Миллер Густав. Тропик Рака (engl)

to pieces. Un acte gratuit pour vous, cher monsieur si bien coupe en
tranches!

How a man can wander about all day on an empty belly, and even get an
erection once in a while, is one of those mysteries which are too easily
explained by the "anatomists of the soul." On a Sunday afternoon, when the
shutters are down and the proletariat possesses the street in a kind of dumb
torpor, there are certain thoroughfares which remind one of nothing less
than a big chancrous cock laid open longitudinally. And it is just these
highways, the Rue St. Denis, for instance, or the Faubourg du Temple -- which
attract one irresistibly, much as in the old days, around Union Square or
the upper reaches of the Bowery, one was drawn to the dime museums where in
the show-windows there were displayed wax reproductions of various organs
of the body eaten away by syphilis and other venereal diseases. The city
sprouts out like a huge organism diseased in every part, the beautiful
thoroughfares only a little less repulsive because they have been drained
of their pus.

At the Cite Nortier, somewhere near the Place du Combat, I pause a few
minutes to drink in the full squalor of the scene. It is a rectangular court
like many another which one glimpses through the low passageways that flank
the old arteries of Paris. In the middle of the court is a clump of decrepit
buildings which have so rotted away that they have collapsed on one another
and formed a sort of intestinal embrace. The ground is uneven, the flagging
slippery with slime. A sort of human dump-heap which has been filled in with
cinders and dry garbage. The sun is setting fast. The colors die. They shift
from purple to dried blood, from nacre to bistre, from cool dead grays to
pigeon shit. Here and there a lopsided monster stands in the window
blinking like an owl. There is the shrill squawk of children with pale faces
and bony limbs, rickety little urchins marked with the forceps. A fetid odor
seeps from the walls, the odor of a mildewed mattress Europe -- medieval,
grotesque, monstrous: a symphony in B mol. Directly across the street the
Cine Combat offers its distinguished clientele Metropolis.

Coming away my mind reverts to a book that I was reading only the other day.
"The town was a shambles; corpses, mangled by butchers and stripped by
plunderers, lay thick in the streets; wolves sneaked from the suburbs to eat
them; the black death and other plagues crept in to keep them company, and
the English came marching on; the while the danse macabre whirled
about the tombs in all the cemeteries ..." Paris during the days of Charles
the Silly! A lovely book! Refreshing, appetizing. I'm still enchanted by
it. About the patrons and prodromes of the Renaissance I know little, but
Madam Pimpernel, la belle boulangere, and Maitre Jehan Crapotte,
I'orfevre, these occupy my spare thoughts still. Not forgetting
Rodin, the evil genius of The Wandering Jew, who practised his
nefarious ways "until the day when he was enflamed and outwitted by the
octoroon Cecily." Sitting in the Square du Temple, musing over the doings of
the horse-knackers led by Jean Caboche, I have thought long and ruefully
over the. sad fate of Charles the Silly. A half-wit, who prowled
about the halls of his Hotel St. Paul, garbed in the filthiest rags, eaten
away by ulcers and vermin, gnawing a bone, when they flung him one, like a
mangy dog. At the Rue des Lions I looked for the stones of the old menagerie
where he once fed his pets. His only diversion, poor dolt, aside from those
card games with his "low-born companion," Odette de Champsdivers.

It was a Sunday afternoon, much like this, when I first met Germaine. I was
strolling along the Boulevard Beaumarchais, rich by a hundred francs or so
which my wife had frantically cabled from America. There was a touch of
spring in the air, a poisonous, malefic spring that seemed to burst from the
manholes. Night after night I had been coming back to this quarter,
attracted by certain leprous streets which only revealed their sinister
splendor when the light of day had oozed away and the whores commenced to
take up their posts. The Rue Pasteur-Wagner is one I recall in particular,
corner of the Rue Amelot which hides behind the boulevard like a slumbering
lizard. Here, at the neck of the bottle, so to speak, there was always a
cluster of vultures who croaked and flapped their dirty wings, who reached
out with sharp talons and plucked you into a doorway. Jolly, rapacious
devils who didn't even give you time to button your pants when it was over.
Led you into a little room off the street, a room without a window usually,
and, sitting on the edge of the bed with skirts tucked up gave you a quick
inspection, spat on your cock, and placed it for you. While you washed
yourself another one stood at the door and, holding her victim by one hand,
watched nonchalantly as you gave the finishing touches to your toilet.

Germaine was different. There was nothing to tell me so from her appearance.
Nothing to distinguish her from the other trollops who met each afternoon
and evening at the Cafe de l'Elephant. As I say, it was a spring day and the
few francs my wife had scraped up to cable me were jingling in my pocket. I
had a sort of vague premonition that I would not reach the Bastille without
being taken in tow by one of these buzzards. Sauntering along the boulevard
I had noticed her verging towards me with that curious trot-about air of a
whore and the rundown heels and the cheap jewelry and the pasty look of
their kind which the rouge only accentuates. It was not difficult to come
to terms with her. We sat in the back of the little tabac called
L'Elephant and talked it over quickly.

In a few minutes we were in a five-franc room on the Rue Amelot, the
curtains drawn and the covers thrown back. She didn't rush things, Germaine.
She sat on the bidet soaping herself and talked to me pleasantly
about this and that; she liked the knickerbockers I was wearing. Tres
chic! she thought. They were once, but I had worn the seat out of them;
fortunately the jacket covered my ass. As she stood up to dry herself, still
talking to me pleasantly, suddenly she dropped the towel and, advancing
towards me leisurely, she commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately,
stroking it with her two hands, caressing it, patting it, patting it. There
was something about her eloquence at that moment and the way she thrust
that rosebush under my nose which remains unforgettable; she spoke of it as
if it were some extraneous object which she had acquired at great cost, an
object whose value had increased with time and which now she prized above
everything in the world. Her words imbued it with a peculiar fragrance; it
was no longer just her private organ, but a treasure, a magic, potent
treasure, a God-given thing -- and none the less so because she traded it day
in and day out for a few pieces of silver. As she flung herself on the bed,
with legs spread wide apart, she cupped it with her hands and stroked it
some more, murmuring all the while in that hoarse, cracked voice of hers
that it was good, beautiful, a treasure, a little treasure. And it was
good, that little pussy of hers! That Sunday afternoon, with its
poisonous breath of spring in the air, everything clicked again. As we
stepped out of the hotel I looked her over again in the harsh light of day
and I saw clearly what a whore she was -- the gold teeth, the geranium in her
hat, the rundown heels, etc., etc. Even the fact that she had wormed
a dinner out of me and cigarettes and taxi hadn't the least disturbing
effect upon me. I encouraged it, in fact. I liked her so well that after
dinner we went back to the hotel again and took another shot at it. "For
love," this time. And again that big, bushy thing of hers worked its bloom
and magic. It began to have an independent existence -- for me too. There was
Germaine and there was that rosebush of hers. I liked them separately and
I liked them together.

As I say, she was different, Germaine. Later, when she
discovered my true circumstances, she treated me nobly -- blew me to drinks,
gave me credit, pawned my things, introduced me to her friends, and so on.
She even apologized for not lending me money, which I understood quite well
after her maquereau had been pointed out to me. Night after night I
walked down the Boulevard Beaumarchais to the little tabac where they
all congregated and I waited for her to stroll in and give me a few minutes
of her precious time.

When, some time later, I came to write about Claude it was not Claude that I
was thinking of, but Germaine.... "All the men she's been with and now you,
just you, and barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of
life flowing through you, through her, through all the guys behind you and
after you, the flowers and the birds and the sun streaming in and the
fragrance of it choking you, annihilating you." That was for Germaine! Claude
was not the same, though I admired her tremendously -- I even thought for a
while that I loved her. Claude had a soul and a conscience; she had
refinement, too, which is bad -- in a whore. Claude always imparted a feeling
of sadness; she left the impression, unwittingly, of course, that you were
just one more added to the stream which fate had ordained to destroy her.
Unwittingly, I say, because Claude was the last person in the world
who would consciously create such an image in one's mind. She was too
delicate, too sensitive for that. At bottom, Claude was just a good French
girl of average breed and intelligence whom life had tricked somehow;
something in her there was which was not tough enough to withstand the shock
of daily experience. For her were meant those terrible words of
Louis-Philippe: "and a night comes when all is over, when so many jaws have
closed upon us that we no longer have the strength to stand, and our meat
hangs upon our bodies, as though it had been masticated by every mouth."
Germaine, on the other hand, was a whore from the cradle; she was thoroughly
satisfied with her role, enjoyed it in fact, except when her stomach pinched
or her shoes gave out, little surface things of no account, nothing that ate
into her soul, nothing that created torment. Ennui! That was the worst
she ever felt. Days there were, no doubt, when she had a bellyful, as we say
-- but no more than that! Most of the time she enjoyed it -- or gave the
illusion of enjoying it. It made a difference of course, whom she went with
-- or came with. But the principal thing was a man. A man! That
was what she craved. A man with something between his legs that could tickle
her, that could make her writhe in ecstasy, make her grab that bushy twat of
hers with both hands and rub it joyfully, boastfully, proudly, with a sense
of connection, a sense of life. That was the only place where she experienced
any life -- down there where she clutched herself with both hands.

Germaine was a whore all the way through, even down to her good heart, her
whore's heart which is not really a good heart but a lazy one, an
indifferent, flaccid heart that can be touched for a moment, a heart without
reference to any fixed point within, a big, flaccid whore's heart that can
detach itself for a moment from its true center. However vile and
circumscribed was that world which she had created for herself, nevertheless
she functioned in it superbly. And that in itself is a tonic thing. When,
after we had become well acquainted, her companions would twit me, saying
that I was in love with Germaine (a situation almost inconceivable to them),
I would say: "Sure! Sure, I'm in love with her! And what's more, I'm going
to be faithful to her!" A lie, of course, because I could no more think of
loving Germaine than I could think of loving a spider; and if I was
faithful, it was not to Germaine but to that bushy thing she carried between
her legs. Whenever I looked at another woman I thought immediately of
Germaine, of that flaming bush which she had left in my mind and which
seemed imperishable. It gave me pleasure to sit on the terrasse of
the little tabac and observe her as she plied her trade, observe her
as she resorted to the same grimaces, the same tricks, with others as she
had with me. "She's doing her job!" -- that's how I felt about it, and it was
with approbation that I regarded her transactions. Later, when I had taken up
with Claude, and I saw her night after night sitting in her accustomed place,
her round little buttocks chubbily ensconced in the plush settee, I felt a
sort of inexpressible rebellion towards her; a whore, it seemed to me, had no
right to be sitting there like a lady, waiting timidly for some one to
approach and all the while abstemiously sipping her chocolat. Germaine
was a hustler. She didn't wait for you to come to her -- she went out and
grabbed you. I remember so well the holes in her stockings, and the torn
ragged shoes; I remember too how she stood at the bar and with blind,
courageous defiance threw a strong drink down her stomach and marched out
again. A hustler! Perhaps it wasn't so pleasant to smell that boozy breath of
hers, that breath compounded of weak coffee, cognac, aperitifs, pemods
and all the other stuff she guzzled between times, what to warm herself and
what to summon up strength and courage, but the fire of it penetrated her, it
glowed down there between her legs where women ought to glow, and there was
established that circuit which makes one feel the earth under his legs again.
When she lay there with her legs apart and moaning, even if she did moan that
way for any and everybody, it was good, it was a proper show of feeling. She
didn't stare up at the ceiling with a vacant look or count the bedbugs on the
wallpaper; she kept her mind on her business, she talked about the things a
man wants to hear when he's climbing over a woman. Whereas Claude -- well, with
Claude there was always a certain delicacy, even when she got under the
sheets with you. And her delicacy offended me. Who wants a delicate
whore! Claude would even ask you to turn your face away when she squatted
over the bidet. All wrong! A man, when he's burning up with passion,
wants to see things; he wants to see everything, even how they make
water. And while it's all very nice to know that a woman has a mind,
literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be
served in bed. Germaine had the right idea: she was ignorant and lusty, she
put her heart and soul into her work. She was a whore all the way
through -- and that was her virtue!

Easter came in like a frozen hare -- but it was fairly warm in bed. Today it
is lovely again and along the Champs-Elysees at twilight it is like an
outdoor seraglio choked with dark-eyed houris. The trees are in full
foliage and of a verdure so pure, so rich, that it seems as though they
were still wet and glistening with dew. From the Palais du Louvre to the
Etoile it is like a piece of music for the pianoforte. For five days I have
not touched the typewriter nor looked at a book; nor have I had a single
idea in my head except to go to the American Express. At nine this morning
I was there, just as the doors were being opened, and again at one o'clock.
No news. At four-thirty I dash out of the hotel, resolved to make a last
minute stab at it. Just as I turn the corner I brush against Walter Pach.
Since he doesn't recognize me, and since I have nothing to say to him, I
make no attempt to arrest him. Later, when I am stretching my legs in the
Tuileries his figure reverts to mind. He was a little stooped, pensive, with
a sort of serene yet reserved smile on his face. I wonder, as I look up at
this softly enamelled sky, so faintly tinted, which does not bulge today
with heavy rain clouds but smiles like a piece of old china, I wonder what
goes on in the mind of this man who translated the four thick volumes of
the History of Art when he takes in this blissful cosmos with his
drooping eye.

Along the Champs-Elysees, ideas pouring from me like sweat. I ought to be
rich enough to have a secretary to whom I could dictate as I walk, because
my best thoughts always come when I am away from the machine.

Walking along the Champs-Elysees I keep thinking of my really superb health.
When I say "health" I mean optimism, to be truthful. Incurably optimistic!
Still have one foot in the 19th century. I'm a bit retarded, like most
Americans. Carl finds it disgusting, this optimism. "I have only to talk
about a meal," he says, "and you're radiant!" It's a fact. The mere thought
of a meal -- another meal -- rejuvenates me. A meal! That means
something to go on -- a few solid hours of work, an erection possibly. I
don't deny it. I have health, good, solid, animal health. The only thing that
stands between me and a future is a meal, another meal.

As for Carl, he's not himself these days. He's upset, his nerves are
jangled. He says he's ill, and I believe him, but I don't feel badly about
it.

I can't. In fact, it makes me laugh. And that offends him, of course.
Everything wounds him -- my laughter, my hunger, my persistence, my
insouciance, everything. One day he wants to blow his brains out
because he can't stand this lousy hole of a Europe any more; the next day he
talks of going to Arizona "where they look you square in the eye."

"Do it!" I say. "Do one thing or the other, you bastard, but don't try to
cloud my healthy eye with your melancholy breath!"

But that's just it! In Europe one gets used to doing nothing. You sit on
your ass and whine all day. You get contaminated. You rot.

Fundamentally Carl is a snob, an aristocratic little prick who lives in a
dementia praecox kingdom all his own. "I hate Paris!" he whines. "All these
stupid people playing cards all day ... look at them! And this writing!
What's the use of putting words together? I can be a writer without
writing, can't I? What does it prove if I write a book? What do we want with
books anyway? There are too many books already ..."

My eye, but I've been all over that ground -- years and years ago. I've lived
out my melancholy youth. I don't give a fuck any more what's behind me, or
what's ahead Of me. I'm healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets.
No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today! Le
bel aujourd'hui!

He has one day a week off, Carl, and on that day he's more miserable, if you
can imagine it, than on any other day of the week. Though he professes to
despise food, the
only way he seems to enjoy himself on his day off is to order a big spread.
Perhaps he does it for my benefit -- I don't know, and I don't ask. If he
chooses to add martyrdom to his list of vices, let him -- it's O. K. with me.
Anyway, last Tuesday, after squandering what he had on a big spread, he
steers me to the D6me, the last place in the world I would seek on my day
off. But one not only gets acquiescent here -- one gets supine.

Standing at the D6me bar is Marlowe, soused to the ears. He's been on a
bender, as he calls it, for the last five days. That means a continuous
drunk, a peregrination from one bar to another, day and night without
interruption, and finally a lay-off at the American Hospital. Marlowe's
bony emaciated face is nothing but a skull perforated by two deep sockets
in which there are buried a pair of dead clams. His back is covered with
sawdust -- he has just had a little snooze in the watercloset. In his coat
pocket are the proofs for the next issue of his review, he was on his way to
the printer with the proofs, it seems, when some one inveigled him to have a
drink. He talks about it as though it happened months ago. He takes out the
proofs and spreads them over the bar; they are full of coffee stains and
dried spittle. He tries to read a poem which he had written in Greek, but
the proofs are undecipherable. Then he decides to deliver a speech, in
French, but the gerant puts a stop to it. Marlowe is piqued: his one
ambition is to talk a French which even the garcon will understand.
Of old French he is a master; of the Surrealists he has made excellent
translations; but to say a simple thing like "get the hell out of here, you
old prick!" -- that is beyond him. Nobody understands Marlowe's French, not
even the whores. For that matter, it's difficult enough to understand his
English when he's under the weather. He blabbers and spits like a confirmed
stutterer ... no sequence to his phrases. "You pay!" that's one thing
he manages to get out clearly.

Even if he is fried to the hat some fine preservative instinct always warns
Marlowe when it is time to act. If there is any doubt in his mind as to how
the drinks are going to be paid he will be sure to put on a stunt. The usual
one is to pretend that he is going blind. Carl knows all his tricks by now,
and so when Marlowe suddenly claps his hands to his temples and begins to act
it out Carl gives him a boot in the ass and says: "Come out of it, you sap!
You don't have to do that with me!"

Whether it is a cunning piece of revenge or not, I don't know, but at any
rate Marlowe is paying Carl back in good coin. Leaning over us
confidentially he relates in a hoarse, croaking voice a piece of gossip
which he picked . up in the course of his peregrinations from bar to bar.
Carl looks up in amazement. He's pale under the gills. Marlowe repeats the
story with variations. Each time Carl wilts a little more. "But that's
impossible!" he finally blurts out. "No, it ain't!" croaks Marlowe. "You're
gonna lose your job ... I got it straight." Carl looks at me in despair.
"Is he shitting me, that bastard?" he murmurs in my ear. And then
aloud -- "What am I going to do now? I'll never find another job. It took me a
year to land this one."

This, apparently, is all that Marlowe has been waiting to hear. At last he
has found someone worse off than himself. "They be hard times!" he croaks,
and his bony skull glows with a cold, electric fire.

Leaving the Dome Marlowe explains between hiccups that he's got to return to
San Francisco. He seems genuinely touched now by Carl's helplessness. He
proposes that Carl and I take over the review during his absence. "I can
trust you, Carl," he says. And then suddenly he gets an attack, a real one
this time. He almost collapses in the gutter. We haul him to a
bistrot at the Boulevard Edgar Quinet and sit him down. This time
he's really got It -- a blinding headache that makes him squeal and grunt and
rock himself to and fro like a dumb brute that's been struck by a
sledge hammer. We spill a couple of Femet-Brancas down his throat, lay him
out on the bench and cover his eyes with his muffler. He lies there
groaning. In a little while we hear him snoring.

"What about his proposition?" says Carl. "Should we take it up? He says
he'll give me a thousand francs when he comes back. I know he won't, but
what about it?" He looks at Marlowe sprawled out on the bench, lifts the
muffler from his eyes, and puts it back again. Suddenly a mischievous grin
lights up his face. "Listen, Joe," he says, beckoning me to move closer,
"we'll take him up on
it. We'll take his lousy review over and we'll fuck him good and proper."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why we'll throw out all the other contributors and we'll fill it with our
own shit -- that's what!"

"Yeah, but what kind of shit?"

"Any kind ... he won't be able to do anything about it. We'll fuck him good
and proper. One good number and after that the magazine'll be finished. Are
you game, Joe?"

Grinning and chuckling we lift Marlowe to his feet and haul him to Carl's
room. When we turn on the lights there's a woman in the bed waiting for
Carl. "I forgot all about her," says Carl. We turn the cunt loose and shove
Marlowe into bed. In a minute or so there's a knock at the door. It's Van
Norden. He's all aflutter. Lost a plate of false teeth -- at the Bal Negre, he
thinks. Anyway, we get to bed, the four of us. Marlowe stinks like a smoked
fish.

In the morning Marlowe and Van Norden leave to search for the false teeth.
Marlowe is blubbering. He imagines they are his teeth.

* * *

It is my last dinner at the dramatist's home. They have just rented a new
piano, a concert grand. I meet Sylvester coming out of the florist's with a
rubber plant in his arms. He asks me if I would carry it for him while he
goes for the cigars. One by one I've fucked myself out of all these free
meals which I had planned so carefully. One by one the husbands turn against
me, or the wives. As I walk along with the rubber plant in my arms I think
of that night a few months back when the idea first occurred to me. I was
sitting on a bench near the Coupole, fingering the wedding ring which I had
tried to pawn off on a garcon at the Dome. He had offered me six
francs for it and I was in a rage about it. But the belly was getting the
upper hand. Ever since I left Mona I had worn the ring on my pinkie. It was
so much a part of me that it had never occurred to me to sell it. It was one
of those orange-blossom affairs in white gold. Worth a dollar and a half
once, may be more. For three years we went along without a wedding ring and
then one day when I was going to the pier to meet Mona I happened to pass a
jewelry window on Maiden Lane and the whole window was staffed with wedding
rings. When I got to the pier Mona Was not to be seen. I waited for the last
passenger to descend the gangplank, but no Mona. Finally I asked to be shown
the passenger list. Her name was not on it. I slipped the wedding ring on my
pinkie and there it stayed. Once I left it in a public bath, but then I got
it back again. One of the orange blossoms had fallen off. Anyway, I was
sitting there on the bench with my head down, twiddling the ring, when
suddenly someone clapped me on the back. To make it brief, I got a meal and a
few francs besides. And then it occurred to me, like a flash, that no one
would refuse a man a meal if only he had the courage to demand it. I went
immediately to a cafe and wrote a dozen letters. "Would you let me have
dinner with you once a week? Tell me what day is most convenient for you." It
worked like a charm. I was not only fed ... I was feasted. Every night I went
home drunk. They couldn't do enough for me, these generous once-a-week souls.
What happened to me between times was none of their affair. Now and then the
thoughtful ones presented me with cigarettes, or a little pin money. They
were all obviously relieved when they realized that they would see me only
once a week. And they were still more relieved when I said -- "it won't be
necessary any more." They never asked why. They congratulated me, and that
was all. Often the reason was I had found a better host; I could afford to
scratch off the ones who were a pain in the ass. But that thought never
occurred to them. Finally I had a steady, solid program -- a fixed schedule.
On Tuesdays I knew it would be this kind of a meal and on Fridays that kind.
Cronstadt, I knew, would have champagne for me and homemade apple pie. And
Carl would invite me out, take me to a different restaurant each time, order
rare wines, invite me to the theatre afterwards or take me to the Cirque
Medrano. They were curious about one another, my hosts. Would ask me which
place I liked best, who was the best cook, etc. I think I liked Cronstadt's
joint best of all, perhaps because he chalked the meal up on the wall each
time. Not that it eased my conscience to see what I owed him, because I had
no intention of paying him back nor had he any illusions about being
requited. No, it was the odd numbers which intrigued me. He used to figure it
out to the last centime. If I was to pay in full I would have had to break a
sou. His wife was a marvellous cook and she didn't give a fuck about those
centimes Cronstadt added up. She took it out of me in carbon copies. A fact!
If I hadn't any fresh carbons for her when I showed up, she was crestfallen.
And for that I would have to take the little girl to the Luxembourg next day,
play with her for two or three hours, a task which drove me wild because she
spoke nothing but Hungarian and French. They were a queer lot on the whole,
my hosts ... At Tania's I look down on the spread from the balcony. Moldorf