CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

            A FEW days later.  A telephone call from MacGregor.

       “You know what, Hen?”

       “No, what?”

       “She’s coming round.  All on her own too.  Don’t know what’s come over her.  You didn’t go to see her, did you?”

       “No.  In fact I’ve hardly had a chance to think about her.”

       “You bastard!  But you brought me luck, just the same.  Or rather your pictures did.  Yeah, those Japanese prints you had on your wall.  I went and bought a couple, beautifully framed, and I sent them to her.  Next day I get a telephone call.  She was all excited.  Said they were just what she always longed for.  I told her that it was from you I got the inspiration.  She pricked up her ears.  Surprised, I guess, that I had a friend who cared anything about art.  Now she wants to meet you.  I said you were a busy man, but I’d call you and see if we could come to your place some evening.  A queer girl, what?  Anyway, this is your chance to fix things for me.  Throw a lot of books around, will you?  You know, the kind I never read. She’s a schoolteacher, remember.  Books mean something to her…. Well, what do you say?  Aren’t you happy?  Say something!”

       “I think it’s marvellous.  Watch out, or you’ll be marrying again.”

       “Nothing would make me happier.  But I have to go easy.  You can’t rush her.  Not her!  It’s like moving a stone wall.”

       Silence for a moment.  Then – “Are you there, Hen?”

       “Sure, I’m listening.”

       “I’d like to get a little dope from you before I see you … before I bring Guelda, I mean.  Just a few facts about painters and paintings.  You know me, I never bothered to brush up on that stuff.  For instance, Hen, what about Breughel – was he one of the very great?  Seems to me I’ve seen his stuff before – in frame stores and bookshops.  That one you have, with the peasant ploughing the field … he’s up on a cliff, I seem to remember, and there’s something falling from the sky … a man maybe … heading straight for the ocean.  You know the one.  What’s it called?”

       “The Flight of Icarus, I think.”

       “Of whom?”

       “Icarus.  The guy who tried to fly to the sun but his wings melted, remember?”

       “Sure, sure.  So that’s it?  I think I’d better drop around some day and have another look at those pictures.  You can wise me up.  I don’t want to look like a jackass when she starts talking art.”

       “O.K.,” I said.  “Anytime.  But remember, don’t keep me long.”

       “Before you hang up, Hen, give me the name of a book I could make her a present of.  Something clean – and poetic.  Can you think of one quick?”

       “Yes, just the thing for her: Green Mansions.  By W.H. Hudson.  She’ll love it.”

       “You’re sure?”

       “Absolutely.  Read it yourself first.”

       “I’d like to, Hen, but I haven’t the time.  By the way, remember that book list you gave me … about seven years ago?  Well, I’ve read three so far.  You see what I mean.”

       “You’re hopeless,” I replied.

       “One more thing, Hen.  You know, vacation time is coming soon.  I’ve got a notion to take her to Europe with me.  That is, if I don’t cross her up in the meantime.  What do you think?”

       “A wonderful idea.  Make it a honeymoon trip.”

      

“It was MacGregor, I’ll bet,” said Mona.

       “Right.  Now he’s threatening to bring his Guelda some evening.”

       “What a pest!  Why don’t you tell your landlady to say you’re out next time there’s a call?”

       “Wouldn’t do much good.  He’d come around to find out if she were lying.  He knows me.  No, we’re trapped.”

       She was getting ready to leave – an appointment with Pop.  The novel was almost completed now.  Pop still thought highly of it.

       “Pop’s going to Miami soon for a brief vacation.”

       “That’s good.”

       “I’ve been thinking, Val…. I’ve been thinking that maybe we could take a vacation too while he’s away.”

       “Like where?” I said.

       “Oh, anywhere.  Maybe to Montreal or Quebec.”

       “It’ll be freezing up there, won’t it?”

       “I don’t know.  Since we’re going to France I thought you might like a taste of French life.  Spring is almost here, it can’t be so very cold there.”

       We said nothing more about the trip for a day or two.  Meanwhile Mona had been investigating.  She had all the dope on Quebec, which she thought I’d like better than Montreal.  More French, she said.  The small hotels were too expensive.

       A few days later it was decided.  She would take the train to Montreal and I would hitchhike.  I would meet her at the railway station in Montreal.

       It was strange to be on the road again.  Spring had come but it was still cold.  With money in my pocket I didn’t worry about lifts.  If it was no go I could always hop a bus or a train.  So I stood there, on the highway outside Paterson N.J., determined to take the first car heading north, no matter if it went straight or zigzag.

       It took almost an hour before I got the first lift.  This advanced me about twenty miles.  The next car advanced me fifty miles.  The countryside looked cold and bleak.  I was getting nothing but short hauls.  However, I had oodles of time.  Now and then I walked a stretch, to limber up.  I had no luggage to speak of – toothbrush, razor, change of linen.  The cold crisp air was invigorating.  It felt good to walk and let the cars pass by.

       I soon got tired of walking.  There was nothing to see but farms.  Burial grounds, they looked like.  I got to thinking of MacGregor and his Guelda.  The name suited her, I thought.  I wondered if he’d ever break her down.  What a cheerless conquest!

       A car pulled up and I hopped in, without questioning the destination.  The guy was a nut, a religious nut.  Never stopped talking.  Finally I asked him where he was heading.  “For the White Mountains,” he replied.  He had a cabin up in the mountains.  He was the local preacher.

       “Is there an hotel anywhere near you?” I asked.

       No, they had no hotels, nor inns, nor nothing.  But he would be happy to put me up.  He had a wife and four children.  All God-loving, he assured me.

       I thanked him.  But I hadn’t the least intention of spending the night with him and his family.  The first town we’d come to I’d hop out.  I couldn’t see myself on my knees praying with this fool.

       “Mister,” he said, after an awkward silence, “I don’t think you’re much of a God-fearing man, are you?  What is your religion?”

       “Ain’t got any,” I replied.

       “I thought so.  You’re not a drinking man, are you?”

       “Summat,” I replied.  “Beer, wine, brandy….”

       “God has compassion on the sinner, friend.  No one escapes His eye.”  He went off into a long spiel about the right path, the wages of sin, the glory of the righteous, and so on.  He was pleased to have found a sinner like myself; it gave him something to work on.”

       “Mister,” I said, after one of his harangues, “you’re wasting your time.  I’m an incurable sinner, an absolute derelict.”  This provided him with more food.

       “No one is beneath God’s grace,” he said.  I kept mum and listened.  Suddenly it began to snow.  The whole countryside was blotted out.  Now I’m at his mercy, I thought.

       “Is it far to the next town?” I asked.

       “A few more miles,” he said.

       “Good,” I said.  “I’ve got to take a leak bad.”

       “You can do it here, friend.  I’ll wait.”

       “I’ve got to do the other thing too,” I said.

       With this he stepped on the gas.  “We’ll be there in a few minutes now, Mister.  God will take care of everything.”

       “Even my bowels?”

       “Even your bowels,” he replied gravely.  “God overlooks nothing.”

       “Supposing your gas gave out.  Could God make the car go just the same?”

       “Friend, God could even make a car go without gas – nothing is impossible for Him – but that isn’t God’s way.  God never violates Nature’s laws; he works with them and through them.  But, this is what God would do, if we ran out of gas and it was important for me to move on: He would find a way to get me where I wanted to go.  He might help you to get there too.  But being blind to His goodness and mercy, you would never suspect that God had aided you.”  He paused to let this sink in, then continued.  “Once I was caught like you, in the middle of nowhere, and I had to do a poop quick.  I went behind a clump of bushes and I emptied my bowels.  Then, just as I was hitching up my pants, I spied a ten dollar bill lying on the ground right in front of me.  God put that money there for me, no one else.  That was His way of directing me to it, by making me go poop.  I didn’t know why He had shown me this favour, but I got down on my knees and I thanked Him.  When I got home I found my wife in bed and two of the children with her.  Fever.  That money bought me medicine and other things that were sorely needed…. Here’s your town, Mister.  Maybe God will have something to show you when you empty your bowels and your bladder.  I’ll wait for you at the corner there, after I do my shopping….”

       I ran into the gas station, did a little pee, but no poop.  There was no evidence of God’s presence in the lavatory.  Just a sign reading: “Please help us keep this place clean.”  I made a detour to avoid meeting my Saviour and headed for the nearest hotel.  It was getting dark and the cold was penetrating.  Spring was far behind here.

       “Where am I?” I asked the clerk as I signed the register.  “I mean, what town is this?”

       “Pittsfield,” he said.

       “Pittsfield what?”

       “Pittsfield, Massachusetts,” he replied, surveying me coldly and with a tinge of contempt.

       The next morning I was up bright and early.  Good thing, too, because cars were fewer and farther between, and no one seemed eager to take an extra passenger.  By nine o’clock, what with the miles I had clicked off on my own two feet, I was famished.  Fortunately – perhaps God had put him in my path – the man next to me in the coffee shop was going almost to the Canadian border.  He said he would be happy to take me along.  He was a professor of literature, I discovered after we had travelled a way together.  A gentleman too.  It was a pleasure to listen to him.  He talked as if he had read about everything of value in the English language.  He spoke at length of Blake, John Donne, Traherne, Laurence Sterne.  He talked of Browning too, and of Henry Adams.  And of Milton’s Areopagitica.  All caviar, in other words.

       “I suppose you’ve written a number of books yourself,” I said.

       “No, just two,” he said.  (Textbooks, they were.)  “I teach literature,” he added, “I don’t make it.”

       Near the border he deposited me at a gas station owned by a friend of his.  He was branching off to some hamlet nearby.

       “My friend will see to it that you get a lift tomorrow morning.  Get acquainted with him, he’s an interesting chap.”

       We had arrived at this point just a half hour before closing time.  His friend was a poet, I soon found out.  I had dinner with him at a friendly little inn and then he escorted me to a hostelry for the night.

       At noon next day I was in Montreal.  I had to wait a few hours for the train to pull in.  It was bitter cold.  Almost like Russia, I thought.  And rather a gloomy-looking city, all in all.  I looked up an hotel, warmed myself in the lobby, then started back to the station.

       “How do you like it?” said Mona, as we drove of in a cab.

       “Not too much.  It’s the cold; it goes right to the marrow.”

       “Let’s go to Quebec tomorrow, then.”

       We had dinner in an English restaurant.  Frightful.  The food was like mildewed cadavers slightly warmed.

       “It’ll be better in Quebec,” said Mona.  “We’ll stay in a French hotel.”

       In Quebec the snow was piled high and frozen stiff.  Walking the streets was like walking between icebergs.  Everywhere we went we seemed to bump into flocks of nuns or priests.  Lugubrious-looking creatures with ice in their veins.  I didn’t think much of Quebec either.  We might as well have gone to the North Pole.  What an atmosphere in which to relax!

       However, the hotel was cosy and cheerful.  And what meals!  Was it like this in Paris? I asked.  Meaning the food.  Better than Paris, she said.  Unless one ate in swell restaurants.

       How well I remember that first meal.  What delicious soup!  What excellent veal!  And the cheeses!  But best of all were the wines.

       I remember the waiter handing me the carte des vins and how I scanned it, utterly bewildered by the choice presented.  When it came time to order I was speechless.  I looked up at him and said: “Select one for us, will you?  I know nothing about wine.”

       He took the wine list and studied it, looking now at me, now at Mona, then back at the list.  He seemed to be giving it his utmost attention and consideration.  Like a man studying the racing chart.

       “I think,” he said, “that what you should have is a Medoc.  It’s a light, dry Bordeaux, which will delight your palate.  If you like it, tomorrow we will try another vintage.”  He whisked off, beaming like a cherub.

       At lunch he suggested another wine – an Anjou.  A heavenly wine, I thought.  Followed next lunchtime by a Vouvray.  For dinner, unless we had seafood, we drank red wines – Pommard, Nuits Saint-Georges, Clos-Vougeot, Mâcon, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, and so on.  Now and then he slipped in a velvety fruity Bordeaux, a château vintage.  It was an education.  (Mentally I was doling out a stupendous tip for him.)  Sometimes he would take a sip himself, to make certain it was up to par.  And with the wines, of course, he made the most wonderful suggestions as to what to eat.  We tried everything.  Everything was delicious.

       After dinner we usually took a seat on the balcony (indoors) and, over an exquisite liqueur or brandy, played chess.  Sometimes the bell hop joined us and then we would sit back and listen to him tell about la douce France.  Now and then we hired a cab, horse-drawn, and drove around in the dark, smothered in furs and blankets.  We even attended Mass one night, to please the bell hop.

       All in all it was the laziest, peacefullest vacation I ever spent.  I was surprised that Mona took it so well.

       “I’d go mad if I had to spend the rest of my days here,” I said one day.

       “This isn’t like France,” she replied.  “Except for the cooking.”

       “It isn’t America either,” I said.  “It’s no man’s land.  The Eskimos should take it over.”

       Towards the end – we were there ten days – I was itching to get back to the novel.

       “Will you finish it quickly now, Val?” she asked.

       “Like lightning,” I replied.

       “Good!  Then we can leave for Europe.”

       “The sooner the better,” said I.

      

When we got back to Brooklyn the trees were all in bloom.  It must have been twenty degrees warmer than in Quebec.

       Mrs. Skolsky greeted us warmly.  “I missed you,” she said.  She followed us up to our rooms.  “Oh,” she said, “I forgot.  That friend of yours – MacGregor is it? – was here one evening with his lady friend.  He didn’t seem to believe me at first, when I told him you had gone to Canada.  ‘Impossible!’ he exclaimed.  Then he asked if he could visit your study.  I hardly knew what to say.  He behaved as if it were very important to show your room to his friend.  ‘You can trust us,’ he said.  ‘I know Henry since he was a boy.’  I gave in, but I stayed with them all the time they were up here.  He showed her the pictures on the wall – and your books.  He acted as if he were trying to impress her.  Once he sat down in your chair and he said to her: ‘Here’s where he writes his books, doesn’t he, Mrs. Skolsky?’  Then he went on about you, what a great writer you were, what a loyal friend, and so on.  I didn’t know what to make of the performance.  Finally I invited them downstairs to have some tea with me.  They stayed for about two hours, I guess.  He was very interesting too….”

       “What did he talk about?” I asked.

       “Many things,” she said.  “But mostly about love.  He seemed infatuated with the young lady.”

       “Did she say much?”

       “No, hardly a word.  She was rather strange, I thought.  Hardly the type for a man like him.”

       “Was she good-looking?”

       “That depends,” said Mrs. Skolsky.  “To be honest, I thought she was very plain, almost homely.  Rather lifeless too.  It puzzles me.  What can he see in a girl like that?  Is he blind?”

       “He’s an utter fool,” said Mona.

       “He sounds quite intelligent,” said Mrs. Skolsky.

       “Please, Mrs. Skolsky,” said Mona, “when he calls up, or even if he comes to the door, will you do us the favour of saying that we’re out?  Say anything, only don’t let him in.  He’s a pest, a bore.  An absolutely worthless individual.”

       Mrs. Skolsky looked at me inquiringly.

       “Yes,” I said, “she’s right.  He’s worse than that, to tell the truth.  He’s one of those people whose intelligence serves no purpose.  He’s intelligent enough to be a lawyer, but in every other respect he’s an imbecile.”

       Mrs. Skolsky looked nonplussed.  She was not accustomed to hearing people take that way about their “friends”.

       “But he spoke of you so warmly,” she said.

       “It makes no difference,” I replied.  “He’s impervious, obtuse … thick-skinned, that’s the word.”

       “Very well … if you say so, Mr. Miller.”  She backed away.

       “I have no friends any more,” I said.  “I’ve killed them all off.”

       She gave a little gasp.

       “He doesn’t mean it quite that way,” said Mona.

       “I’m sure he can’t,” said Mrs. Skolsky.  “It sounds dreadful.”

       “It’s the truth, like it or not.  I’m a thoroughly unsocial individual, Mrs. Skolsky.”

       “I don’t believe you,” she replied.  “Nor would Mr. Essen.”

       “He’ll find out one day.  Not that I dislike him, you understand.”

       “No, I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Skolsky.

       “Neither do I,” said I, and I began to laugh.

       “There’s a bit of a devil in you,” said Mrs. Skolsky.  “Isn’t that so, Mrs. Miller?”

       “Maybe,” said Mona.  “He’s not always easy to understand.”

       “I think I understand him,” said Mrs. Skolsky.  “I think he’s ashamed of himself for being so good, so honest, so sincere – and so loyal to his friends.”  She turned to me.  “Really, Mr. Miller, you’re the friendliest human being I ever knew.  I don’t care what you say about yourself – I’ll think what I please…. When you’ve unpacked come down and have dinner with me, won’t you, the two of you?”

       “You see,” I said, when she had retreated, “how difficult it is to make people accept the truth.”

       “You like to shock people, Val.  There’s always truth in what you say, but you have to make it unpalatable.”

       “Well, I don’t think she’ll let MacGregor bother us any more, that’s one good thing.”

       “He’ll follow you to the grave,” said Mona.

       “Wouldn’t it be queer if we were to run into him in Paris?”

       “Don’t say that, Val!  The thought of it is enough to spoil our trip.”

       “If that guy ever gets her to Paris he’ll rape her.  Right now he can’t even lay a hand on her backside….”

       “Let’s forget about them, will you, Val?  It gives me the creeps to think of them.”

       But it was impossible to forget them.  All through the dinner we talked about them.  And that night I had a dream about them, about meeting them in Paris.  In the dream Guelda looked and behaved like a cocotte, spoke French like a native, and was making poor MacGregor’s life unbearable with her lascivious ways.  “I wanted a wife,” he lamented, “not a whore!  Reform her, will you, Hen?” he pleaded.  I took her to a priest, to be shrived, but as things turned out we found ourselves in a whorehouse and Guelda, the number one girl, was in such demand that we couldn’t get a squeak out of her.  Finally she took the priest upstairs with her, whereupon the Madame of the whorehouse threw her out, stark naked, with a towel in one hand and a bar of soap in the other.

      

Only a few weeks now and the novel would be finished.  Pop already had a publisher in mind for it, a friend of his whom he had known in the old country.  He was determined to find a legitimate publisher for it or do it himself, according to Mona.  The bugger was feeling good these days; he was making money hand over fist on the stock market.  He was even threatening to go to Europe himself.  With Mona, presumably.  (“Don’t worry, Val, I’ll give him the slip when the time comes.”  “Yes, but what about that money you were to put in the bank?”  “I’ll square that too, don’t worry!”)

       She never had any doubts or fears where Pop was concerned.  It was useless to attempt to guide her, or even make suggestions: she knew far better than I what she could do and what she couldn’t.  All I knew of the man was what she told me.  I always pictured him as well-dressed, excessively polite, and carrying a wallet bulging with greenbacks.  (Menelik the Bountiful.)  I never felt sorry for him, either.  He was enjoying himself, that was clear.  What I did wonder about sometimes was – how could she continue to keep her address secret?  To live with an invalid mother is one thing, to keep the whereabouts of this ménage a secret quite another.  Perhaps Pop suspected the truth – that she was living with a man.  What difference could it make to him whether it was an invalid mother or a lover or a husband – as long as she kept her appointments?  Perhaps he was tactful enough to help her save face?  He was no dope, that was certain…. But why would he encourage her to leave for Europe, stay away for months or longer?  Here, of course, I had only to do a bit of transposing.  When she said “Pop would like to see me go to Europe for a while”, I had only to turn it around and I could hear her saying to Pop: “I want so much to see Europe again, even if only for a little while!”  As for publishing the novel, perhaps Pop hadn’t the slightest intention of doing anything, either through his friend, the publisher (if there were such a one) or on his own.  Perhaps he fell in love with her there to satisfy the lover or husband – or the poor invalid mother.  Perhaps he was a better actor than either of us!

       Maybe – this was a random thought – maybe there had never passed a word between them about Europe.  Maybe she was just determined to get there again, no matter how.

       Suddenly Stasia’s image floated before me.  Strange, that not a word had ever been received from her!  Surely she couldn’t still be wandering about in North Africa.  Was she in Paris – waiting?  Why not?  It was simple enough to have a box at the Post Office, and another box somewhere else, in which to hide the letters which Stasia may have written.  Worse than meeting MacGregor and his Guelda in Paris would be to run into Stasia.  How stupid of me never to have thought of a clandestine correspondence!  No wonder everything was running smoothly.

       There was only one other possibility: Stasia could have committed suicide.  But it would be hard to keep that a secret.  A weird creature like Stasia couldn’t do herself in without the story leaking out.  Unless, and this was far-fetched, they had wandered far into the desert, got lost, and were now nothing but a heap of bones.

       No, she was alive, I was certain of it.  And if alive, here was another angle.  Perhaps she had found someone else in the meantime.  A man, this time.  Maybe she was already a good housewife.  Such things happen now and again.

       No, I ruled that one out too.  Too unlike Stasia.

       “Fuck it all!” I said to myself.  “Why worry about such things?  To Europe, that’s the thing!”  So saying I thought of the chestnut trees (all in bloom now, no doubt) and of those little tables (les guéridons) on the crowded terraces of the cafés, and of bicycle cops wheeling by in pairs.  I thought of the Vespasiennes too.  How charming to take a leak outdoors, right on the sidewalk, while peering at all the beautiful dames strolling by…. Ought to be studying French…. (Où sont les lavabos?)

       If we were to get all that Mona said we would, why not go places…. Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Copenhagan, Rome, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Sofia, Bucharest?  Why not Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco?  I thought of my old Dutch friend who had slipped out of his messenger uniform one evening to go abroad with his American boss … writing me from Sofia, no less, and from the waiting room of the Queen of Roumania, somewhere high up in the Carpathians.

       And O’Mara, what had become of him, I wondered?  There was one fellow I would dearly love to see again.  A friend, what!  What a lark to take him to Europe with us, Mona willing.  (Impossible, of course.)

       My mind was circling, circling.  Always, when I was keyed up, when I knew I could do it, could say it, my mind would start wandering in all directions at once.  Instead of sitting down to the machine and letting go, I would sit at the desk and think up projects, dream dreams, or just dwell on those I loved, the good times we had had, the things we said and did.  (Ho ho!  Haw Haw!)  Or trump up a bit of research which would suddenly assume momentous importance, which must be attended to immediately.  Or I would conceive a brilliant chess manoeuvre and, to make certain I wouldn’t forget, I would set up the pieces, shuffle them around, make ready the trap that I planned to set for the first comer.  Then, at last ready to tickle the keys, it would suddenly dawn on me that on page so-and-so I had made a grievous error, and turning to the page I would discover that whole sentences were out of kilter, made no sense, or said exactly the opposite of what I meant.  In correcting them the need to elaborate would force me to write pages which later I realized might just as well have been omitted.

       Anything to stave off the event.  Was it that?  Or was it that, in order to write smoothly and steadily, I had to first blow off steam, reduce the power, cool the motor?  It always seemed to go better, the writing, when I had reached a lower, less exalted level; to stay on the surface, where it was all foam and whitecaps, was something only the Ancient Mariner could do.

       Once I got under wing, once I hit my stride, it was like eating peanuts: one thought induced another.  And as my fingers flew, pleasant but utterly extraneous ideas would intrude – without damaging the flow.  Such as “This passage is for you, Ulric; I can hear you chuckling in advance.”  Or, “How O’Mara will gobble this up!”  They accompanied my thoughts, like playful dolphins.  I was like a man at the tiller dodging the fish that flew over his head.  Sailing along with full sails, the ship precariously tilted but steady on her course, I would salute imaginary passing vessels, wave my shirt in the air, call to the birds, hail the rugged cliffs, praise God for his “savin’ and keepin’ power”, and so on.  Gogol had his troika, I had my trim cutter.  King of the waterways – while the spell lasted.

       Ramming the last pages home, I was already ashore, walking the boulevards of the luminous city, doffing my hat to this one and that, practising my “S’il vous plait, monsieur.”  “A votre service, madame.”  “Quelle belle journée, n’est-ce pas?”  “C’est moi qui avais tort.”  “A quoi bon se plaindre, la vie est belle!”  Et cetera, et cetera.  (All in an imaginary suave français.)

       I even indulged myself to the extent of carrying on an imaginary conversation with a Parisian who understood English well enough to follow me.  One of those delightful Frenchmen (encountered only in books) who is always interested in a foreigner’s observations, trivial though they may be.  We had discovered a mutual interest in Anatole France.  (How simple these liaisons, in the world of reverie!)  And I, the pompous idiot, had seized the opening to make mention of a curious Englishman who had also loved France – the country, not the author.  Charmed by my reference to a celebrated boulevardier of that delightful epoch, la fin de siècle, my companion insisted on escorting me to the Place Pigalle, in order to point out a rendezvous of the literary lights of that epoch – Le Rat Mort.  “But monsieur,” I am saying, “you are too kind.”  “Mais non, monsieur, c’est en privilege.”  And so on.  All this flubdub, this flattery and flânerie under a metallic green sky, the ground strewn with autumn leaves, siphons gleaming on every table – and not a single horse with his tail docked.  In short, the perfect Paris, the perfect Frenchman, the perfect day for a post-prandial ambulatory conversation.

       “Europe,” I concluded to myself, “my dear, my beloved Europe, deceive me not!  Even though you be not all that I now imagine, long for, and desperately need, grant me at least the illusion of enjoying this fair contentment which the mention of your name invites.  Let your citizens hold me in contempt, let them despise me, if they will, but give me to hear them converse as I have ever imagined them to.  Let me drink of these keen, roving minds (from the cradle) to mingle poetry with fact and deed, spirits which kindle at the mention of a nuance, and soar and soar, encompassing the most sublime flights, yet touching everything with wit, with malice, with erudition, with the salt and the spice of the worldly.  Do not, O faithful Europe, do not, I beg you, show me the polished surface of a continent devoted to progress.  I want to see your ancient, time-worn visage, with its furrows carved by age-long combat in the arena of thought.  I want to see with my own eyes the eagles you have trained to eat from your hand.  I come as a pilgrim, a devout pilgrim, who not only believes but knows that the invisible face of the moon is glorious, glorious beyond all imagining.  I have seen only the spectral, pitted face of the world which whirls us about.  Too well do I know this array of extinct volcanoes, of arid mountain ranges, of airless deserts whose huge cracks distribute themselves like varicose veins over the heart-breaking heartless void.  Accept me, O ancient ones, accept me as a penitent, one not wholly lost but deeply erring, a wanderer who from birth was made to stray from the sight of his brothers and sisters, his guides, his mentors, his comforters.”

       There stood Ulric, at the end of my prayer, exactly as he looked that day I met him on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street: the man who had been to Europe, and to Africa too, and in whose eyes the wonder and the magic of it still glowed.  He was giving me a blood transfusion, pouring faith and courage into my veins.  Hodie mihi, cras tibi!  It was there, Europe, waiting for me.  It would always be the same, come war, revolution, famine, frost or what.  Always a Europe for the soul that hungered.  Listening to his words, sucking them in in big draughts, asking myself if it were possible (attainable) for one like me, “always dragging behind like a cow’s tail”, intoxicated, groping for it like a blind man without his stick, the magnetic force of his words (the Alps, the Apennines, Ravenna, Fiesole, the plains of Hungary, the Ile Saint-Louis, Chartres, the Touraine, le Périgord …) caused a pain to settle in the pit of my stomach, a pain which slowly spelled itself out as a kind of Heimweh, a longing for “the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances”.  (“Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home.”)

       Yes, Ulric, that day you planted the seed in me.  You walked back to your studio to make more bananas and pineapples for the Saturday Evening Post and you left me to wander off with a vision.  Europe was in my grasp.  What matter two years, five years, ten years?  It was you who handed me my passport.  It was you who awakened the sleeping guide: Heimweh.

       Hodie tibi, cras mihi.

 

And so I walked about that afternoon, up one street and down another, I was already saying goodbye to the familiar scenes of horror and ennui, of morbid monotony, of sanitary sterility and loveless love.  Passing down Fifth Avenue, cutting through the shoppers and drifters like a wire eel, my contempt and loathing for all that met my eye almost suffocated me.  Pray God, I would not have long to endure the sight of these snuffed out Jack-o’-Lanterns, these decrepit New World buildings, these hideous, mournful churches, these parks dotted with pigeons and derelicts.  From the street of the tailor shop on down to the Bowery (the course of my ancient walk) I lived again the days of my apprenticeship, and they were like a thousand years of misery, of mishap, of misfortune.  A thousand years of alienation.  Approaching Cooper Union, ever the low-water mark of my sagging spirits, passages of those books I once wrote in my head came back, like the curled edges of a dream which refuse to flatten out.  They would always be flapping there, those curled edges … flapping from the cornices of those dingy shit-brown shanties, those slat-faced saloons, those foul rescue and shelter places where the bleary-eyed codfish-faced bums hung about like lazy flies, and O God, how miserable they looked, how wasted, how blenched, how withered and hollowed out!  Yet it was here in this bombed-out world that John Cowper Powys lectured, had sent forth into the soot-laden, stench-filled airs his tidings of the eternal world of the spirit – the spirit of Europe, his Europe, our Europe, the Europe of Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, Ibsen.  In this same area other fiery zealots had appeared and addressed the mob, invoking other great names: Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Engels, Shelley, Blake.  The streets looked the same as ever, worse indeed, breathing less hope, less justice, less beauty, less harmony.  Small chance now for a Thoreau to appear, or a Whitman, or a John Brown – or a Robert E. Lee.  The man of the masses was coming into his own: a sad, weird-looking creature animated by a central switchboard, capable of saying neither Yes nor No, recognizing neither right nor wrong, but always in step, the lock step, always chanting the Dead March.

       “Goodbye, goodbye!” I kept saying, as I marched along.  “Goodbye to all this!”  And not a soul responding, not even a pigeon.  “Are you deaf, you slumbering maniacs?”

       I am walking down the middle of civilization, and this is how it is.  On the one side culture running like an open sewer; on the other the abattoirs where everything hangs on the hooks, split open, gory, swarming with flies and maggots.  The boulevard of life in the twentieth century.  One Arc de Triomphe after another.  Robots advancing with the Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other.  Lemmings rushing to the sea.  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war…. Hurrah for the Karamazovs!  What gay wisdom!  Encore a petit effort, si vous voulez être républicain!

       Down in the middle of the road.  Stepping gingerly amidst the piles of horse manure.  What dirt and humbug we have to stumble through!  Ah, Harry, Harry!  Harry Haller, Harry Heller, Harry Smith, Harry Miller, Harry Harried.  Coming, Asmodeus, coming!  On two sticks, like a crippled Satan.  But laden with medals.  Such medals!  The Iron Cross, the Victoria Cross, the Croix de Guerre … in gold, in silver, in bronze, in iron, in zinc, in wood, in tin…. Take your pick!

       And poor Jesus had to carry his own cross!

       The air grows more pungent.  Chatham Square.  Good old Chinatown.  Below the pavement a honeycomb of booths.  Opium dens.  Lotus land.  Nirvana.  Rest in peace, the workers of the world are working.  We are all working – to usher in eternity.

       Now the Brooklyn Bridge swinging like a lyre between the skyscrapers and Brooklyn Heights.  Once again the weary pedestrian wends his way homeward, pockets empty, stomach empty, heart empty.  Gorgonzola hobbling along on two burned stumps.  The river below, the seagulls above.  And above the gulls the stars invisible.  What a glorious day!  A walk such as Pomander himself might have enjoyed.  Or Anaxagoras.  Or that arbiter of perverted taste: Petronius.

       The winter of life, as someone should have said, begins at birth.  The hardest years are from one to ninety.  After that, smooth sailing.  Homeward the swallows fly.  Each one carrying in his bill a crumb, a dead twig, a spark of hope.  E pluribus unum.

       The orchestra pit is rising, all sixty-four players donned in spotless white.  Above, the stars are beginning to show through the midnight blue of the domed ceiling.  The greatest show on earth is about to be ushered in, complete with trained seals, ventriloquists and aerial acrobats.  The master of ceremonies is Uncle Sam himself, that long, lean striped-like-a-zebra humorist who straddles the world with his Baron Munchausen legs and, come wind, hail, snow, frost or dry rot, is ever ready to cry Cock-a-doodledoo!