. Kronski ceased to exist: only the pain and torment remained, functioning as positive and negative electrons in the vast atomic vacuum of a lost personality. In this state of abeyance not even the miraculous Sovietization of the world could rouse a spark of enthusiasm in him. What spoke were the nerves, the ductless glands, the spleen, the liver, the kidneys, the little blood vessels lying close to the surface of the skin. The skin itself was just a bag in which was loosely collected a rather messy outfit of bones, muscles, sinews, blood, fat, lymph, bile, urine, dung, and so on. Germs were stewing around in this stinking bag of guts; the germs would win out no matter how brilliantly that cage of dull gray matter called the brain functioned. The body was in hostage to Death, and Dr. Kronski, so vital in the X-ray world of statistics, was just a louse to be cracked under a dirty nail when it came to surrender his shell. It never occurred to Dr. Kronski, in these fits of genitourinary depression, that there might be a view of the universe in which death assumed another aspect. He had disemboweled, dissected and chopped to bits so many corpses that death had come to mean something very concrete—a piece of cold meat lying on the mortuary slab, so to say. The light went out and the machine stopped, and after a time it would stink. Voilà, it was as plain and simple as that. In death the loveliest creature imaginable was just another piece of extraordinary cold plumbing. He had looked at his wife, just after the gangrene had set in; she might have been a codfish, he intimated, for all the attractiveness she displayed. The thought of the pain she was suffering was overruled by the knowledge of what was going on inside that body. Death had already made his entry and his work was fascinating to behold. Death is always present, he asserted. Death lurks in dark corners, waiting for the opportune moment to raise his head and strike. That is the only real bond we have, he said—the constant presence of death in all of us always.
Mara was quite taken in by all this. She stroked his hair and purred softly as the steady stream of singing gas parted from his thick bloodless lips. I was more annoyed by her evident sympathy for the sufferer than by the monotony of his weird. The image of Kronski huddled up like a sick goat struck me as distinctly comical. He had swallowed too many empty tin cans. He had nourished himself on discarded automobile parts. He was a walking cemetery of facts and figures. He was dying of statistical indigestion.
“Do you know what you ought to do?” I said quietly. “You ought to kill yourself—now, tonight. You haven’t anything to live for—why kid yourself? We’ll leave you in a little while and you just do away with yourself. You’re a smart alec, you must know a way to do it without making too much of a mess. Really, I think you owe it to the world. As it is, you’re only making a nuisance of yourself.”
These words had an almost electrical effect upon the suffering Dr. Kronski. He actually bounded to his feet in one porpoise-like movement. He clapped his hands and danced a few steps with the grace of a spavined pachyderm. He was ecstatic, in the way that a sewer digger becomes ecstatic when he learns that his wife has given birth to another brat.
“So you want me to get rid of myself, Mister Miller, that’s it, eh? What’s the great hurry? You’re jealous of me, are you? Well, I’m going to disappoint you this time. I’m going to stay alive and make you miserable. I’m going to torture you. One day you’re going to come to me and beg me to give you something to put you out of harm�
�s way. You’re going to beg me on your knees and I’m going to refuse you.”
“You’re crazy,” I said, stroking him under the chin.
“Oh no I’m not!” he answered, patting my bald knob. “I’m just a neurotic, like all Jews. I won’t ever kill myself, don’t fool yourself. I’ll be at your funeral and I’ll be laughing at you. Maybe you won’t have a funeral. Maybe you’ll be so in debt to me that you’ll have to will me your body when you die. Mister Miller, when I start carving you up there won’t be a crumb left over.”
He reached for a paper knife on the piano and placed the point of it on my diaphragm. He traced an imaginary line of incision and flourished the knife before my eyes.
“That’s how I’ll begin,” he said, “in your guts. First I’ll let out all that romantic nonsense which makes you think you lead a charmed life; then I’ll skin you like a snake so as to get at your calm, peaceful nerves and make them quiver and jump; you’ll be more alive under the knife than you are right now; you’ll look queer with one leg on and one leg off and your head sitting on my mantelpiece with your mouth fixed in a perpetual grin.”
He turned to Mara. “Do you think you’ll still be in love with him when I dress him for the laboratory?”
I turned my back on him and went to the window. It was a typical back view in the Bronx: wooden fences, clothes poles, wash lines, mangy grass plots, serial tenement houses, fire escapes, et cetera. Figures prowled back and forth before the windows in all states of attire. They were getting ready to retire in order to go through with the morrow’s meaningless humdrum. One out of a hundred thousand might escape the general doom; as for the rest it would be an act of mercy if someone came in the night and slit their throats while they slept. To believe that these wretched victims had it in them to create a new world was sheer insanity. I thought of Kronski’s second wife, the one who would eventually go crazy. She was from these parts. Her father ran a stationery store; the mother lay in bed all day nursing a cancerous womb. Her youngest brother had the sleeping sickness, another was paralyzed, and the oldest one was a mental defective. An intelligently ordered state would have put the whole family out of commission and the house with it. . . .
I spat out of the window in disgust.
Kronski was standing beside me, his arm around Mara’s waist. “Why not jump it?” I said, throwing my hat out the window.
“What, and make a mess for the neighbors to mop up? No sir, not me. Mister Miller, it seems to me that you’re the one who’s anxious to commit suicide. Why don’t you jump?”
“I’m willing,” I said, “provided you jump with me. Let me show you how easy it is. Here, give me your hand . . .”
“Oh, stop it!” said Mara. “You’re behaving like children. I thought you two were going to help me solve my problem. I’ve got real worries.”
“There are no solutions,” said Kronski glumly. It’s impossible to help your father because he doesn’t want to be helped. He wants to die.”
“But I want to live,” said Mara. “I refuse to be a drudge.”
“That’s what everybody says, but it doesn’t help. Until we overthrow this rotten capitalistic system there’ll be no solution to. . .”
“That’s all rot,” Mara broke in. “Do you think I’m going to wait for the revolution in order to live my life? Something has to be done now. If I can’t solve it any other way I’ll become a whore—an intelligent one, of course.”
“There are no intelligent whores,” said Kronski. “To prostitute the body is a sign of feeble intelligence. Why don’t you use your brains? You’d have a better time of it if you became a spy. Now that’s an idea! I think I could dig up something for you along those lines. I have some pretty good connections in the Party. Of course, you’d have to give up the idea of living with this bird,” and he jerked his thumb in my direction. “But a dame like you,” and he eyed her gloating from head to foot, “could take her pick. How would you like to pose as a countess or a princess?” he added. “A hundred a week and all expenses paid . . . not so bad, what?”
“I make more than that now,” said Mara, “without the risk of being shot.”
“What?” we both exclaimed at once.
She laughed. “You think that’s big money, do you? I need much more than that. If I wanted to I could marry a millionaire tomorrow; I’ve had several offers already.”
“Why don’t you marry one and divorce him quickly,” said Kronski. “You could marry one after another and become a millionairess yourself. Where’s your brains? You don’t mean to tell me you have scruples about such things?”
Mara didn’t know quite how to answer this. All she could think to say was that it was obscene to marry an old derelict for his money.
“And you think you could be a whore!” he said scornfully. “You’re as bad as this guy here—he’s corrupted by bourgeois morality too. Listen, why don’t you train him as your pimp? You’d make a fine romantic couple in the underworld of sex. Do that! Maybe I can bring you some trade now and then.”
“Dr. Kronski,” I said, giving him the bland and amiable smile, “I think we’ll be taking leave of you now. This has been a most pleasant and instructive evening, I assure you. When Mara gets her first dose of syphilis I’ll be sure to call on you for your expert services. I think you’ve solved all our problems with admirable finesse. When you send your wife to the asylum come and spend a little time with us—it will be jolly to have you around, you’re inspiring and entertaining, to say the least.”
“Don’t go yet,” he begged. “I want to talk to you seriously.” He turned to Mara. “Just how much do you need immediately? I could lend you three hundred dollars, if that would help. I’d have to have it back in six months, because it isn’t mine. Listen, don’t run off now. Let him go—I want to tell you a few things.”
Mara looked at me as if to ask whether this was just talk on his part.
“Don’t ask his advice,” said Kronski. “I’m sincere with you. I like you and I want to do something for you.” He turned round on me gruffly: “Go on, go home, will you? I’m not going to rape her.”
“Shall I go?” I asked.
“Yes, please do,” said Mara. “Only why did the idiot wait so long to tell me this?”
I had my doubts about the three hundred dollars but I left anyway. In the subway, faced with the broken-down night riders of the big city, I fell into a deep introspection, such as comes over the hero in modern novels. Like them, I asked myself useless questions, posed problems that didn’t exist, made plans for the future which would never materialize, doubted everything, including my own existence. For the modern hero thought leads nowhere; his brain is a colander in which he washes the soggy vegetables of the mind. He says to himself that he is in love and he sits in the moving underground trying to run like a sewer. He beguiles himself with pleasant thoughts. For example this one: he is probably kneeling on the floor, stroking her knees: he is working his sweaty hamlike paw slowly upwards over the cool flesh: he is telling her in glutinous language how unique she is; there never was any three hundred dollars but if he can get it in, if he can get her to open her legs a little more, he’ll try to raise something; while she is sliding her twat closer and closer, hoping that he’ll just be satisfied to suck her off and not make her go the whole hog, she tells herself that it’s no betrayal because she warned all and sundry with explicit frankness that if she had to do it she’d do it and she must do something. God help her, it’s very real and very urgent: she can get away with this easily enough because nobody knows how many times she’s let herself be fucked for a little loose change; she’s got a good excuse, not wanting her father to die like a dog; he’s got his head between her legs now, his tongue is hot; she slips down lower and puts a leg around his neck; the juice is flowing and she feels hornier than she ever felt; is he going to tantalize her all night? She takes his head in her hands and runs her fingers through his greasy hair; she presses her cunt against his mouth; she feels it coming, she squi
rms and wriggles, she gasps, she pulls his hair. Where are you? she screams to herself. Give me that fat prick! She pulls frantically at his collar, yanks him off his knees; in the dark her hand slips like an eel into the bulging fly, cups the fat swollen balls, traces with thumb and finger the stiff chicken neck of the penis where it dives into the unknown; he’s slow and heavy and he pants like a walrus; she raises her legs high, slings them round his neck. Get it in, you fuss-pot! Not there—here! She puts her fist around it and leads it to the stable. Oh, that’s good. Oh! Oh! Oh God, it’s good this way, keep it in, hold it, hold it. Get it in deeper, push it in all the way . . . there, that’s it, that’s it. Oh, oh! He’s trying to hold it. He’s trying to think of two things at once. Three hundred dollars . . . three greenbacks. Who’ll give it to me? Jesus, that feels marvelous. Jesus, hold that now! Hold it! He’s feeling and thinking at the same time. He feels a little clam without a shell opening and closing, a thirsty flower clamping the end of his prick. Don’t move, you bastard, or I’ll spill it. Do that again! Jesus, what a cunt! He feels for her boobies, rips the dress open, laps a nipple greedily. Don’t move now, just suck, that’s it, like that. Easy now, easy! Jesus, if we could only lie like this all night. Oh Jesus, it’s coming. Move, you bitch! Give it to me . . . faster, faster. Oh, Ah, Sis, Boom, Blam!