CHAPTER FIVE
IT
was getting to be like sequences in a coke dream, what with the reading of
entrails, the unravelling of lies, the bouts with Osiecki, the solo ramblings
along the waterfront at night, the encounters with the “masters” at the public
library, the wall paintings, the dialogues in the dark with my other self, and
so on. Nothing could surprise me any
more, not even the arrival of an ambulance.
Someone, Curley most likely, had thought up that idea to rid me of
Stasia. Fortunately I was alone when the
ambulance pulled up. There was no crazy
person at this address, I informed the driver.
He seemed disappointed. Someone
had telephoned to come and get her. A
mistake, I said.
Now
and then the two Dutch sisters who owned the building would drop in to see if
all was well. Never
stayed but a minute or two. I
never saw them unkempt and bedraggled.
The one sister wore blue stockings and the other pink and white striped
stockings. The stripes ran spirally,
like on a barber’s pole.
But
about The Captive … I went to see the
play on my own, without letting them know.
A week later they went to see it, returning with violets and full of
song. This time it was – “Just a kiss in
the Dark”.
Then
one evening – how did it ever happen? – the three of
us went to eat in a Greek restaurant.
There they spilled the beans, about The
Captive, what a wonderful play it was and how I ought to see it some time,
maybe it would enlarge my ideas. “But I have seen it!” I said. “I saw it a week ago.” Whereupon a discussion
began as to the merits of the play, capped by a battle royal because I failed
to see eye to eye with them, because I interpreted everything in a prosaic,
vulgar way. In the midst of the
argument I produced the letter filched from the little casket. Far from being crestfallen or humiliated,
they sailed into me with such venom, raised such a howl and stink, that soon
the whole restaurant was in an uproar and we were asked, none too politely, to
leave.
As
if to make amends, the following day Mona suggested that I take her out some
night, without Stasia. I demurred at
first but she kept insisting. I thought
probably she had a reason of her own, one which would be disclosed at the
proper time, and so I agreed. We were to
do it the night after next.
The
evening came but, just as we were about to leave, she grew irresolute. True, I had been ragging her about her
appearance – the lip rouge, the green eyelids, the white powdered cheeks, the
cape that trailed the ground, the skirt that came just to her knees, and above
all, the puppet, that leering degenerate-looking Count Bruga, which she was
hugging to her bosom and which she meant to take along.
“No,”
I said. “not that,
by God!”
“Why?”
“Because
… God-damn it, no!”
She
handed the Count to Stasia, removed her cape, and sat down to think it
over. Experience told me that this was
the end of our evening. To my surprise,
however, Stasia now came over, put both arms around us – just like a great big
sister – and begged us not to quarrel. “Go!”
she said. “Go and enjoy yourselves! I’ll clean house while you’re gone.” She fairly pushed us out, and as we marched
off she kept shouting – “Have a good time!
Enjoy yourselves!”
It
was a lame start, but we had decided to go through with it. As we hastened our steps –
why? Where were we rushing? – I felt as if I would explode. But I couldn’t get a word out, I was
tongue-tied. Here we were, rushing along
arm in arm “to enjoy ourselves”, but nothing definite had been planned. Were we just taking the air?
Presently
I realized that we were headed for the subway.
We entered, waited for a train, got in, sat
down. Not a word as yet had passed
between us. At Times Square
we rose, like robots tuned to the same wavelength, and tripped up the stairs. Broadway. Same old Broadway, same old
neon hell’s fire. Instinctively
we headed north. People stopped in their
tracks to stare at us. We pretended not
to notice.
Finally
we arrived in front of Chin Lee’s. “Shall we go up?” she asked. I nodded.
She walks straight to the booth we had occupied that first night – a
thousand years ago.
The
moment the food is served her tongue loosens.
Everything floods back: the food we ate, the way we faced each other,
the airs we listened to, the things we said to one another…. Not a detail
overlooked.
As
one recollection followed another we grew more and more sentimental. “Falling in love again … never wanted to …
what am I to do?” It was as if nothing
had happened in between – no Stasia, no cellar life, no
misunderstandings. Just
we two, a pair of shoulder birds, with life everlasting.
A
full dress rehearsal, that’s what it was.
Tomorrow we would play our parts – to a packed house.
Were
I asked which was the true reality, this dream of love, this lullaby, or the
copper-plated drama which inspired it, I would have said – “This.
This is it!”
Dream
and reality – are they not interchangeable?
Beyond
ourselves, we gave our tongues free rein, looked at one another with new eyes,
more hungry, greedy eyes than ever before, believing, promising, as if it were
our last hour on earth. We had found one
another at last, we understood one another, and we would love one another for
ever and ever.
Still
dewy, still reeling from the fumes of bliss, we left arm in arm and started
wandering through the streets
No one stopped to look at us.
In
a Brazilian coffee house we sat down again and resumed the duologue. Here the current showed signs of
fluctuating. Now came halting admissions
tinged with guilt and remorse. All that
she had done, and she had done worse things than I had imagined, had been done
through fear of losing my love.
Simpleton that I was, I insisted that she was exaggerating. I begged her to forget the past, declared it
was of no importance whether true or false, real or imagined. I swore that there could never be anyone but
her.
The
table at which we were seated was shaped like a heart. It was to this onyx heart that we addressed
our vows of everlasting fealty.
Finally,
I could stand no more of it. I had heard
too much. “Let’s go,” I begged.
We
rolled home in a cab, too exhausted to exchange another word.
We
walked in on a scene transformed.
Everything was in order, polished, gleaming. The table was laid for three. In the very centre of the table stood a huge
vase from which an enormous bouquet of violets sprouted.
All
would have been perfect had it not been for the violets. Their presence seemed to outweigh all the
words which had passed between us.
Eloquent and irrefutable was their silent language. Without so much as parting their lips they
made it clear to us that love is something which must be shared. “Love me as I love you.” That was the message.
Christmas
was drawing nigh and in deference to the spirit of the season,
they decided to invite Ricardo for a visit.
He had been begging permission for this privilege for months; how they
had managed to put off such a persistent suitor so long was beyond me.
Since
they had often mentioned my name to Ricardo – I was their eccentric writer friend,
perhaps a genius! – it was arranged that I should pop
in soon after her arrived. There was a
double purpose in this strategy, but the principal idea was to make sure that
Ricardo left when they left.
I
arrived to find Ricardo mending a skirt.
The atmosphere was that of a Vermeer.
Or a Saturday
Evening’s Post cover depicting the activities of the Ladies’ Home
Auxiliary.
I
liked Ricardo immediately. He was all
they said of him plus something beyond reach of their antennae. We began talking at once as if we had been
friends all our lives. Or brothers. They had
said he was Cuban, but I soon discovered that he was a Catalonian who had
migrated to
Observing
him bent over his sewing, I recalled the speech Mona had once made about
him. Particularly those words he had
spoken so quietly: “I will kill you one day.”
He
was indeed a man capable of doing such a thing.
Strangely enough, my feeling was that anything Ricardo might decide to
do would be entirely justifiable. To
kill, in his case, could not be called a crime; it would be an act of
justice. The man was incapable of doing
an impure thing. He was a man of heart,
all heart, indeed.
At
intervals he sipped the tea which they had poured for him. Had it been firewater he would have sipped it
in the same calm, tranquil way, I thought.
It was a ritual he was observing.
Even his way of talking gave the impression of being part of a ritual.
In
Homely
as sin he was, but from every pore of his being there radiated only kindness,
mercy and forbearance. And this was the
man to whom they imagined they were doing a great favour! How little they suspected the man’s keen
understanding! Impossible for them to
believe that, knowing all, he could still give nothing but affection. Or, that he expected nothing more of Mona
than the privilege of further inflaming his mad passion.
“One
day,” he says quietly, “I will marry you.
Then all this will be like a dream.”
Slowly
he raises his eyes, first to Mona, then to Stasia, then to me. As if to say – “You have heard me.”
“What
a lucky man,” he says, fixing me with his steady, kindly gaze. “What a lucky man you are to enjoy the
friendship of these two. I have not yet
been admitted to the inner circle.”
Then,
veering to Mona, he says; “You will soon tire of being forever mysterious. It is like standing before the mirror all
day. I see you from behind the mirror. The mystery is not in what you do but in what
you are. When I take you out of this
morbid life you will be naked as a statue.
Now your beauty is all furniture.
It has been moved around too much.
We must put it back where it belongs – on the rubbish pile. Once upon a time I thought that everything
had to be expressed poetically, or musically.
I did not realize that there was a place, and a reason, for ugly
things. For me the worst was
vulgarity. But vulgarity can be honest,
even pleasing, as I discovered. We do
not need to raise everything to the level of the stars. Everything has its foundation of clay. Even Helen of
While
speaking thus, in his quiet even way, he continued with his mending. Here is the true sage, I thought to myself. Male and female equally divided; passionate,
yet calm and patient; detached, yet giving fully of himself; seeing clearly
into the very soul of his beloved, steadfast, devoted, almost idolatrous, yet
aware of even her slightest defects. A
truly gentle soul, as Dostoievsky would say.
And
they had thought I would enjoy meeting this individual because I had a weakness
for fools!
Instead
of talking to him they plied him with questions, silly questions which were
intended to reveal the absurd innocence of his nature. To all their queries he replied in the same
vein. He answered them as if he were
replying to the senseless remarks of children.
While thoroughly aware of their abysmal indifference to his
explanations, which he purposely drew out, he spoke as the wise man so often
does when dealing with a child: he planted in their minds the seeds which later
would sprout and, in sprouting, would remind them of their cruelty, their
wilful ignorance, and the healing quality of truth.
In
effect they were not quite as callous as their conduct might have led one to
believe. They were drawn to him, one might even say they loved him, in a way which to
them was unique. No one else they knew
could have elicited such sincere affection, such deep regard. They did not ridicule this love if such it
was. They were baffled by it. It was the sort of love which usually only an
animal is capable of evoking. For only
animals, it would seem, are capable of manifesting that total acceptance of
human kind which brings about a surrender of the whole being – an unquestioning
surrender, moreover, such as is seldom rendered by one human to another.
To
me it was more than strange that such a scene should occur around a table where
so much talk of love was constantly bandied.
It was because of these continual eruptions indeed that we had come to
refer to it as the gut table. In what
other dwelling, I often wondered, could there be this incessant disturbance,
this inferno of emotion, this devastating talk of love resolved always on a
note of discord? Only now, in Ricardo’s
presence, did the reality of love show forth.
Curiously enough, the word was scarcely mentioned. But it was love, nothing else,
that shone through all his gestures, poured through all his utterances.
Love,
I say. It might also have been God.
This
same Ricardo, I had been given to understand, was a confirmed atheist. They might as well have said – a confirmed
criminal. Perhaps the greatest lovers of
God and of man have been confirmed atheists, confirmed criminals. The lunatics of love, so to
say.
What
one took him to be mattered not at all to Ricardo. He could give the illusion of being whatever
one desired him to be. Yet he was
forever himself.
If
I am never to meet him again, thought I, neither shall I ever forget him. Though it may be given us
only once in a lifetime to come into the presence of a complete and thoroughly
genuine being, it is enough. More than enough. It
was not difficult to understand why a Christ, or a
Buddha could, by a single word, a glance, or a gesture, profoundly affect the
nature and the destiny of the twisted souls who moved within their
spheres. I could also understand why
some should remain impervious.
In
the midst of these reflections it occurred to me that perhaps I had played a
similar role, though in a far lesser degree in those unforgettable days when,
begging for an ounce of understanding, a sign of forgiveness, a touch of grace,
there poured into my office a steady stream of hapless men, women and
youngsters of all descriptions. From
where I sat, an employment manager, I must have appeared to them either as a
beneficent deity or a stern judge, perhaps even an executioner. I had power not only over their
own lives but over their loved ones.
Power over their very souls, it seemed.
Seeking me out after hours, as they did, they often gave me the
impression of convicts sneaking into the confessional through the rear door of
the church. Little did they know that in
begging for mercy they disarmed me, robbed me of my
power and authority. It was not I who
aided them at such moments, it was they who aided
me. They humbled me, made me
compassionate, taught me how to give of myself.
How
often, after a heart-rending scene, I felt obliged to walk over the Bridge – to
collect myself. How unnerving, how
shattering it was, to be regarded as an all-powerful being! How ironic and absurd too that, in the
performance of my routine duties, I should be obliged to play the role of a
little Christ! Halfway across the span I
would stop and lean over the rail. The
sight of the dark, oily waters below comforted me. Into the rushing stream I emptied my
turbulent thoughts and emotions.
Still
more soothing and fascinating to my spirit were the coloured reflections which
danced over the surface of the water below.
They danced like festive lanterns swaying in the wind; they mocked my
sombre thoughts and illuminated the deep chasms of mystery which yawned within
me. Suspended high above the river’s
flow, I had the feeling of being detached from all problems, relieved of all
cares and responsibilities. Never once
did the river stop to ponder or question, never once did it seek to alter its
course. Always onward,
onward, full and steady. Looking
back towards the shore, how like toy blocks appeared the skyscrapers which
overshadowed the river’s bank! How
ephemeral, how puny, how vain and arrogant!
Into these grandiose tombs men and women muscled their way day in and
day out, killing their souls to earn their bread, selling themselves, selling
one another, even selling God, some of them, and towards night they poured out
again, like ants, choked the gutters, dove into the underground, or scampered
homeward pitter-patter to bury themselves again, not in grandiose tombs now
but, like the worn, haggard, defeated wretches they were, in shacks and rabbit
warrens which they called “home”. By day the graveyard of senseless sweat and toil; by night the
cemetery of love and despair. And
these creatures who had so faithfully learned to run, to beg, to sell
themselves and their fellow-men, to dance like bears or perform like trained
poodles, ever and always belying their own nature, these same wretched
creatures broke down now and then, wept like fountains of misery, crawled like
snakes, uttered sounds which only wounded animals are thought to emit. What they meant to convey by these horrible
antics was that they had come to the end of their rope, that the powers above
had deserted them, that unless someone spoke to them who understood their
language of distress they were forever lost, broken, betrayed. Someone had to respond, someone recognizable,
someone so utterly inconspicuous that even a worm would not hesitate to lick
his boots.
And
I was that kind of worm. The perfect worm.
Defeated in the place of love, equipped not to do battle but to suffer
insult and injury, it was I who had been chosen to act as Comforter. What a mockery that I who had been condemned
and cast out, allotted to the judge’s seat, made to punish and reward, to act
the father, the priest, the benefactor – or the executioner! I who had trotted up and down the land always
under the sting of the lash, I who could take the Woolworth stairs at a gallop
– if it was to bum a free lunch – I who had learned to dance to any tune, to pretend
all abilities, all capabilities, I who had taken so many kicks in the pants
only to return for more, I who understood nothing of the crazy set-up except
that it was wrong, sinful, insane, I now of all men was summoned to dispense
wisdom, love and understanding. God
himself could not have picked a better goat.
Only a despised and lonely member of society could have qualified for
this delicate role. Ambition did I say a moment ago?
At last it came to me, the ambition to save what I could from the
wreck. To do for these miserable
wretches what had not been done for
me. To breathe an
ounce of spirit into their deflated souls. To set them free from bondage, honour them as
human beings, make them my friends.
And
while these thoughts (as of another life) were crowding my head, I could not
help but compare that situation, so difficult as it then seemed, with the present one. Then my words had weight, my counsels were
listened to; now nothing I said or did carried the least weight. I had become the fool incarnate. Whatever I attempted, whatever I proposed, fell to dust.
Even were I to writhe on the floor protestingly, or foam at the mouth
like an epileptic, it would be to no avail.
I was but a dog baying at the moon.
Why
had I not learned to surrender utterly, like Ricardo? Why had I failed to reach a state of complete
humility? What was I holding out for in
this lost battle?
As
I sat watching this farce which the two of them were enacting for Ricardo’s
benefit, I became more and more aware of the fact that he was not the least
taken in. My own attitude I made clear
each time I addressed him. It was hardly
necessary, indeed, for I could sense that he knew I had no desire to deceive
him. How little he suspected, Mona, that
it was our mutual love for her which united us and which made this game
ridiculously absurd.
The
hero of love, I thought to myself, can never be deceived or betrayed by his
bosom friend. What have they to fear,
two brotherly spirits? It is the woman’s
own fear, her own self-doubt, which alone can jeopardize such a relation. What the loved one fails to comprehend is
that there can be no taint of treachery or disloyalty on the part of her
lovers. She fails to realize that it is
her own feminine urge to betray which unites her lovers so firmly, which holds
their possessive egos in check, and permits them to share what they would never
share were they not swayed by a passion greater than the passion of love. In the grip of such a passion the man knows
only total surrender. As for the woman
who is the object of such love to uphold this love she must exercise nothing
short of spiritual legerdemain. It is
her inmost soul which is called upon to respond. And it grows, her soul, in the measure that
it is inspired.
But if the object of this sublime adoration
be not worthy! Seldom is it the man
who is afflicted by such doubts. Usually
it is the one who inspired this rare and overpowering love who falls victim to doubt.
Nor is it her feminine nature which is solely at fault, but rather some
spiritual lack which, until subjected to the test, had never been in
evidence. With such creatures,
particularly when endowed with surpassing beauty, their real powers of
attraction remain unknown: they are blind to all but the lure of the
flesh. The tragedy, for the hero of
love, resides in the awakening, often a brutal one, to the fact that beauty,
though an attribute of the soul, may be absent in everything but the lines and
lineaments of the loved one.