CHAPTER NINETEEN
SAILING
out one bright and lovely morning to take my constitutional, I find MacGregor
waiting for me at the doorstep.
“Hi
there!” he says, switching on his electric grin. “So it’s you,
in the flesh? Trapped you at last,
eh?” He puts out his hand. “Hen, why do I have to lay in wait for you
like this? Can’t you spare five minutes
occasionally for an old friend? What are you running away from? How are
you anyway? How’s the book coming
along? Mind if I walk a way with you?”
“I suppose
the landlady told you I was out?”
“How did
you guess it?”
I started
walking; he fell in step with me, as if we were on parade.
“Hen,
you’ll never change, I guess.” (Sounded
frighteningly like my mother.) “Once
upon a time I could call you any hour of the day or night and you’d come. Now you’re a writer … an important man … no
time for old friends.”
“Come on,”
I replied, “cut it. You know that’s not
it.”
“What is
it then?”
“This … I’m done wasting time. These problems of yours – I can’t solve
them. No one can, except yourself. You’re not
the first man who’s been jilted.”
“What
about yourself? Have you forgotten how
you used to keep me up all night bending my ear about Una Gifford?”
“We were
twenty-one then.”
“One’s
never too old to fall in love. At this
age it’s even worse. I can’t afford to lose her.”
“What do
you mean – can’t afford?”
“Too hard on the ego.
One doesn’t fall in love as often now or as easily. I don’t want to fall out of love, it would be
disastrous. I don’t say that she has to
marry me, but I’ve got to know that she’s there … reachable. I can love her from a distance, if necessary.”
I
smiled. “Funny, you saying a thing like
that. I was touching on that very theme
the other day, in the novel. Do you know
what I concluded?”
“Better to
become a celibate, I suppose.”
“No, I
came to the same conclusion that every jackass does … that nothing matters
except to keep on loving. Even if she
were to marry someone else, you could keep on loving her. What do you make of that?”
“Easier said than done, Hen.”
“Precisely. It’s your opportunity. Most men give up. Supposing you decided to live in
“You’re
talking Christian Science, man. I’m not
in love with a Virgin Mary. Why should I
stand still and watch her drift away?
You don’t make sense.”
“That’s
what I’m trying to convince you of.
That’s why it’s useless to bring me your problem, don’t you see? We don’t see eye to eye any more. We’re old friends who haven’t a thing in
common.”
“Do you
really think that, Hen?” His tone was
wistful rather than reproachful.
“Listen,”
I said, “once we were as close as peas in a pod, you, George Marshall and
me. Things happened. Somewhere the link snapped. George settled down, like a reformed
crook. His wife won out….”
“And me?”
“You
buried yourself in your law work, which you despise. One day you’ll be a judge, mark my
words. But it won’t change your way of
life. You’ve given up the ghost. Nothing interests you any more – unless it’s
a game of poker. And you think my way of life is cock-eyed. It is, I’ll admit
that. But not in the way you think.”
His reply
surprised me somewhat. “You’re not so
far off the track, Hen. We have made a mess of it, George and myself. The others too, for that matter.” (He was referring to the members of the
Xerxes Society.) “None of us has
amounted to a damn. But what’s all that
got to do with friendship? Must we
become important figures in the world to remain friends? Sounds like snobbery to me. We never pretended, George or I, that we were going to burn up the world. We’re what we are. Isn’t that good enough for you?”
“Look,” I
replied, “it wouldn’t matter to me if you were nothing but a bum; you could
still be my friend and I yours. You
could make fun of everything I believed in, if you believed in something
yourself. But you don’t. You believe in nothing. To my way of thinking one’s got to believe in
what he’s doing, else all’s a farce. I’d
be all for you if you wanted to be a bum and became a bum with all your heart
and soul. But what are you? You’re one of those meaningless souls who
filled us with contempt when we were younger … when we sat up the whole night
long discussing such thinkers as Nietzsche, Shaw, Ibsen. Just names to you now. You weren’t going to be like your old man, no
sir! They weren’t going to lasso you, tame you. But they did. Or you
did. You put yourself in the
straitjacket. You took the easiest
way. You surrendered before you had even
begun to fight.”
“And you?” he exclaimed, holding a hand aloft
as if to say “Hear, hear! Yeah, you, what have you accomplished that’s
so remarkable? Going on forty and
nothing published yet. What’s so great
about that?”
“Nothing,”
I replied. “It’s deplorable, that’s
what.”
“And that
entitles you to lecture me.
Ho ho!”
I had to
hedge a bit. “I wasn’t lecturing you, I was explaining that we had nothing in common any
more.”
“From the
looks of it we’re both failures. That’s
what we have in common, if you’ll face it squarely.”
“I never
said I was a failure. Except
to myself, perhaps. How can one
be a failure if he’s still struggling, still fighting? Maybe I won’t
make the grade. Maybe I’ll end up being
a trombone player. But whatever I do,
whatever I take up, it’ll be because I believe in it. I won’t float with the tide. I’d rather go down fighting … a failure, as
you say. I loathe doing like everyone
else, falling in line, saying yes when you mean no.”
He started
to say something but I waved him down.
“I don’t
mean senseless struggle, senseless resistance.
One should make an effort to reach clear, still waters. One has to struggle to stop struggling. One has to find himself, that’s what I mean.”
“Hen,” he
said, “you talk well and you mean well, but you’re all mixed up. You read too much, that’s your trouble.”
“And you
never stop to think,” I rejoined. “Nor
will you accept your share of suffering.
You think there’s an answer to everything. It never occurs to you that maybe there
isn’t, that maybe the only answer is you yourself, how you regard your
problems. You don’t want to wrestle with
problems, you want them eliminated for you. The easy way out, that’s you. Take this girl
of yours … this life and death problem … doesn’t it mean something to you that
she sees nothing in you? You ignore
that, don’t you? I want her! I’ve got to have
her! That’s all you’ve got to
answer. Sure you’d change your ways,
you’d make something of yourself … if someone were kind enough to stand over
you with a sledgehammer. You like to say
– ‘Hen, I’m an ornery sort of bastard,’ but you won’t raise a finger to make
yourself a wee bit different. You want
to be taken as you are and if one doesn’t like you the way you are, fuck
him! Isn’t that it?”
He cocked
his head to one side, like a judge weighing the testimony presented, then said:
“Maybe. Maybe you’re right.”
For a few
moments we walked on in silence. Like a
bird with a burr in his craw, he was digesting the evidence. Then, his lips spreading into an impish grin,
he said: “Sometimes you remind me of that bastard, Challacombe. God, how that guy could rile me! Always talking down from
his pedestal. And you fell for
all that crap of his. You believed in
him … in that Theosophical shit….”
“I
certainly did!” I answered with heat.
“If he had never mentioned anything more than the mane Swami Vivekananda
I would have felt indebted to him the rest of my life. Crap,
you say. To me it was the breath of
life. I know he wasn’t your idea of a
friend. A little too
lofty, too detached, for your taste.
He was a teacher, and you couldn’t see him as a teacher. Where did he get his credentials and all
that? He had no schooling, no training, no nothing. But he
knew what he was talking about. At
least, I thought so. He made you wallow in your own vomit, and you
didn’t like that. You wanted to lean on
his shoulder and puke all over him – then he would have been a friend. And so you searched for flaws in his
character, you found his weaknesses, you reduced him
to your own level. You do that with
everyone who’s difficult to understand.
When you can jeer at the other fellow as you do at yourself you’re happy
… then everything comes out even…. Look, try to understand this. Everything’s wrong with the world. Everywhere there’s ignorance, superstition,
bigotry, injustice, intolerance. It’s
been so since the world began most likely.
It will be so tomorrow and the day after. So what?
Do you know what Swami Vivekananda said once? He said: “There is only one sin. That is weakness…. Do not add one lunacy to
anther. Do not add your weakness to the
evil that is going to come…. Be strong!”
I paused waiting for him to make mincemeat of this. Instead he said: “Go on, Hen, give us some
more! It sounds good.”
“It is good,” I replied. “It will always be good. And people will go on doing the very
opposite. The very ones who applauded
his words betrayed him the instant he stopped speaking. That goes for Vivekananda, Socrates, Jesus,
Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Krishnamurti … name them yourself! But what am I telling you all this for
anyway? You won’t change. You refuse to grow. You want to get by with the least effort, the
least trouble, the least pain. Everyone does. It’s wonderful to hear tell about the
masters, but as for becoming a
master, shit! Listen, I was reading a
book the other day … to be honest, I’ve been reading it for a year or
more. Don’t ask me the title, because
I’m not giving it to you. But here’s
what I read, and no master could have put it better. ‘The sole meaning, purpose, intention, and
secret of Christ, my dears, is not to understand Life, or mould it, or change
it, or even to love it, but to drink of its undying essence.’”
“Say it
again, will you, Hen?”
I did.
“To drink
of its undying essence,” he mumbled. “Damned good. And you
won’t tell me who wrote it?”
“No.”
“Okay,
Hen. Go on! What else have you got up your sleeve this
morning?”
“This…. How are you making out with your
Guelda?”
“Forget
it! This is much better.”
“You’re
not giving her up, I hope?”
“She’s
giving me up. For good, this time.”
“And
you’re reconciled to it?”
“Don’t you
ever listen to me? Of course not! That’s why I was laying in wait for you. But, as you say, each one has to follow his own path. Don’t
you think I know that? Maybe we haven’t
anything in common any more. Maybe we never did, have you ever
thought that? Maybe it was something
more than that which held us together. I
can’t help liking you, Hen, even when you rake me over the coals. You’re a heartless son of a bitch
sometimes. If anyone’s ornery it’s you, not me. But you’ve got
something, if you can only bring it out.
Something for the world, I mean, not for me. You shouldn’t be writing
a novel, Hen. Anyone can do that. You’ve got more important things to do. I’m serious.
I’d rather see you lecture on Vivekananda – or Mahatma Gandhi.”
“Or Pico della Mirandola.”
“Never heard of him.”
“So she
won’t have anything more to do with you?”
“That’s
what she said. A woman can always change
her mind, of course.”
“She will,
don’t worry.”
“The last
time I saw her she was taking a vacation – in
“Why don’t
you follow her?”
“Better
than that, Hen, I’ve got it all figured out.
Soon as I learn what boat she’s taking I’ll go to the steamship office
and, even if I have to bribe the clerk, I’ll get a stateroom next to hers. When she comes out that first morning I’ll be
there to greet her. ‘Hi
there, sweetheart! Beautiful day today, what?’”
“She’ll
love that.”
“She won’t
jump overboard, that’s for sure.”
“But she
might tell the captain that you’re annoying her.”
“Fuck the
captain! I can handle him…. Three days at
sea and, whether she likes it or not, I’ll break her down.”
“I wish
you luck!” I grasped his hand and shook
it. “Here’s where I take leave of you.”
“Have a
coffee with me! Come on!”
“Nope. Back to
work. As
“Would
what?”
“ ‘Fall apart,’ I think he said.”
“Okay,
Hen.” He wheeled around and, without
another word, went off in the opposite direction.
I had only
gone a few steps when I heard him shouting.
“Hey Hen!”
“What?”
“I’ll see
you in
“See you
in Hell,” I thought to myself. But as I
resumed my walk I felt a twinge of remorse.
“You shouldn’t treat anyone
like that, not even your best friend,” I said to myself.
All the way
home I kept carrying on a monologue. It
went something like this….
“So what
if he is a pain in the ass? Sure, everyone has to solve his own problems,
but – is that a reason to turn a man
down? You’re not a Vivekananda. Besides, would Vivekananda have acted that
way? You don’t snub a man who’s in
distress. Nor do you have to let him
puke over you either. Supposing
he is acting like a child, what of
it? Is your behaviour always that
of an adult? And wasn’t that a lot of
shit, about not having anything in common any more? He should have walked away from you then and
there. What you have in common, my fine Swami, is plain ordinary human weakness. Maybe he did stop growing long ago. Is that a crime? No matter at what point along the road he is,
he’s still a human being. Move on, if
you like … keep your eyes straight ahead … but don’t refuse a laggard a helping
hand. Where would you be if you had had to go it alone? Are you
standing on your own two feet? What
about all those nobodies, those nincompoops, who emptied their pockets for you
when you were in need? Are they
worthless, now that you no longer have need of them?”
“No, but
…”
“So you
have no answer! You’re pretending to be
something which you’re not. You’re
afraid of falling back into your old ways.
You flatter yourself that you’re different, but the fact is you’re only
too much like the others whom you glibly condemn. That crazy elevator runner was on to
you. He saw right through you, didn’t
he? Frankly, what have you accomplished
with your own two hands, or with that intellect you seem so proud of? At twenty-one Alexander started out to
conquer the world, and at thirty he had the world in his two hands. I know you’re not aiming to conquer the world
– but you’d like to make a dent in it, wouldn’t you? You want to be recognized as a writer. Well, who’s stopping you? Not poor MacGregor, certainly. Yes, there is only one sin, as Vivekananda
said. And that is weakness. Take it to heart, old man …
take it to heart! Come down off
your high horse! Come out of your ivory
tower and join the ranks! Maybe there’s
something more to life than writing books.
And what have you got to say that’s so very important? Are you another Nietzsche? You’re not even you yet, do you realize that?”
By the
time I reached the corner of our street I had beaten myself to a pulp. I had about as much spunk left in me as a
stoat. To make it worse, Sid Essen was
waiting for me at the foot of the steps.
He was wreathed in smiles.
“Miller,”
he said, “I’m not going to take up your valuable time. I couldn’t keep this in my pocket another
minute.”
He pulled
out an envelope and handed it to me.
“What’s
this?” I said.
“A little token from your friends. Those darkies think the world of you. You’re to buy something with it for the
missus. It’s a
little collection they made among themselves.”
In my
crestfallen state I was on the verge of tears.
“Miller,
Miller,” said Reb, throwing his arms around me, “what are we ever going to do
without you?”
“It’ll only
be a few months,” I said, blushing like a fool.
“I know, I
know, but we’re going to miss you.
There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”
I walked
back to the corner with him, to the candy and stationary shop where we had
first met.
“You
know,” he said, as we took a seat at the counter, “I’ve almost a mind to join
you. Only I know that I’d be in the
way.”
Somewhat
embarrassed, I replied: “Guess ‘most everybody would love to go to
“I meant, Miller, that I’d love to see it through your eyes.” He gave me a look that melted me.
“Yes,” I
said, disregarding his words, “one day it won’t be necessary to take a boat or
a ‘plane to get to
Poor Reb
didn’t know what to make of it. He was
itching to say something, but he didn’t want to be impolite and head me off. So I rattled on.
“Simplification,
that’s what we need. Look at the stars –
they have no motors. Have you ever
thought what it is that keeps this earth of ours spinning like a ball? Nikola Tesla gave a lot of thought to it, and
Marconi too. No one has yet come up with
the final answer.”
He looked
at me in utter perplexity. I knew that
whatever it was that was on his mind it wasn’t electro-magnetism.
“I’m
sorry,” I said. “You wanted to tell me
something, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he
said, “but I don’t want to….”
“I was
only thinking aloud.”
“Well,
then….” He cleared his throat. “All I wanted to tell you was this … if you
should get stranded over there, don’t hesitate to cable me. Or if you want to prolong
your stay. You know where to
reach me.” He blushed and turned his
head away.
“Reb,” I
said, nudging him with my elbow “you’re just too damned good to me. And you hardly know me. I mean, you’ve known me only a short
time. None of my so-called friends would
do as much, that’s a bet.”
To this he
replied – “You don’t know what your friends are capable of doing for you, I’m
afraid. You’ve never given them a
chance.”
I fairly
exploded. “I haven’t, eh? Man, I’ve given them so many chances that
don’t even want to hear my name.”
“Aren’t
you a bit hard on them? Maybe they
didn’t have what to give.”
“That’s
exactly what they said, all of
them. But it’s not true. If you don’t have you can borrow – for a friend. Right? Abraham offered up his son, didn’t he?”
“That was
to Jehovah.”
“I wasn’t
asking them to make sacrifices. All I
asked for was chicken feed – cigarettes, a meal, old
clothes. Wait a minute,
I want to modify what I said. There were exceptions. There was one lad I remember, one of my
messengers … this was after I had quit the telegraph company … when he learned
that I was up against it he went and stole for me. He’d bring us a chicken or a few vegetables …
sometimes only a candy bar, if that was all he could lay hands on. There were others too, poor like him, or
nuts. They didn’t turn their pockets
inside out to show me they had nothing.
The guys I travelled with had no right to refuse me. None of them had ever starved. We weren’t poor white trash. We all came from decent, comfortable
homes. No, maybe it’s the Jew in you
that makes you so kind and thoughtful, pardon the way I put it. When a Jew sees a man in distress, hungry,
abused, despised, he sees himself. He
identifies immediately with the other fellow.
Not us. We haven’t tasted enough poverty, misfortune,
disgrace, humiliation. We’ve never been
pariahs. We’re sitting pretty, we are, lording it over the rest of the world.”
“Miller,”
he said, “you must have taken a lot of punishment. No matter what I may think of my own people –
they’ve got their faults too, you know – I could never talk about them the way
you do about yours. It makes me all the
more happy to think you’re going to enjoy yourself for a while. It’s coming to you. But you’ve got to bury the past!”
“I’ve got
to stop feeling sorry for myself, you mean.”
I threw him a tender smile. “You
know, Reb, I really don’t feel this way all the time. Deep down it still rankles, but on the
surface I take people pretty much as they come.
What I can’t get over, I guess, is that I had to worm it out of them,
everything I got. And what did I get? Crumbs. I exaggerate, of course. Not everyone turned me down cold. And those who did probably had a right to act
as they did. It was like the pitcher you
bring once too often to the well. I sure
knew how to make a nuisance of myself.
And for a man who’s willing to eat humble pie I was too arrogant. I had a way of rubbing people the wrong
way. Especially when asking for
help. You see, I’m one of those fools
who think that people, friends
anyway, ought to divine the fact that
one is in need. When you come across a
poor, filthy beggar, does he have to make your heart bleed before you toss him
a coin? Not if you’re a decent,
sensitive being. When you see him with
head down, searching the gutter for a discarded butt or a piece of yesterday’s
sandwich, you lift up his head, you put your arms around him, especially if
he’s crawling with lice, and you say: ‘What is it, friend? Can I be of any help?’ You don’t pass him up with one eye fastened
on a bird sitting on a telegraph wire.
You don’t make him run after you with hands outstretched. That’s my point. No many so many people refuse a beggar when
he accosts them. It’s humiliating to be
approached that way: it makes you feel guilty.
We’re all generous, in our own way.
But the moment someone begs
something of us our hearts close up.”
“Miller,”
said Reb, visibly moved by this outburst, “you’re what I’d call a good Jew.”
“Another Jesus, eh?”
“Yeah, why not? Jesus
was a good Jew, even though we’ve had to suffer for two thousand years because
of him.”
“The moral
is – don’t work too hard at it! Don’t
try to be too good.”
“One can
never do too much,” said Reb heatedly.
“Oh yes he
can. Do what needs doing, that’s good
enough.”
“Isn’t it
the same thing?”
“Almost. The point is
that God looks after the world. We
should look after one another. If the
good Lord had needed help to run this world He would have given us bigger
hearts. Hearts, not brains.”
“Jesus,”
said Reb, “but you do talk like a Jew.
You remind me of certain scholars I listened to when I was a kid and
they were expounding the law. They could
jump from one side of the fence to the other, like goats. When you were cold they blew hot, and vice versa. You never knew where you stood with
them. Here’s what I mean…. Passionate as
they were, they always preached moderation.
The prophets were the wild men; they were in a class apart. They hold men didn’t rant and rave. They were pure, that’s why. And you’re pure too. I know you are.”
What was
there to answer? He was simple, Reb, and
in need of a friend. No matter what I
said, no matter how I treated him, he acted as if I had enriched him. I was his friend. And he would remain my friend, no matter what.
Walking
back to the house I resumed the inner monologue. “You see, it’s as simple as that,
friendship. What’s the old adage? To have a friend you must be a friend.”
It was
hard to see, though, in what way I had been a friend to Reb – or to anybody,
for that matter. All I could see was
that I was my own best friend – any my own worst enemy.
Pushing
the door open, I had to remark to myself – “If you know that much, old fella,
you know a lot.”
I took my
accustomed place before the machine.
“Now,” said I to myself, “you’re back in your
own little kingdom. Now you can play God
again.”
The
drollery of addressing myself thus stopped me.
God! As if it were only yesterday that I had left
off communing with Him, I found myself conversing with Him as of yore. “For God so loved the world that He gave his
only begotten Son….” And
how little we had given in return.
What can we offer thee, O Heavenly Father, in return for thy
blessings? My heart spoke out, as if,
veriest nothing that I was, I had an inkling of the problems which confronted
the Creator of the universe. Nor was I
ashamed to be thus intimate with the Maker.
Was I not part of that immense all which He had made manifest expressly,
perhaps to realize the unlimited bounds of His Being?
It was
ages since I had addressed Him in this intimate fashion. What a difference between those prayers wrung
out of sheer despair, when I called on Him for mercy – mercy, not grace! – and the easy duos born of humble understanding! Strange, is it, this mention of
earthly-heavenly discourse? It would
occur most often when my spirits ran high … when there was little reason, mark
this, to show any sign of spirit.
Incongruous as it may sound, it was often when the cruel nature of man’s
fate smote me between the eyes that my spirit soared. When, like a worm eating his way through the
slime, there came the thought, crazy perhaps, that the
lowest was linked to the highest. Did
they not tell us, when we were young, that God noted the sparrow’s fall? Even if I never quite believed it, I was
nevertheless impressed. (“Behold, I am
the Lord, the God of all flesh – is there anything to hard for me?”) Total awareness! Plausible or implausible, it was a great
reach of thought. Sometimes, as a kid,
when something truly extraordinary occurred, I would exclaim: “Did you see
that, God?” How wonderful to think that
He was there, within calling distance!
He was a presence then, not a
metaphysical abstraction. His spirit
pervaded everything; He was of it all and above it all, at one and the same
time. And then – thinking about it I
assumed an almost seraphic smile – then would come times when, in order not to
go stark, raving mad, one simply had to look upon it (upon the absurd,
monstrous nature of things) with the eyes of the Creator, He who was
responsible for it all and understands it.
Tapping
away – I was on the gallop now – the thought of Creation, of the all-seeing
eye, the all-embracing compassion, the nearness and farness of God, hung over
me like a veil. What a joke to be
writing a novel about “imaginary” characters, “imaginary” situations! Hadn’t the Lord of the Universe imagined everything? What a farce to lord it over this fictitious
realm! Was it for this I had beseeched
the Almighty to grant me the gift of words?
The utter
ridiculousness of my position brought me to a halt. Why hurry to bring the book to a close? In my mind it was already finished. I had thought out the imaginary drama to its
imaginary end. I could rest a moment,
suspended above my ant-like being, and let a few more hairs whiten.
I fell
back into the vacuum (where God is all) with the most delicious sense of
relief. I could see it all clearly – my
earthly evolution, from the larval stage to the present, and even beyond the
present. What was the struggle for or
toward? Toward union. Perhaps. What else could it mean,
this desire to communicate? To reach
everyone, high and low, and get an answer back – a devastating thought! To vibrate eternally, like the world lyre. Rather frightening, if pushed to its furthest
implications.
Perhaps I
didn’t mean quite that. Enough, perhaps, to establish communications with one’s peers,
one’s kindred spirits. But who
were they? Where were they? One could
only know by letting fly the arrow.
A picture
now obtruded. A picture
of the world as a web of magnetic forces. Studding this web like nuclei were the
burning spirits of the earth about whom the various orders of humanity spun
like constellations. Due to the
hierarchical distribution of powers and aptitudes a sublime harmony
reigned. No discord was possible. All the conflict, all the disturbance, all
the confusion and disorder to which man vainly endeavoured to adjust was
meaningless. The intelligence which
invested the universe recognized it not.
The murderous, the suicidal, the maniacal activity of earthly beings,
yea, even their benevolent, their worshipful, their all too human activities,
were illusory. In the magnetic web
motion itself was nil.
Nothing to go toward, nothing to retreat from, nothing
to reach up to. The vast,
unending field of force was like a suspended thought, a suspended note. Aeons from now - and what was now? – another thought might replace it.
Brrrr! Chilling thought it was, I wanted to lie
there on the floor of nothingness and forever contemplate the picture of
creation.
It came to
me presently that the element of creation, where writing was concerned, had
little to do with thought. “A tree does
not search for its fruits, it grows them.”
To write, I concluded, was to garner the fruits of the imagination, to
grow into the life of the mind like a tree putting forth leaves.
Profound
or not, it was a comforting thought. At
one bound I was sitting in the lap of the gods.
I heard laughter all about me. No
need to play God. No need to astound
anyone. Take the lyre and pluck a
silvery note. Above all the commotion,
even above the sound of laughter, there was music. Perpetual music. That
was the meaning of the supreme intelligence which invested creation.
I came
sliding down the ladder in a hurry. And
this was the lovely, lovely thought which had me by the hair…. You there, pretending to be dead and
crucified, you there, with your
terrible historia de calamitatis, who
not re-enact it in the spirit of play?
Why not tell it over to yourself and extract a little music from
it? Are they real, your wounds? Are they still alive, still fresh? Or are they so much literary nail polish?
Come the cadenza….
“Kiss me,
kiss me again!” We were eighteen or nineteen then, MacGregor
and I, and the girl he had brought to the party was studying to become an opera
singer. She was sensitive, attractive,
the best he had found so far, or ever would find, for that matter. She loved him passionately. She loved him though she knew he was
frivolous and faithless. When he said in his easy, thoughtful way – “I’m crazy about you!”
– she swooned.
There was this song between them which he never tired of hearing. “Sing it again, won’t you? No one can sing it like you.” And she would sing it, again and again. “Kiss me, kiss me again.” It always gave me a
pang to hear her sing it, but this night I thought my heart would break. For this night, seated in a far corner of the
room seemingly as far from me as she could get, sat the divine, the
unattainable Una Gifford, a thousand times more beautiful than MacGregor’s
prima donna, a thousand times more mysterious, and a thousand times beyond any
reach of mine. “Kiss me, kiss me, again!”
How the word pierced me! And not
a soul in that boisterous, merry-making group was aware of my agony. The fiddler approaches, blithe, debonair, his
cheek glued to the instrument, and drawing out each phrase on muted strings, he
plays it softly in my ear. Kiss me …. kiss me
… a …. again.
Not another note can I take.
Pushing him aside, I bolt. Down
the street I run, the tears streaming down my cheeks. At the corner I come upon a horse wandering
in the middle of the street. The most
forlorn, broken-down nag ever a man laid eyes on. I try to speak to this lost quadruped – it’s
not a horse any more, not even an animal.
For a moment I thought it understood.
For one long moment it looked me full in the face. Then, terrified, it let out a blood-curdling
neigh and took to its heels. Desolate, I
made a noise like a rusty sleighbell, and slumped to the ground. Sounds of revelry filled the empty
street. They fell on my ears like the
din from a barracks full of drunken soldiers.
It was for me they were giving the party. And she was there, my beloved, snow-blonde,
starry-eyed, forever unattainable. Queen of the
No one
else regarded her thus. Only me.
A long ago
wound, this one. Not too much blood
connected with it. Worse
to follow. Much,
much worse. Isn’t it funny how
the faster they come, the more one expects them – yes, expects them! – to be bigger, bloodier,
more painful, more devastating. And they always are.
I closed
the book of memory. Yes, there was music
to be extracted from these old wounds.
But the time was not yet. Let
them fester awhile in the dark. Once we
reached
I saw myself
standing on a table top, an insignificant pouter pigeon dropping his little
white pellets of pigeon shit. A table
top named
Soon, dear
men of