CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

            THE following day, while rummaging through the waste basket in search of a missing letter, I ran across a crumpled letter which the Commissioner had obviously tossed there in disgust.  The handwriting was thin and shaky, as if written by an old man, but legible despite the elaborate curlicues he delighted in employing.  I took one glance at it, then slipped it into my pocket to read at leisure.

       It was this letter, ridiculous and pathetic in its way, which saved me from eating my heart out.  If the Commissioner had thrown it there then it must have been at the bidding of my guardian angel.

       “Honourable Sir …” it began, and with the very next words a weight was lifted from me.  I found not only that I could laugh as of old, I found that I could laugh at myself, which was vastly more important.

       “Honourable Sir: I hope that you are well and enjoying good health during this very changeable weather that we are now having.  I am quite well myself at the present time and I am glad to say so.”

       Then, without further ado, the author of this curious document launched into his arborico-solipsistic language  Here are his words….

       “I wish that you would do me a very kind-hearted and a very special favour and kindly have the men of the Park Department go around now and start by the Borough Lines of Queens and King’s Counties and work outward easterly and back westerly and likewise northerly and southerly and remove the numerous dead and dying trees, trees all open at the base part and in the trunk part and trees bending and leaning over and ready to fall down and do damage to human life, limb and property, and to give all the good trees both large and small sizes an extra good, thorough, proper, systematic and symmetrical pruning, trimming and paring off from the base to the very top parts and all through.

       “I wish that you would do me a very kind-hearted and very special favour and kindly have the men of the Park Department greatly reduce all the top-heavy and overgrown trees in height to a height of about twenty-five feet high and to have all the long boughs and branches shortened considerably in the length and all parts of the trees greatly thinned out from the base to the very top parts and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty, and very much more safety to the pedestrians, the general thoroughfares and to the surroundings along by the streets, avenues, places, roadways, roads, highways, boulevards, terraces, parkways (streets called courts, lanes, etc.) and by the Parks inside and outside.

       “I would greatly, kindly and very urgently request that the boughs and branches be pruned, trimmed and pared off at the distance of from twelve to fifteen feet from the front, side and rear walls of all houses and other buildings of every description and not allow them to come in contact with them as a great many of them are very much marred by them coming in contact with them, and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty and very much more safety.

       “I wish that you would kindly have the men of the Park Department prune, trim and pare off the boughs and branches at a distance of from twelve to sixteen feet above the sidewalks, flaggings, grounds, kerbs, etc. and not allow them to keep drooping away down low as a great many of them are now doing and thereby give plenty of height to walk beneath the same …”

       It went on and on in this vein, always detailed and explicit, the style never varying.  One more paragraph –

       “I wish that you would kindly have the boughs and branches pruned, trimmed and pared off and down considerably below the roofs of the houses and other buildings and not allow them to protrude over, lap over, lay over, cross over or come in contact with the houses and other buildings and to have the boughs and branches greatly separated between each and every tree and not allow the boughs and branches to lap over, lay over, cross over, entwine, hug, cluster or come in contact with the adjoining trees and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty and very much more safety to the pedestrians, the thoroughfares and to the general surroundings around by all pats of Queens County, New York….”

 

As I say, upon finishing the letter I felt thoroughly relaxed, at ease with the world, and extremely indulgent toward my own precious self.  It was as if some of that light – that “more natural light” – had invaded my being.  I was no longer enveloped in a fog of despair.  There was more air, more light, more beauty to all the surroundings: my inner surroundings.

       Come Saturday noon therefore, I made straight for Manhattan Isle; at Times Square I rose to the surface, snatched a quick bite at the Automat, then swung my prow round in the direction of the nearest all-out dance hall.  It didn’t occur to me that I was repeating a pattern which had brought me to my present low state.  Only when I pushed my way through the immense portals of the Itchigumi Dance Palace on the ground floor of a demented-looking building this side of the Café Mozambique did it come over me that it was in a mood similar to the one which now claimed me that I had staggered up the steep rickety stairs of another Broadway dance hall and there found the beloved.  Since those days my mind was utterly free of these pay as you go joints and the angels of mercy who soberly fleece their sex-starved patrons.  All I thought of now was a few hours of escape from boredom, a few hours of forgetfulness – and to get it as cheaply as possible.  There was no fear in me of falling in love again or even of getting a lay, though that I needed bad.  I merely craved to become like any ordinary mortal, a jellyfish, if you like, in the ocean of drift.  I asked for nothing more than to be swished and sloshed about in an eddying pool of fragrant flesh under a subaqueous rainbow of subdued and intoxicating lights.

       Entering the place I felt like a farmer come to town.  Immediately I was dazzled, dazzled by the sea of faces, by the fetid warmth radiating from hundreds of over-excited bodies, by the blare of the orchestra, by the kaleidoscopic whirl of lights.  Everyone was keyed to fever pitch, it seemed.  Everyone looked intent and alert, intensely intent, intensely alert.  The air crackled with this electric desire, this all-consuming concentration.  A thousand different perfumes clashed with one another, with the heat of the hall, with the sweat and perspiration, the fever, the lust of the inmates, for they were very definitely, it seemed to me, inmates of one kind or another.  Inmates perhaps of the vaginal vestibule of love.  Icky inmates, advancing upon one another with lips parted, with dry, hot lips, hungry lips, lips that trembled, that begged, that whimpered, that beseeched, that chewed and macerated other lips.  Sober, too, all of them.  Stone sober.  Too sobers, indeed.  Sober as criminals about to pull off a job.  All converging upon one another in a huge, swirling cake mould, the coloured lights playing over their faces, their busts, their haunches, cutting them to ribbons in which they became entangled and enmeshed, yet always skilfully extricating themselves as they whirled about, body to body, cheek to cheek, lip to lip.

       I had forgotten what it was like, this dance mania.  Too much alone, too close to my grief, too ravaged by thought.  Here was abandon with its nameless face and prune-whipped dreams.  Here was the land of twinkling toes, of satiny buttocks, of let your hair down, Miss Victoria-Nyanza, for Egypt is no more, nor Babylon, nor Gehenna.  Here the baboons in full rut swim the belly of the Nile seeking the end of all things; here are the ancient maenads, reborn to the wail of sax and muted horn; here the mummies of the skyscrapers take out their inflamed ovaries and air them, while the incessant play of music poisons the pores, drugs the mind, opens the sluice gates. With the sweat and perspiration, with the sickening, over-powering reek of perfumes and deodorants all discreetly sucked up by the ventilators, the electric odour of lust hung like a halo suspended in space.

       Walking up and down beside the Hershey Almond bars stacked one upon another like precious ingots, I rub against the pack.  A thousand smiles are raining from every direction; I lift my face as if to catch the shimmering dewdrops dispersed by a gentle breeze.  Smiles, smiles.  As if it weren’t life and death, a race to the womb and back again.  Flutter and frou-frou, camphor and fish balls, Omega oil … wings spread full preen, limbs bare to the touch, palms moist, foreheads glistening, lips parched, tongues hanging out, teeth gleaming like the advertisements, eyes bright, roving, stripping one bare … piercing, penetrating eyes, some searching for gold, some for fuck, some to kill, but all bright, shamelessly, innocently bright like the lion’s red maw, and pretending, yes, pretending, that it’s a Saturday afternoon, a floor like any other floor, a cunt’s cunt, no tickee no fuckee, buy me, take me, squeeze me, all’s well in Itchigumi, don’t step  on me, isn’t it warm, yes, I love it, I do love it, bite me again, harder, harder …

 

Weaving in and out, sizing them up – height, weight, texture – rubbing flanks together, measuring bosoms, bottoms, waists, studying hair-dos, noses, stances, devouring mouths half open, closing others … weaving, sidling, pushing, rubbing, and everywhere a sea of faces, a sea of flesh carved by scimitar strokes of light, the whole pack glued together in one vast terpsichorean stew.  And over this hot conglomerate flesh whirling in the cake bowl the smear of brasses, the wail of trombones, the coagulating saxophones, the piercing trumpets, all like liquid fire going straight to the glands.  On the sidelines, standing like thirsty sentinels, huge upturned jugs of orangeade, lemonade, sarsaparilla, coca-cola, root beer, the milk of she-asses and the pulp of wilted anemones.  Above it all the almost inaudible hum of the ventilators sucking up the sour, rancid odour of flesh and perfume, passing it out over the heads of the passing throngs in the street.

       Find someone!  That was all I could think.  But whom?  I milled around and milled around, but nothing suited me.  Some were wonderful, ravishing – as ass, so to say.  I wanted something more.  It was a bazaar, a bazaar of flesh – why not pick and choose?  Most of them had the empty look of the empty souls they were.  And why not, handling nothing but goods, money, labels, buttons, dishes, bills of lading, day in and day out?  Should they have personality too?  Some, like rapacious birds of the air, had that nondescript look of wrack tossed in by a storm – neither sluts, whores, shop girls nor griseldas.  Some stood like wilted flowers or like canes draped in wet towels.  Some, pure as chickweed, looked as though they were hoping to be raped, but not seriously damaged.  The good live bait was on the floor, wiggling, wriggling, their eloquent haunches gleaming like moiré.

       In a corner beside the ticket booth the hostesses were collected.  Bright and fresh they were, as if they had just stepped out of the tub.  All beautifully coiffed, beautifully frocked.  Waiting to be bought and, if luck would have it, wined and dined.  Waiting for the right guy to come along, that jaded millionaire who in a moment of forgetfulness might propose marriage.

       Standing at the rail I surveyed them coolly.  If it were the Yoshiwara now … If when you glanced their way they would undress, make a few obscene gestures, call to you in a raucous voice.  But the Itchigumi follows a different programme.  It suggests that you very kindly and sincerely pick the flower of your choice, lead her to the centre of the floor, bill and coo, nibble and gobble, wiggle and woggle, buy more tickets, take girl have drink, speak correctly, come again next week, choose ‘nother pretty flower, thank you kindly, good night.

       The music stops for a few moments and the dancers melt like snowflakes.  A girl in a pale yellow dress is gliding back to the slave booth.  She looks Cuban.  Rather short, well built, and with a mouth that’s insatiable.

       I wait a moment to give her a chance to dry off, as it were, then approach.  She looks eighteen and fresh from the jungle.  Ebony and ivory.  Her greeting is warm and natural – no ready-made smile, no cash-register business.  She’s new at the game, I find, and she is a Cuban.  (How wonderful!) In short, she doesn’t mind too much being pawed over, chewed to bits, et cetera; she’s still mixing pleasure with business.

       Pushed to the centre of the floor, wedged in, we remain there moving like caterpillars, the censor fast asleep, the lights very low, the music creeping like a paid whore from chromosome to chromosome.  The orgasm arrives and she pulls away for fear her dress will be stained.

       Back at the barricade I’m trembling like a leaf.  All I can smell now is cunt, cunt, cunt.  No use dancing any more this afternoon.  Must come again next Saturday.  Why not?

       And that’s exactly what I do.  On the third Saturday I run into a newcomer at the salve booth.  She has a marvellous body, and her face, chipped here and there like an ancient statue, excites me.  She had a trifle more intelligence than the others, which is no detriment, and she’s not hungry for money.  That is simply extraordinary.

       When she’s not working I take her to a movie or to a cheap dance hall in some other neighbourhood.  Makes no difference to her where we go.  Just bring a little booze along, that’s all.  Not that she wants to go blotto, no … it makes things smoother, she thinks.  She’s a country girl from up-State.

       Never any tension in her presence.  Laughs easily, enjoys everything.  When I take her home – she lives in a boarding house – we have to stand in the hallway and make as best we can.  A nerve-racking business, what with boarders coming and going all night long.

       Sometimes, on leaving her, I ask myself how come I never hitched up with this sort, the easy-going type, instead of the difficult ones?  This gal hasn’t an ounce of ambition; nothing bothers her, nothing worries her.  She doesn’t even worry about “getting caught”, as the saying goes.  (Probably skilful with the darning needle.)

       It doesn’t take much thinking to realize that the reason I’m immune is because I’d be bored stiff in no time.  Anyway, there’s little danger of my linking up with her in solid fashion.  I’m a boarder myself, one not above pilfering change from the landlady’s purse.

       I said she had a marvellous physique, this fly-by-night.  It’s true.  She was full and supple, limber, smooth as a seal.  When I ran my hands over her buttocks it was enough to make me forget all my problems, Nietzsche, Stirner, Bakunin as well.  As for her mug, if it wasn’t exactly beautiful, it was attractive and arresting.  Perhaps her nose was a trifle long, a trifle thick, but it suited her personality, suited that laughing cunt of hers, is what I mean.  But the moment I began to make comparison between her body and Mona’s I knew it was useless to go into it.  Whatever flesh and blood qualities she had, this one, they remained flesh and blood.  There was nothing more to her than what you could see and touch, hear and smell.  With Mona it was another story entirely.  Any portion of her body served to inflame me.  Her personality was as much in her left teat, so to speak, as in her little right toe.  The flesh spoke from every quarter, every angle.  Strangely, hers was not a perfect body either.  But it was melodious and provocative.  Her body echoed her moods.  She had no need to flaunt it or fling it about; she had only to inhabit it, to be it.

       There was also this about Mona’s body – it was constantly changing.  How well I remember those days when we lived with the doctor and his family in the Bronx, when we always took a shower together, soaped one another, hugged one another, fucked as best we could – under the shower – while the cockroaches streamed up and down the walls like armies in full rout.  Her body then, though I loved it, was out of line.  The flesh drooped from her waist like folds, the breasts hung loose, the buttocks were too flat, too boyish.  Yet that same body, draped in a stiff poker dot Swiss dress, had all the charm and allure of a soubrette’s.  The neck was full, a columnar neck, I always called it, and it suited the rich, dark, vibrant voice which issued from it.  As the months and years went by this body went through all manner of changes.  At times it grew taut, slender, drum-like.  Almost too taut, too slender.  And then it would change again, each change registering her inner transformation, her fluctuations, her moods, longings and frustrations.  But always it remained provocative – fully alive, responsive, tingling, pulsing with love, tenderness, passion.  Each day it seemed to speak a new language.

       When power then could the body of another exert?  At the most only a feeble, transitory one.  I had found the body, no other was necessary.  No other would ever fully satisfy me.  No, the laughing kind was not for me.  One penetrated that sort of body like a knife going through cardboard.  What I craved was the elusive.  (The elusive basilisk, is how I put it to myself.)  The elusive and the insatiable at the same time.  A body like Mona’s own, which, the more one possessed it the more one became possessed.  A body which could bring with it all the woes of Egypt – and its wonders, its marvels.

       I tried another dance hall.  Everything was perfect – music, lights, girls, even the ventilators.  But never did I feel more loneliness, more desolation.  In desperation I danced with one after another, all responsive, yielding, ductile, malleable, all gracious, lovely, satiny and dusky, but a despair had come over me, a weight which crushed me.  As the afternoon wore on a feeling of nausea seized me.  The music particularly revolted me.  How many thousand times had I heard these pale, feeble, utterly idiotic tunes with their sickening words of endearment!  The offspring of pimps and narks who had never known the pangs of love.  “Embryonic,” I kept repeating to myself.  The music of embryos made for embryos.  The sloth calling to its mate in five feet of sewer water; the weasel weeping for his lost one and drowning in his own pipi.  Romance, of the copulation of the violet and the stink wort.  I love you!  Written on fine, silky toilet paper stroked by a thousand superfine combs.  Rhymes invented by mangy pederasts; lyrics by Albumen and his mates.  Pfui!

       Fleecing the place I thought of the African records I once owned, thought of the blood heat, steady and incessant, which animated their music.  Only the steady, recurring, pounding rhythm of sex – but how refreshing, how pure, how innocent!

       I was in such a state that I felt like pulling out my cock, right in the middle of Broadway, and jerking off.  Imagine a sex maniac pulling out his prick – on a Saturday afternoon! – in full view of the Automat!

       Fuming and raging, I strolled over to Central Park and flung myself on the grass.  Money gone, what was there to do?  The dance mania … I was still thinkin’ on it.  Still climbing that steep flight of steps to the ticket booth where the hairy Greek sat and grabbed the money.  (“Yes, she’ll be here soon; why don’t you dance with one of the other girls?”)  Often she didn’t show up at all.  In a corner, on a dais, the coloured musicians working like fury, sweating, panting, wheezing; grinding it out hour after hour with scarcely a let up.  No fun in it for them, not for the girls either, even though they did wet their pants occasionally.  One had to be screwy to patronize such a dive.

       Giving way to a feeling of delicious drowsiness, I was on the point of closing my eyes when out of nowhere a ravishing young woman appeared and seated herself on a knoll just above me.  Perhaps she was unaware that, in the position she had assumed, her private parts were fully exposed to view.  Perhaps she didn’t care.  Perhaps it was her way of smiling at me, or winking.  There was nothing brazen or vulgar about her; she was like some great soft creature of the air who had come to rest from her flight.

       She was so utterly oblivious of my presence, so still, so wrapped in reverie, that incredible as it may seem, I closed my eyes and dozed off.  The next thing I knew was I [was] no longer on this earth.  Just as it takes time to grow accustomed to the after-world, so it was in my dream.  The strangest thing to get used to was the fact that nothing I wished to do required the least effort.  If I wished to run, whether slow or fast, I did so without losing breath.  If I wanted to jump a lake or skip over a hill, I simply jumped.  If I wanted to fly, I flew.  There was nothing more to it than that, whatever I attempted.

       After a time I realized that I was not alone.  Someone was at my side, like a shadow, moving with the same ease and assurance as myself.  My guardian angel, most likely.  Though I encountered nothing resembling earthly creatures, I found myself conversing, effortlessly again, with whatever crossed my path.  If it was an animal, I spoke to it in my own tongue; if it was a tree, I spoke in the language of the tree; if a rock, I spoke as a rock.  I attributed this gift of tongues to the presence of the being which accompanied me.

       But to what realm was I being escorted?  And for what end?

       Slowly I became aware that I was bleeding, that indeed I was a mass of wounds, from head to foot.  It was then that, seized with fright, I swooned away.  When at last I opened my eyes I saw to my astonishment that the Being who had accompanied me was tenderly bathing my wounds, anointing my body with oil.  Was I at the point of death?  Was it the Angel of Mercy whose figure was solicitously bent over me?  Or had I already crossed the Great Divine?

       Imploringly I gazed into the eyes of my Comforter.  The ineffable look of compassion which illuminated her features reassured me.  I was no longer concerned to know whether I was still of this world or not.  A feeling of peace invaded my being, and again I closed my eyes.  Slowly and steadily a new vigour poured into my limbs; except for a strange feeling of emptiness in the region of the heart I felt completely restored.

       It was after I had opened my eyes and found that I was alone, though not deserted, not abandoned that instinctively I raised a hand and placed it over my heart.  To my horror there was a deep hole where the heart should have been.  A hole from which no blood flowed.  “Then I am dead,” I murmured.  Yet it believed it not.

       At this strange moment, dead but not dead, the doors of memory swung open and down through the corridors of time I beheld that which no man should be permitted to see until he is ready to give up the ghost: I saw in every phase and moment of his pitiful weakness the utter wretch I had been, the blackguard, nothing less, who had striven so vainly and ignominiously to protect his miserable little heart.  I saw that it never had been broken, as I imagined, but that, paralysed by fear, it had shrunk almost to nothingness.  I saw that the grievous wounds which had brought me low had all been received in a senseless effort to prevent this shrivelled heart from breaking.  The heart itself had never been touched; it had dwindled from disuse.

       It was gone now, this heart, taken from me, no doubt, by the Angle of Mercy.  I had been healed and restored so that I might live on in death as I had never lived in life.  Vulnerable no longer, what need was there for a heart?

       Lying there prone, with all my strength and vigour returned, the enormity of my fate smote me like a rock.  The sense of the utter emptiness of existence overwhelmed me.  I had achieved invulnerability, it was mine forever, but life – if this was life – had lost all meaning.  My lips moved as if in prayer but the feeling to express anguish failed me.  Heartless, I had lost the power to communicate, even with my Creator.

       Now, once again, the Angel appeared before me.  In her hands, cupped like a chalice, she held the poor, shrunken semblance of a heart which was mine.  Bestowing upon me a look of the utmost compassion, she blew upon this dead-looking ember until it swelled and filled with blood, until it palpitated between her fingers like a live, human heart.

       Restoring it to its place, her lips moved as if pronouncing the benediction, but no sound issued forth.  My transgressions had been forgiven; I was free to sin again, free to burn with the flame of the spirit.  But in that moment I knew, and would never, never forget, that it is the heart which rules, the heart which binds and protects.  Nor would it ever did, this heart, for its keeping was in greater hands.

       What joy now possessed me!  What complete and absolute trust!

       Rising to my feet, a new being entire, I put forth my arms to embrace the world.  Nothing had changed; it was the world I had always known.  But I saw it now with other eyes.  I no longer sought to escape it, to shun its ills, or alter it in any least way.  I was fully of it and one with it.  I had come through the valley of the shadow of death; I was no longer ashamed to be human, all-too-human.

       I had found my place.  I belonged.  My place was in the world, in the midst of death and corruption.  For companions I had the sun, the moon, the stars.  My heart, cleansed of its iniquities, had lost all fear; it ached now to offer itself to the first comer.  Indeed, I had the impression that I was all heart, a heart which could never be broken, nor even wounded, since it was forever inseparable from that which had given it birth.

       And so, as I walked forward and onward into the thick of the world, there where full havoc had been wreaked and panic alone reigned, I cried out with all the fervour which my soul possessed – “Take heart, O brothers and sisters!  Take heart!”