by Henry Miller
She wriggled away laughingly. “I don’t think any such thing—and you know it!” she burst out.
“I’m only making up to you out of politeness,” I said, with a huge grin. “We’re going to have a cozy little meal now. . . . God, it smells good . . . what is it? Chicken?”
“Pork!” she said. “Chicken . . . what do you think? That I made this especially for you? Go on, talk to me. Keep your mind off the food a little longer. Say something nice, if you can. But don’t come near me, or I’ll stick a fork in you. . . . Tell me what happened last night. Tell me the truth, I dare you . . .”
“That isn’t hard to do, my wonderful Rebecca. Especially since we’re alone. It’s a long story—are you sure you’d like to hear it?”
She was laughing again.
“Jesus, you’ve got a dirty laugh,” I said. “Well anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the truth . . . Listen, the truth is that I slept with my wife . . .”
“I thought as much,” said Rebecca.
“But wait, that isn’t all. There was another woman besides . . .”
“You mean after you slept with your wife—or before?”
“At the same time,” I said, grinning amiably.
“No, no! Don’t tell me that!” She dropped the carving knife and stood with arms akimbo looking at me searchingly. “I don’t know . . . with you anything’s possible. Wait a minute. Wait till I set the table. I want to hear the whole thing, from beginning to end.”
“You haven’t got a little schnapps, have you?” I said.
“I’ve got some red wine . . . that’ll have to do you.”
“Good, good! Of course it’ll do. Where is it?”
As I was uncorking the bottle she came over to me and grasped me by the arm. “Look, tell me the truth,” she said. “I won’t give you away.”
“But I’m telling you the truth!”
“All right, hold it, then. Wait till we sit down. . . . Do you like cauliflower? I haven’t any other vegetable.”
“I like any kind of food. I like everything. I like you, I like Mona, I like my wife, I like horses, cows, chickens, pinochle, tapioca, Bach, benzine, prickly heat. . .”
“You like! . . . That’s you all over. It’s wonderful to hear it. You make me hungry too. You like everything, yes . . . but you don’t love.”
“I do too. I love food, wine, women. Of course I do. What makes you think I don’t? If you like, you love. Love is only the superlative degree. I love like God loves—without distinction of time, place, race, color, sex and so forth. I love you too—that way. It’s not enough, I suppose?”
“It’s too much, you mean. You’re out of focus. Listen, calm down a moment. Carve the meat, will you? I’ll fix the gravy.”
“Gravy . . . ooh, ooh. I love gravy.”
“Like you love your wife and me and Mona, is that it?”
“More even. Right now it’s all gravy. I could lick it up by the ladleful. Rich, thick, heavy, black gravy . . . it’s wonderful. By the way, I was just talking to an Egyptologist—he wanted a job as a messenger.”
“Here’s the gravy. Don’t get off the track. You were going to tell me about your wife.”
“Sure, sure I will. I’ll tell you that too. I’ll tell you everything. First of all, I want to tell you how beautiful you look—with the gravy in your hand.”
“If you don’t stop this,” she said, “I’ll put a knife in you. What’s come over you, anyway? Does your wife have such an effect upon you every time you see her? You must have had a wonderful time.” She sat down, not opposite me, but to one side.
“Yes, I did have a wonderful time,” I said. “And then just now there was the Egyptologist. . .”
“Oh, drat the Egyptologist! I want to hear about your wife . . . and that other woman. God, if you’re making this up I’ll kill you!”
I busied myself for a while with the pork and the cauliflower. Took a few swigs of wine to wash it down. A succulent repast. I was feeling mellow as could be. I needed replenishment.
“It’s like this,” I began, after I had packed away a few forkfuls.
She began to titter.
“What’s the matter? What did I say now?”
“It isn’t what you say, it’s the way you say it. You seem so serene and detached, so innocent-like. God, yes, that’s it—innocent. If it had been murder instead of adultery, or fornication, I think you’d begin the same way. You enjoy yourself, don’t you?”
“Of course . . . why not? Why shouldn’t I? Is that so terribly strange?”
“No-o-h,” she drawled. “I suppose it isn’t. . . or it shouldn’t be, anyway. But you make everything sound a little crazy sometimes. You’re always a little wide of the mark . . . too big a swoop. You ought to have been born in Russia!”
“Yeah, Russia! That’s it. I love Russia!”
“And you love the pork and the cauliflower—and the gravy and me. Tell me, what don’t you love? Think first! I’d really like to know.”
I gobbled down a juicy bit of fatty pork dipped in gravy and looked at her. “Well, for one thing, I don’t like work.” I paused a minute to think what else I didn’t like. “Oh yes,” I said, meaning it utterly seriously, “and I don’t like flies.”
She burst out laughing. “Work and flies—so that’s it. I must remember that. God, is that all that you don’t like?”
“For the moment that’s all I can think of.”
“And what about crime, injustice, tyranny and those things?”
“Well, what about them?” I said. “What can you do about such things? You might just as well ask me—what about the weather?”
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
“You’re impossible! Or maybe you can’t think when you eat.”
“That’s a fact,” I said. “I don’t think very well when I eat. Do you? I don’t want to, as a matter of fact. Anyway, I was never much of a thinker. Thinking doesn’t get you anywhere anyhow. It’s a delusion. Thinking makes you morbid. . . . By the way, have you any dessert . . . any of that Liederkranz? That’s a wonderful cheese, don’t you think?
“I suppose it does sound funny,” I continued, “to hear someone say, ‘I love it, it’s wonderful, it’s good, it’s great,’ meaning everything. Of course I don’t feel that way every day—but I’d like to. And I do when I’m normal, when I’m myself. Everybody does, if given a chance. It’s the natural state of the heart. The trouble is, we’re terrorized most of the time. I say ‘we’re terrorized,’ but I mean we terrorize ourselves. Last night, for instance. You can’t imagine how extraordinary it was. Nothing external created it—unless it was the lightning. Suddenly everything was different—and yet it was the same house, the same atmosphere, the same wife, the same bed. It was as though the pressure had suddenly been removed—I mean that psychic pressure, that incomprehensible wet blanket which smothers us from the time we’re born. . . . You said something about tyranny, injustice, and so on. Of course I know what you mean. I used to occupy myself with those problems when I was younger—when I was fifteen or sixteen. I understood everything then, very clearly . . . that is, as far as the mind permits one to understand things. I was more pure, more disinterested, so to speak. I didn’t have to defend or uphold anything, least of all a system which I never did believe in, not even as a child. I worked out an ideal universe, all on my own. It was very simple: no money, no property, no laws, no police, no government, no soldiers, no executioners, no prisons, no schools. I eliminated every disturbing and restraining element. Perfect freedom. It was a vacuum—and in it I exploded. What I really wanted, you see, was that everyone should behave as I behaved, or thought I would behave. I wanted a world made in my own image, a world that would breathe my spirit. I made myself God, since there was nothing to hinder me. . . .”
I paused for breath. I noticed that she was listening with the utmost seriousness.
“Should I go on? You’ve probably heard this sort of thing a thousand times.”
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“Do go on,” she said softly, placing a hand on my arm. “I’m beginning to see another you. I like you better in this vein.”
“Didn’t you forget the cheese? By the way, the wine isn’t bad at all. A little sharp, maybe, but not bad.”
“Listen, Henry, eat, drink, smoke, do anything you want, as much as you want. I’ll give you everything we have in the house. But don’t stop talking now . . . please.”
She was just about to sit down. I sprang up suddenly, my eyes full of tears, and I put my arms around her. “Now I can tell you honestly and sincerely,” I said, “that I do love you.” I made no attempt to kiss her—I just embraced her. I released her of my own accord, sat down, picked up the glass of wine and finished it off.
“You’re an actor,” she said. “In the real sense of the word, of course. I don’t wonder that people are frightened of you sometimes.”
“I know, I get frightened of myself sometimes. Especially if the other person responds. I don’t know where the proper limits are. There are no limits, I suppose. Nothing would be bad or ugly or evil—if we really let ourselves go. But it’s hard to make people understand that. Anyway, that’s the difference between the world of imagination and the world of common sense, which isn’t common sense at all but sheer buggery and insanity. If you stop still and look at things . . . I say look, not think, not criticize . . . the world looks absolutely crazy to you. And it is crazy, by God! It’s just as crazy when things are normal and peaceful as in times of war or revolution. The evils are insane evils, and the panaceas are insane panaceas. Because we’re all driven like dogs. We’re running away. From what? We don’t know. From a million nameless things. It’s a rout, a panic. There’s no ultimate place to retreat to—unless, as I say, you stand stock-still. If you can do that, and not lose your balance, not be swept away in the rush, you may be able to get a grip on yourself . . . be able to act, if you know what I mean. You know what I’m driving at . . . From the time you wake up until the moment you go to bed it’s all a lie, all a sham and a swindle. Everybody knows it, and everybody collaborates in the perpetuation of the hoax. That’s why we look so goddamned disgusting to one another. That’s why it’s so easy to trump up a war, or a pogrom, or a vice crusade, or any damned thing you like. It’s always easier to give in, to bash somebody’s puss in, because what we all pray for is to get done in, but done in proper and no comeback. If we could still believe in a god, we’d make him a god of vengeance. We’d surrender to him with a full heart the task of cleaning things up. It’s too late for us to pretend to clean up the mess. We’re in it up to the eyes. We don’t want a new world . . . we want an end to the mess we’ve made. At sixteen you can believe in a new world . . . you can believe anything, in fact . . . but at twenty you’re doomed, and you know it. At twenty you’re well in harness, and the most you can hope for is to get off with arms and legs intact. It isn’t a question of fading hope. . . . Hope is a baneful sign; it means impotence. Courage is no use either: everybody can muster courage—for the wrong thing. I don’t know what to say—unless I use a word like vision. And by that I don’t mean a projected picture of the future, of some imagined ideal made real. I mean something more flexible, more constant—a permanent supersight, as it were . . . something like a third eye. We had it once. There was a sort of clairvoyance which was natural and common to all men. Then came the mind, and that eye which permitted us to see whole and round and beyond was absorbed by the brain, and we became conscious of the world, and of one another, in a new way. Our pretty little egos came into bloom: we became self-conscious, and with that came conceit, arrogance, blindness, a blindness such as was never known before, not even by the blind.”
“Where do you get these ideas?” said Rebecca suddenly. “Or are you making it up on the spur of the moment? Wait a minute . . . I want you to tell me something. Do you ever put your thoughts down on paper? What do you write about anyway? You’ve never showed me a thing. I haven’t the least idea what you’re doing.”
“Oh that,” I said, “it’s just as well you haven’t read anything. I haven’t said anything yet. I can’t seem to get started. I don’t know what the hell to put down first, there’s so much to say.”
“But do you write the way you talk? That’s what I want to know.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, blushing. “I don’t know anything about writing yet. I’m too self-conscious, I guess.”
“You shouldn’t be,” said Rebecca. “You’re not self-conscious when you talk, and you don’t act self-consciously either.”
“Rebecca,” I said, proceeding slowly and deliberately, “if I really knew what I was capable of I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. I feel sometimes as though I’m going to burst. I really don’t give a damn about the misery of the world. I take it for granted. What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin—to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I’m sure of it. I know it because I feel so marvelous myself most of the time. And when I feel that way everybody seems marvelous . . . everybody and everything . . . even pebbles and pieces of cardboard . . . a goat’s beard, if you like. That’s what I want to write about—but I don’t know how . . . I don’t know where to begin. Maybe it’s too personal. Maybe it would sound like sheer rubbish. . . . You see, to me it seems as though the artists, the scientists, the philosophers were grinding lenses. It’s all a grand preparation for something that never comes off. Someday the lens is going to be perfect and then we’re all going to see clearly, see what a staggering, wonderful, beautiful world it is. But in the meantime we go without glasses, so to speak. We blunder about like myopic, blinking idiots. We don’t see what is under our nose because we’re so intent on seeing the stars, or what lies beyond the stars. We’re trying to see with the mind, but the mind sees only what it’s told to see. The mind can’t open its eyes and look just for the pleasure of looking. Haven’t you ever noticed that when you stop looking, when you don’t try to see, you suddenly see? What is it you see? Who is it that sees? Why is it all so different—so marvelously different—in such moments? And which is more real, that kind of vision or the other? You see what I mean . . . When you have an inspiration your mind takes a vacation; you turn it over to someone else, some invisible, unknowable power which takes possession of you, as we so aptly say. What the hell does that mean—if it makes sense at all? What happens when the machinery of the mind slows down, or comes to a standstill? Whatever or however you choose to look upon it, this other modus operandi is of another order. The machine runs perfectly, but its object and purpose seem purely gratuitous. It makes another kind of sense . . . grand sense if you accept it unquestioningly, and nonsense—or not nonsense, but madness—if you try to examine into it with the other machinery . . . Jesus, I guess I’m getting off the track.”
Little by little she steered me back to the story she wanted to hear. She was avidly curious about the details. She laughed a great deal—that low, earthy laugh which was provocative and approving at the same time.
“You pick the strangest women,” she said. “You seem to choose with your eyes shut. Don’t you ever think beforehand what it’s going to mean to live with them?”
She went on like this for a space and then suddenly I was aware that she had veered the conversation to Mona. Mona—that puzzled her. What did we have in common, she wanted to know. How could I stand her lies, her pretenses—or didn’t I care about such things? Surely there had to be firm ground somewhere . . . one couldn’t build on quicksands. She had thought about us a great deal, even before she met Mona. She had heard about her, from different sources, had been curious to know her, to understand what the great attraction was. . . . Mona was beautiful, yes—ravishingly beautiful—and perhaps intelligent too. But God, so theatrical! There was no getting to grips with her; she eluded one like a phantom.
“What do you real
ly know about her?” she asked challengingly. “Have you met her parents? Do you know anything about her life before she met you?”
I confessed that I knew almost nothing. Perhaps it was better that I didn’t know, I averred. There was something attractive about the mystery which surrounded her.
“Oh, nonsense!” said Rebecca scathingly. “I don’t think there’s any great mystery there. Her father’s probably a rabbi.”
“What! What makes you say that? How do you know she’s Jewish? I don’t even know it myself.”
“You don’t want to know it, you mean. Of course I don’t know either, except that she denies it so vehemently—that always makes one suspicious. Besides, does she look like the average American type? Come, come, don’t tell me you haven’t suspected as much—you’re not as dumb as all that.”
What surprised me more than anything, as regards these remarks, was the fact that Rebecca had succeeded in discussing the subject with Mona. Not a hint of it had reached my ears. I would have given anything to have been behind a screen during that encounter.
“If you really want to know something,” I said, “I’d rather that she were a Jewess than anything else. I never pump her about that, of course. Evidently it’s a painful subject. She’ll come out with it one day, you’ll see . . .”
“You’re so damned romantic,” said Rebecca. “Really, you’re incurable. Why should a Jewish girl be any different from a Gentile? I live in both worlds . . . I don’t find anything strange or marvelous about either.”
“Naturally,” I said. “You’re always the same person. You don’t change from one milieu to another. You’re honest and open. You could get along anywhere with any group or class or race. But most people aren’t that way. Most people are conscious of race, color, religion, nationality, and so on. To me all peoples are mysterious when I look at them closely. I can detect their differences much easier than their kinship. In fact, I like the distinctions which separate them just as much as I like what unites them. I think it’s foolish to pretend that we’re all pretty much the same. Only the great, the truly distinctive individuals, resemble one another. Brotherhood doesn’t start at the bottom, but at the top. The nearer we get to God the more we resemble one another. At the bottom it’s like a rubbish pile . . . that’s to say, from a distance it all seems like so much rubbish, but when you get nearer you perceive that this so-called ‘rubbish’ is composed of a million billion different particles. And yet, no matter how different one bit of ‘rubbish’ is from another, the real difference only asserts itself when you look at something which is not ‘rubbish.’ Even if the elements which compose the universe can be broken down into one vital substance . . . well, I don’t know what I was going to say exactly . . . maybe this. . . that as long as there is life there will be differentiation, values, hierarchies. Life is always making pyramidal structures, in every realm. If you’re at the bottom you stress the sameness of things; if you’re at the top, or near it, you become aware of the difference between things. And if something is obscure—especially a person—you’re attracted beyond all power of will. You may find that it was an empty chase, that there was nothing there, nothing more than a question mark, but just the same . . .”