by Henry Miller
MacGregor was impressed by a magazine cover that Ulric had just finished. It was a picture of a man with a golf bag just setting out for the greens. MacGregor found it extremely lifelike. “I didn’t know you were that good,” he said with his customary tactlessness. “What do you get for a job like that, if I may ask?” Ulric told him. His respect deepened. Meanwhile his wife had spied a water color which she liked. “Did you do that?” she asked. Ulric nodded. “I’d like to buy it,” she said. “How much do you want for it?” Ulric said he would be glad to give it to her when it was finished. “It’s not finished yet, you mean?” she screamed. “It looks finished to me. I don’t care, I’ll take it anyway, just as it is. Will you take twenty dollars for it?”
“Now listen, you fathead,” said MacGregor, giving her a playful oxlike poke on the jaw which knocked the glass out of her hand, “the man says it ain’t finished yet; what do you want to do, make a liar out of him?”
“I’m not saying it’s finished,” she said, “and I didn’t call him a liar. I like it just as it is and I want to buy it.”
“Well, buy it then, by Jesus, and get done with it!”
“No, really, I couldn’t let you take it in that condition,” said Ulric. “Besides, it’s not good enough to sell—it’s just a sketch.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Tess Molloy. “I want it. I’ll give you thirty dollars for it.”
“You just said twenty a minute ago,” put in MacGregor. “What’s the matter with you, are you nuts? Didn’t you ever buy a picture before? Listen, Ulric, you’d better let her have it or else we’ll never get started. I’d like to do a little fishing before the day’s over, what do you say? Of course this bird”—indicating me with his thumb—“doesn’t like fishing; he wants to sit and mope, dream about love, study the sky and that kind of crap. Come on, let’s get going. Yeah, that’s right, take a bottle along—we might want a swig of it before we get there.”
Tess took the water color from the wall and left a twenty-dollar bill on the desk.
“Better take it with you,” warned MacGregor. “No telling who may break in while we’re gone.”
After we had gone a block or so it occurred to me that I ought to have left a note for Mara on the doorbell. “Oh, fuck that idea!” said MacGregor. “Give her something to worry about—they like that. Eh Toots?” and again he poked his wife in the ribs.
“If you poke me again like that,” she said, “I’ll wrap this bottle around your neck. I mean it too.”
“She means it,” he said, glancing back at us with a bright nickel-plated sort of smile. “You can’t prod her too much, can you Toots? Yep, she’s got a good disposition—otherwise she’d never have stood me as long as she has, ain’t that right, kid?”
“Oh, shut up! Look where you’re driving. We don’t want this car smashed up like the other one.”
“We don’t?” he yelled. “Jesus, I like that. And who, may I ask, ran into the milk truck on the Hempstead Turnpike in broad daylight?”
“Oh, forget it!”
They kept it up like that until way past Jamaica. Suddenly he quit pestering and nagging her and, looking through the mirror, he began talking to us about his conception of art and life. It was all right, he thought, to go in for that sort of thing—meaning pictures and all that humbug—provided one had the talent for it. A good artist was worth his money, that was his opinion. The proof was that he got it, if you noticed. Anybody who was any good always got recognition, that’s what he wanted to say. Wasn’t that so? Ulric said he thought so too. Not always, of course, but generally speaking. Of course, there were fellows like Gauguin, MacGregor went on, and Christ knows they were good artists, but then there was some strange quirk in them, something antisocial, if you wanted to call it that, which prevented them from being recognized immediately. You couldn’t blame the public for that, could you? Some people were born unlucky, that’s how he saw it. Now take himself, for instance. He wasn’t an artist, to be sure, but then he wasn’t a dud either. In his way he was as good as the next fellow, maybe just a little bit better. And yet, just to prove how uncertain everything could be, nothing he had put his hand to had turned out right. Sometimes a little shyster had gotten the better of him. And why? Because he, MacGregor, wouldn’t stoop to doing certain things. There are things you just don’t do, he insisted. No sir! and he banged the wheel emphatically. But that’s the way they play the game, and they get away with it too. But not forever! Ah no!
“Now you take Maxfield Parrish,” he continued. “I suppose he doesn’t count, but just the same he gives ’em what they want. While a guy like Gauguin has to struggle for a crust of bread—and even when he’s dead they spit in his eye. It’s a queer game, art. I suppose it’s like everything else—you do it because you like it, that’s about the size it, what? Now you take that bastard sitting alongside of you—yeah you!” he said, grinning at me through the mirror. “He thinks we ought to support him, nurse him along until he writes his masterpiece. He never thinks that he might look for a job meanwhile. Oh no, he wouldn’t soil his lily-white hands that way. He’s an artist. Well, maybe he is, for all I know. But he’s got to prove it first, am I right? Did anybody support me because I thought I was a lawyer? It’s all right to have dreams—we all like to dream—but somebody has to pay the rent.”
We had just passed a duck farm. “Now that’s what I’d like,” said MacGregor. “I’d like nothing better than to settle down and raise ducks. Why don’t I? Because I’ve got sense enough to know that I don’t know anything about ducks. You can’t just dream them up—you’ve got to raise them! Now Henry there, if he took it into his head to raise ducks, he’d just move out here and dream about it. First he’d ask me to lend him some money, of course. He’s got that much sense, I must admit. He knows that you have to buy them before you can raise them. So, when he wants something, say a duck now, he just blindly says, ‘Give me some money, I want to buy a duck!’ Now that’s what I call impractical. That’s dreaming. . . . How did I get my money? Did I pick it off a bush? When I tell him to get out and hustle for it he gets sore. He thinks I’m against him. Is that right—or am I slandering you?” and he gave me another nickel-plated grin through the mirror.
“It’s O.K.,” I said. “Don’t take it to heart.”
“Take it to heart? Do you hear that? Jesus, if you think I lay awake nights worrying about you, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m trying to set you right, that’s all. I’m trying to put a little sense into your thick head. Of course I know you don’t want to raise ducks, but you must admit you do get some crazy notions now and then. Jesus, I hope you don’t forget the time you tried to sell me a Jewish encyclopedia. Imagine, he wanted me to sign for a set so that he could get his commission, and then I was to return it after a while—just like that. I was to give them some cock-and-bull story which he had trumped up on the spur of the moment. That’s the sort of genius he has for business. And me a lawyer! Can you see me signing my name to a phony proposition like that? No, by Jesus, I’d have more respect for him if he had told me he wanted to raise ducks. I can understand a guy wanting to raise ducks. But to try and palm off a Jewish encyclopedia on your best friend—that’s raw, to say nothing of it being illegal and untenable. That’s another thing—he thinks the law is all rot. ‘I don’t believe in it,’ he says, as if his believing or not believing made any difference. And as soon as he’s in trouble he comes hotfooting it to me. ‘Do something,’ he says, ‘you know how to handle these things.’ It’s just a game to him. He could live without law, so he thinks, but I’ll be damned if he isn’t in trouble all the time. And of course, as to paying me for my trouble, or just for the time I put in on him, that never enters his bean. I should do those little things for him out of friendship. You see what I mean?”
Nobody said anything.
We drove along in silence for a while. We passed more duck farms. I asked myself how long it would take to go crazy if one bought a duck and settled down on Long Island with
it. Walt Whitman was born here somewhere. I no sooner thought of his name than, like buying the duck, I wanted to visit his birthplace.
“What about visiting Walt Whitman’s birthplace?” I said aloud.
“What?” yelled MacGregor.
“Walt Whitman!” I yelled. “He was born somewhere on Long Island. Let’s go there.”
“Do you know where?” shouted MacGregor.
“No, but we could ask someone.”
“Oh, the hell with that! I thought you knew where. These people out here wouldn’t know who Walt Whitman was. I wouldn’t have known myself only you talk about him so goddamn much. He was a bit queer, wasn’t he? Didn’t you tell me he was in love with a bus driver? Or was he a nigger lover? I can’t remember any more.”
“Maybe it was both,” said Ulric, uncorking the bottle.
We were passing through a town. “Jesus, but I seem to know this place!” said MacGregor. “Where in hell are we?” We pulled up to the curb and hailed a pedestrian. “Hey, what’s the name of this burg?” The man told him. “Can you beat that?” he said. “I thought I recognized the dump. Jesus, what a beautiful dose of clap I got here once! I wonder if I could find the house. I’d just like to drive by and see if that cute little bitch is sitting on the veranda. God, the prettiest little trick you ever laid eyes on—a little angel, you’d say. And could she fuck! One of those excitable little bitches, always in heat—you know, always throwing it up to you, rubbing it in your face. I drove out here in a pouring rain to keep a date with her. Everything just fine. Her husband was away on a trip and she was just itching for a piece of tail. . . . I’m trying to think now where I picked her up. I know this, that I had a hell of a time persuading her to let me visit her. Well, anyway, I had a wonderful time—never got out of bed for two days. Never got up to wash even—that was the trouble. Jesus, I swear if you saw that face alongside of you on the pillow you’d think you were getting the Virgin Mary. She could come about nine times without stopping. And then she’d say—’Do it again, once more. . . . I feel depraved.’ That was a funny one, eh? I don’t think she knew what the word meant. Anyway, a few days later it began to itch and then it got red and swollen. I couldn’t believe I was getting the clap. I thought maybe a flea had bitten me. Then the pus began to run. Boy, fleas don’t make pus. Well, I went round to the family doctor. ‘That’s a beauty,’ he said, ‘where did you get it?’ I told him. ‘Better have a blood test,’ he said, ‘it might be syphilis.’”
“That’s enough of that,” groaned Tess. “Can’t you talk about something pleasant for a change?”
“Well,” says MacGregor, in answer to that, “you’ve got to admit I’ve been pretty clean since I know you, right?”
“You better had,” she answered, “or it wouldn’t be healthy for you.”
“She’s always afraid I’m going to bring her a present,” said MacGregor, grinning through the mirror again. “Listen Toots, everybody gets a dose sometime or other. You can be thankful I got it before I met you—isn’t that right, Ulric?”
“Oh yeah?” snapped Tess. Another long wrangle might have ensued had we not come to a hamlet which MacGregor thought would be a good stopping place. He had an idea he would like to go crabbing. Besides, there was a roadhouse nearby which served good food, if he remembered rightly. He bundled us all out. “Want to take a leak? Come on!” We left Tess standing at the roadside like a torn umbrella and went indoors to empty our bladders. He got us both by the arm. “Confidentially,” he said, “we ought to stick around here for the evening. There’s a fast crowd comes here; if you’d like to dance and have a drink or two, why this is the place. I won’t tell her we’re staying just yet—might get the wind up. We’ll go down to the beach first and loll around. When you get hungry just say so and then I’ll suddenly remember the roadhouse—get me?”
We strolled down to the beach. It was almost deserted. MacGregor bought a pocketful of cigars, lit one, took off his shoes and socks and waded around in the water smoking a fat cigar. “It’s great isn’t it?” he said. “You’ve got to be a kid once in a while.” He made his wife take her shoes and stockings off. She waddled into the water like a hairy duck. Ulric sprawled out on the sand and took a nap. I lay there watching MacGregor and his wife at their clumsy antics. I wondered if Mara had arrived and what she would think when she found I was not there. I wanted to get back as quick as possible. I didn’t give a fuck about the roadhouse and the fast ponies who came there to dance. I had a feeling that she was back, that she was sitting on Ulric’s doorstep waiting for me. I wanted to get married again, that’s what I wanted. What had ever induced me to come out here to this Godforsaken place? I hated Long Island, always had. MacGregor and his ducks! The thought of it drove me mad. If I were to own a duck I would call it MacGregor, tie it to a lamppost and shoot it with a 48-caliber revolver. I’d shoot it until it was dead and then poleax it. His ducks! Fuck a duck! I said to myself. Fuck everything!
We went to the roadhouse just the same. If I had thought to demur I forgot it. I had reached a state of indifference born of despair. I let myself drift with the current. And, as always happens when you relent and allow yourself to be borne along by the clashing wills of others, something occurred which we didn’t bargain for.
We had finished eating and we were having a third or fourth drink; the place was cosily filled, everybody was in a good mood. Suddenly, at a table nearby, a young man rose to his feet with a glass in hand and addressed the house. He wasn’t drunk, he was just in a pleasant state of euphoria, as Dr. Kronski would put it. He was explaining quietly and easily that he had taken the liberty of calling attention to himself and his wife, to whom he raised his glass, because it was the first anniversary of their wedding, and because they felt so good about it that they wanted everybody to know it and to share their happiness. He said he didn’t want to bore us by making a speech, that he had never made a speech in his life, and that he wasn’t trying to make a speech now, but he just had to let everybody know how good he felt and how good his wife felt, that maybe he’d never feel this way again all his life. He said he was just a nobody, that he worked for a living and didn’t make much money (nobody did any more), but he knew one thing and that was that he was happy, and he was happy because he had found the woman he loved, and he still loved her just as much as ever, though they were now married a whole year. (He smiled.) He said he wasn’t ashamed to admit it before the whole world. He said he couldn’t help telling us all about it, even if it bored us, because when you’re very happy you want others to share your happiness. He said he thought it wonderful that there could be such happiness when there were so many things wrong with the world, but that perhaps there would be more happiness if people confessed their happiness to one another instead of waiting to confide in one another only when they were sorrowful and sad. He said he wanted to see everybody looking happy, that even if we were all strangers one to another, we were united this evening with him and his wife and if we would share their great joy with them it would make them still happier.
He was so completely carried away by this idea that everybody should participate in their joy that he went on talking for twenty minutes or more, roaming from one thing to another like a man sitting at the piano and improvising. He hadn’t a doubt in the world that we were all his friends, that we would listen to him in peace until he had had his say. Nothing he said sounded ridiculous, however sentimental his words may have been. He was utterly sincere, utterly genuine, and utterly possessed by the realization that to be happy is the greatest boon on earth. It wasn’t courage which had made him get up and address us, for obviously the thought of getting to his feet and delivering a long extemporaneous speech was as much of a surprise to him as it was to us. He was for the moment, and without knowing it, of course, on the way to becoming an evangelist, that curious phenomenon of American life which has never been adequately explained. The men who have been touched by a vision, by an unknown voice, by an irresistible inner prompting—and
there have been thousands upon thousands of them in our country—what must have been the sense of isolation in which they dwelled, and for how long, to suddenly rise up, as if out of a deep trance, and create for themselves a new identity, a new image of the world, a new God, a new heaven? We are accustomed to think of ourselves as a great democratic body, linked by common ties of blood and language, united indissolubly by all the modes of communication which the ingenuity of man can possibly devise; we wear the same clothes, eat the same diet, read the same newspapers, alike in everything but name, weight and numbers; we are the most collectivized people in the world, barring certain primitive peoples whom we consider backward in their development. And yet—yet despite all the outward evidences of being close-knit, interrelated, neighborly, good-humored, helpful, sympathetic, almost brotherly, we are a lonely people, a morbid, crazed herd thrashing about in zealous frenzy, trying to forget that we are not what we think we are, not really united, not really devoted to one another, not really listening, not really anything, just digits shuffled about by some unseen hand in a calculation which doesn’t concern us. Suddenly now and then someone comes awake, comes undone, as it were, from the meaningless glue in which we are stuck—the rigmarole which we call the everyday life and which is not life but a trancelike suspension above the great stream of life—and this person who, because he no longer subscribes to the general pattern, seems to us quite mad finds himself invested with strange and almost terrifying powers, finds that he can wean countless thousands from the fold, cut them loose from their moorings, stand them on their heads, fill them with joy, or madness, make them forsake their own kith and kin, renounce their calling, change their character, their physiognomy, their very soul. And what is the nature of this overpowering seduction, this madness, this “temporary derangement,” as we love to call it? What else if not the hope of finding joy and peace? Every evangelist uses a different language but they are all talking about the same thing. (To stop seeking, to stop struggling, to stop climbing on top of one another, to stop thrashing about in the pursuit of vain and vacillating goals.) In the twinkle of an eye it comes, the great secret which arrests the outer motion, which tranquilizes the spirit, which equilibrates, which brings serenity and poise, and illumines the visage with a steady, quiet flame that never dies. In their efforts to communicate the secret they become a nuisance to us, true. We shun them because we feel that they look upon us condescendingly; we can’t bear to think that we are not the equal of anyone, however superior he may seem to be. But we are not equals; we are mostly inferior, vastly inferior, inferior particularly to those who are quiet and contained, who are simple in their ways, and unshakable in their beliefs. We resent what is steady and anchored, what is impervious to our blandishments, our logic, our collectivized cud of principles, our antiquated forms of allegiance.