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puts everything about Mr. Wren in the loveliest light. "He thinks as he goes
along" -- very charming, charming indeed, as Borowski would say, but really
very painful, particularly when the thinker is nothing but a spavined horse.
Boris hands me money to buy liquor. Going for the liquor I am already
intoxicated. I know just how I'll begin when I get back to the house.
Walking down the street it commences, the grand speech inside me that's
gurgling like Mrs. Wren's loose laugh. Seems to me she had a slight edge on
already. Listens beautifully when she's tight. Coming out of the wine-shop I
hear the urinal gurgling. Everything is loose and splashy. I want Mrs. Wren
to listen ...
Boris is rubbing his hands again. Mr. Wren is still stuttering and
spluttering. I have a bottle between my legs and I'm shoving the corkscrew
in. Mrs. Wren has her mouth parted expectantly. The wine is splashing
between my legs, the sun is splashing through the bay window, and inside my
veins there is a bubble and splash of a thousand crazy things that commence
to gush out of me now pell-mell. I'm telling them everything that comes to
mind, everything that was bottled up inside me and which Mrs. Wren's loose
laugh has somehow released. With that bottle between my legs and the sun
splashing through the window I experience once again the splendor of those
miserable days when I first arrived in Paris, a bewildered, poverty-stricken
individual who haunted the streets like a ghost at a banquet. Everything
comes back to me in a rush -- the toilets that wouldn't work, the prince who
shined my shoes, the Cinema Splendide where I slept on the patron's
overcoat, the bars in the window, the feeling of suffocation, the fat
cockroaches, the drinking and carousing that went on between times. Rose
Cannaque and Naples dying in the sunlight. Dancing the streets on an empty
belly and now and then calling on strange people -- Madame Delorme, for
instance. How I ever got to Madame Delorme's, I can't imagine any more. But
I got there, got inside somehow, past the butler, past the maid with her
little white apron, got right inside the palace with my corduroy trousers
and my hunting jacket -- and not a button on my fly. Even now I can taste
again the golden ambiance of that room where Madame Delorme sat upon a
throne in her mannish rig, the goldfish in the bowls, the maps of the ancient
world, the beautifully bound books; I can feel again her heavy hand resting
upon my shoulder, frightening me a little with her heavy Lesbian air. More
comfortable down below in that thick stew pouring into the Gare St. Lazare,
the whores in the doorways, seltzer bottles on every table; a thick tide of
semen flooding the gutters. Nothing better, between five and seven than to be
pushed around in that throng, to follow a leg or a beautiful bust, to move
along with the tide and everything whirling in your brain. A weird sort of
contentment in those days. No appointments, no invitations for dinner, no
program, no dough. The golden period, when I had not a single friend. Each
morning the dreary walk to the American Express, and each morning the
inevitable answer from the clerk. Dashing here and there like a bedbug,
gathering butts now and then, sometimes furtively, sometimes brazenly;
sitting down on a bench and squeezing my guts to stop the gnawing, or walking
through the Jardin des Tuileries and getting an erection looking at the dumb
statues. Or wandering along the Seine at night, wandering and wandering, and
going mad with the beauty of it, the trees leaning to, the broken images in
the water, the rush of the current under the bloody lights of the bridges,
the women sleeping in doorways, sleeping on newspapers, sleeping in the rain;
everywhere the musty porches of the cathedrals and beggars and lice and old
hags full of St. Vitus' dance; pushcarts stacked up like wine barrels in the
side streets, the smell of berries in the market-place and the old church
surrounded with vegetables and blue arc lights, the gutters slippery with
garbage and women in satin pumps staggering through the filth and vermin at
the end of an all-night souse. The Place St. Sulpice, so quiet and deserted,
where toward midnight there came every night the woman with the busted
umbrella and the crazy veil; every night she slept there on a bench under her
torn umbrella, the ribs hanging down, her dress turning green, her bony
fingers and the odor of decay oozing from her body; and in the morning I'd be
sitting there myself, taking a quiet snooze in the sunshine, cursing the
goddamned pigeons gathering up the crumbs everywhere. St. Sulpice! The fat
belfries, the garish posters over the door, the candles flaming inside. The
Square so beloved of Anatole France, with that drone and buzz from the altar,
the splash of the fountain, the pigeons cooing, the crumbs disappearing like
magic and only a dull rumbling in the hollow of the guts. Here I would sit
day after day thinking of Germaine and that dirty little street near the
Bastille where she lived, and that buzz-buzz going on behind the altar, the
buses whizzing by, the sun beating down into the asphalt and the asphalt
working into me and Germaine, into the asphalt and all Paris in the big fat
belfries.
And it was down the Rue Bonaparte that only a year before Mona and I used to
walk every night, after we had taken leave of Borowski. St. Sulpice not
meaning much to me then, nor anything in Paris. Washed out with talk. Sick
of faces. Fed up with cathedrals and squares and menageries and what not.
Picking up a book in the red bedroom and the cane chair uncomfortable; tired
of sitting on my ass all day long, tired of red wallpaper, tired of seeing so
many people jabbering away about nothing. The red bedroom and the trunk
always open; her gowns lying about in a delirium of disorder. The red bedroom
with my goloshes and canes, the notebooks I never touched, the manuscripts
lying cold and dead. Paris! Meaning the Cafe Select, the D6me, the Flea
Market, the American Express. Paris! Meaning Borowski's canes, Borowski's
hats, Borowski's gouaches, Borowski's prehistoric fish -- and prehistoric
jokes. In that Paris of '28 only one night stands out in my memory -- the
night before sailing for America. A rare night, with Borowski slightly
pickled and a little disgusted with me because I'm dancing with every slut in
the place. But we're leaving in the morning! That's what I tell every cunt I
grab hold of -- leaving in the morning! That's what I'm telling the
blonde with agate-colored eyes. And while I'm telling her she takes my hand
and sqeeezes it between her legs. In the lavatory I stand before the bowl
with a tremendous erection; it seems light and heavy at the same time, like a
piece of lead with wings on it. And while I'm standing there like that two
cunts sail in -- Americans. I greet them cordially, prick in hand. They give
me a wink and pass on. In the vestibule, as I'm buttoning my fly, I notice
one of them waiting for her friend to come out of the can. The music
is still playing and maybe Mona'll be coming to fetch me, or Borowski
with his gold-knobbed cane, but I'm in her arms now and she has hold of me
and I don't care who comes or what happens. We wriggle into the cabinet and
there I stand her up, slap up against the wall, and I try to get it into her
but it won't work and so we sit down on the seat and try it that way but it
won't work either. No matter how we try it it won't work. And all the while
she's got hold of my prick, she's clutching it like a life-saver, but it's no
use, we're too hot, too eager. The music is still playing and so we waltz out
of the cabinet into the vestibule again and as we're dancing there in the
shit-house I come all over her beautiful gown and she's sore as hell about
it. I stumble back to the table and there's Borowski with his ruddy face and
Mona with her disapproving eye. And Borowski says "Let's all go to Brussels
tomorrow," and we agree, and when we get back to the hotel I vomit all over
the place, in the bed, in the washbowl, over the suits and gowns and the
goloshes and canes and the notebooks I never touched and the manuscripts
lying cold and dead.
A few months later. The same hotel, the same room. We look out on the
courtyard where the bicycles are parked, and there is the little room up
above, under the attic, where some smart young Alee played the phonograph
all day long and repeated clever little things at the top of his voice. I
say "we" but I'm getting ahead of myself, because Mona has been away a long
time and it's just today that I'm meeting her at the Gare St. Lazare. Toward
evening I'm standing there with my face squeezed between the bars, but
there's no Mona, and I read the cable over again but it doesn't help any. I
go back to the Quarter and just the same I put away a hearty meal. Strolling
past the D6me and a little later suddenly I see a pale, heavy face and
burning eyes -- and the little velvet suit that I always adored because under
the soft velvet there were always her warm breasts, the marble legs, cool,
firm, muscular. She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me,
embraces me passionately -- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles,
windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us and we in each other's arms
oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks -- a flood of talk. Wild
consumptive notes of histeria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because
she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.
We walk down the Rue du Chateau, looking for Eugene. Walk over the railroad
bridge where I used to watch the trains pulling out and feel all sick inside
wondering where the hell she could be. Everything soft and enchanting as we
walk over the bridge. Smoke coming up between our legs, the tracks
creaking, semaphores in our blood. I feel her body close to mine -- all mine
now -- and I stop to rub my hands over the warm velvet. Everything around us
is crumbling, crumbling and the warm body under the warm velvet is aching
for me ...
Back in the very same room and fifty francs to the good, thanks to Eugene/ I
look out on the court but the phonograph is silent. The trunk is open and
her things are lying around everywhere just as before. She lies down on the
bed with her clothes on. Once, twice, three times, four times ... I'm afraid
she'll go mad ... in bed, under the blankets, how good to feel her body
again! But for how long? Will it last this time? Already I have a
presentiment that it won't.
She talks to me so feverishly -- as if there will be no tomorrow. "Be quiet,
Mona! Just look at me ... don't talk!" Finally she drops off and I
pull my arm from under her. My eyes close. Her body is there beside me ...
it will be there till morning surely ... It was in February I pulled out of
the harbor in a blinding snowstorm. The last glimpse I had of her was in the
window waving good-bye to me. A man standing on the other side of the
street, at the corner, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his jowls resting
on his lapels. A foetus watching me. A foetus with a cigar in its mouth.
Mona at the window waving goodbye. White heavy face, hair streaming wild.
And now it is a heavy bedroom, breathing regularly through the gills, sap
still oozing from between her legs, a warm feline odor and her hair in my
mouth. My eyes are closed. We breathe warmly into each other's mouth. Close
together, America three thousand miles away. I never want to see it again.
To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth -- I
count that something of a miracle. Nothing can happen now till morning ...
I wake from a deep slumber to look at her. A pale light is trickling in. I
look at her beautiful wild hair. I feel something crawling down my neck. I
look at her again, closely. Her hair is alive! I pull back the sheet -- more
of them. They are swarming over the pillow.
It is a little after daybreak. We pack hurriedly and sneak out of the hotel.
The cafes are still closed. We walk, and as we walk we scratch ourselves.
The day opens in milky whiteness, streaks of salmon-pink sky, snails leaving
their shells. Paris. Paris. Everything happens here. Old, crumbling walls
and the pleasant sound of water running in the urinals. Men licking their
moustaches at the bar. Shutters going up with a bang and little streams
purling in the gutters. Amer Picon in huge scarlet letters.
Zigzag. Which way will we go and why or where or what?
Mona is hungry, her dress is thin. Nothing but evening wraps, bottles of
perfume, barbaric earrings, bracelets, depilatories. We sit down in a
billiard parlor on the Avenue due Maine and order hot coffee. The toilet is
out of order. We shall have to sit some time before we can go to another
hotel. Meanwhile we pick bedbugs out of each other's hair. Nervous. Mona is
losing her temper. Must have a bath. Must have this. Must have that. Must,
must, must ...
"How much money have you left?"
Money! Forgot all about that.
Hotel des Etats-Unis. An ascenseur. We go to bed in broad daylight.
When we get up it is dark and the first thing to do is to raise enough dough
to send a cable to America. A cable to the foetus with the long juicy cigar
in his mouth. Meanwhile there is the Spanish woman on the Boulevard
Raspail -- she's always good for a warm meal. By morning something will
happen. At least we're going to bed together. No more bedbugs now. The rainy
season has commenced. The sheets are immaculate ...
* * *
A new life opening up for me at the Villa Borghese. Only ten o'clock and we
have already had breakfast and been out for a walk. We have an Elsa here with
us now. "Step softly for a few days," cautions Boris.
The day begins gloriously: a bright sky, a fresh wind, the houses newly
washed. On our way to the Post Office Boris and I discussed the book. The
Last Book -- which is going to be written anonymously.
A new day is beginning. I felt it this morning as we stood before one of
Dufresne's glistening canvases, a sort of dejeuner intime in the 13th
century, sans vin. A fine, fleshy nude, solid, vibrant, pink as a
fingernail, with glistening billows of flesh; all the secondary
characteristics, and a few of the primary. A body that sings, that has the
moisture of dawn. A still life, only nothing is still, nothing dead here. The
table creaks with food; it is so heavy it is sliding out of the frame. A 13th
century repast -- with all the jungle notes that he has memorized so well. A
family of gazelles and zebras nipping the fronds of the palms.
And now we have Elsa. She was playing for us this morning while we were in
bed. Step softly for a few days ... Good! Elsa is the maid and I am
the guest. And Boris is the big cheese. A new drama is beginning. I'm
laughing to myself as I write this. He knows what is going to happen, that
lynx, Boris. He has a nose for things too. Step softly ...
Boris is on pins and needles. At any moment now his wife may appear on the
scene. She weighs well over 180 pounds, that wife of his. And Boris is only
a handful. There you have the situation. He tries to explain it to me on our
way home at night. It is so tragic and so ridiculous at the same time that I
am obliged to stop now and then and laugh in his face. "Why do you laugh so?"
he says gently, and then he commences himself, with that whimpering,
hysterical note in his voice, like a helpless wretch who realizes suddenly
that no matter how many frock coats he puts on he will never make a man. He
wants to run away, to take a new name. "She can have everything, that cow, if
only she leaves me alone," he whines. But first the apartment has to be
rented, and the deeds signed, and a thousand other details for which his
frock coat will come in handy. But the size of her! -- that's what really
worries him. If we were to find her suddenly standing on the doorstep when we
arrive he would faint -- that's how much he respects her!
And so we've got to go easy with Elsa for a while. Elsa is only there to
make breakfast -- and to show the apartment.
But Elsa is already undermining me. That German blood. Those melancholy
songs. Coming down the stairs this morning, with the fresh coffee in my
nostrils, I was humming softly ... "Es war' so schon gewesen." For
breakfast, that. And in a little while the English boy upstairs with his
Bach. As Elsa says -- "he needs a woman." And Elsa needs something too. I can
feel it. I didn't say anything to Boris about it, but while he was cleaning
his teeth this morning Elsa was giving me an earful about Berlin, about the
women who look so attractive from behind, and when they turn round -- wow,
syphilis!
It seems to me that Elsa looks at me rather wistfully. Something left over
from the breakfast table. This afternoon we were writing, back to back, in
the studio. She had begun a letter to her lover who is in Italy. The machine
got jammed. Boris had gone to look at a cheap room he will take as soon as
the apartment is rented. There was nothing for it but to make love to Elsa.
She wanted it. And yet I felt a little sorry for her. She had only written
the first line to her lover -- I read it out of the corner of my eye as I
bent over her. But it couldn't be helped. That damned German music, so
melancholy, so sentimental. It undermined me. And then her beady little eyes,
so hot and sorrowful at the same time.
After it was over I asked her to play something for me.
She's a musician, Elsa, even though it sounded like broken pots and skulls
clanking. She was weeping, too, as she played. I don't blame her. Everywhere
the same thing, she says. Everywhere a man, and then she has to leave, and
then there's an abortion and then a new job and then another man and nobody
gives a fuck about her except to use her. All this after she's played
Schumann for me -- Schumann, that slobbery, sentimental German bastard!
Somehow I feel sorry as hell for her and yet I don't give a damn. A cunt who
can play as she does ought to have better sense than be tripped up by every
guy with a big putz who happens to come along. But that Schumann gets into
my blood. She's still sniffling, Elsa; but my mind is far away. I'm thinking
of Tania and how she claws away at her adagio. I'm thinking of lots of
things that are gone and buried. Thinking of a summer afternoon in
Greenpoint when the Germans were romping over Belgium and we had not yet
lost enough money to be concerned over the rape of a neutral country. A
time when we were still innocent enough to listen to poets and to sit around
a table in the twilight rapping for departed spirits. All that afternoon and
evening the atmosphere is saturated with German music; the whole
neighborhood is German, more German even than Germany. We were brought up on
Schumann and Hugo Wolf and Sauerkraut and Kummel and potato
dumplings. Toward evening we're sitting around a big table with the curtains
drawn and some fool two-headed wench is rapping for Jesus Christ. We're
holding hands under the table and the dame next to me has two fingers in my
fly. And finally we lie on the floor, behind the piano, while someone sings
a dreary song. The air is stifling and her breath is boozy. The pedal is
moving up and down, stiffly, automatically, a crazy, futile movement, like a
tower of dung that takes twenty-seven years to build but keeps perfect time.
I pull her over me with the sounding board in my ears; the room is dark and
the carpet is sticky with the Kiimmel that has been spilled about. Suddenly
it seems as if the dawn were coming: it is like water purling over ice and
the ice is blue with a rising mist, glaciers sunk in emerald green, chamois
and antelope, golden groupers, sea-cows mouching along and the amber-jack
leaping over the Arctic rim ...
Elsa is sitting in my lap. Her eyes are like little belly-buttons. I look at
her large mouth, so wet and glistening, and I cover it. She is humming now
... "Es war' so schon gewesen ..." Ah, Elsa, you don't know yet what
that means to me, your Trompeter von Sackingen. German Singing
Societies, Schwaben Hall, the Turnverein ... links um, rechts um ...
and then a whack over the ass with the end of a rope.
Ah, the Germans! They take you all over like an omnibus. They give you
indigestion. In the same night one cannot visit the morgue, the infirmary,
the zoo, the signs of the zodiac, the limbos of philosophy, the caves of
epistemology, the arcana of Freud and Stekel ... On the merry-go-round one
doesn't get anywhere, whereas with the Germans one can go from Vega to Lope
de Vega, all in one night, and come away as foolish as Parsifal.
As I say, the day began gloriously. It was only this morning that I became
conscious again of this physical Paris of which I have been unaware for
weeks. Perhaps it is because the book has begun to grow inside me. I am
carrying it around with me everywhere. I walk through the streets big with
child and the cops escort me across the street. Women get up to offer me
their seats. Nobody pushes me rudely any more. I am pregnant. I waddle
awkwardly; my big stomach pressed against the weight of the world.
It was this morning, on our way to the Post Office, that we gave the book
its final imprimatur. We have evolved a new cosmogony of literature,
Boris and I. It is to be a new Bible -- The Last Book. All those who
have anything to say will say it here -- anonymously. We will exhaust
the age. After us not another book -- not for a generation, at least.
Heretofore we had been digging in the dark, with nothing but instinct to
guide us. Now we shall have a vessel in which to pour the vital fluid, a
bomb which, when we throw it, will set off the world. We shall put into it
enough to give the writers of tomorrow their plots, their dramas, their
poems, their myths, their sciences. The world will be able to feed on it for
a thousand years to come. It is colossal in its pretentiousness. The thought
of it almost shatters us.
For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And
not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put
a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is
rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it
needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have
in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds
of the air. We are going to put it down -- the evolution of this world which
has died but which has not been buried. We are swimming on the face of time
and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown. It will be enormous,
the Book. There will be oceans of space in which to move about, to
perambulate, to sing, to dance, to climb, to bathe, to leap somersaults, to
whine, to rape, to murder. A cathedral, a veritable cathedral, in the
building of which everybody will assist who has lost his identity. There
will be masses for the dead, prayers, confessions, hymns, a moaning and a
chattering, a sort of murderous insouciance; there will be rose windows and
gargoyles and acolytes and pallbearers. You can bring your horses in a
gallop through the aisles. You can butt your head against the walls -- they
won't give. You can pray in any language you choose, or you can curl up
outside and go to sleep. It will last a thousand years, at least, this
cathedral, and there will be no replica, for the builders will be dead and
the formula too. We will have postcards made and organize tours. We will
build a town around it and set up a free commune. We have no need for
genius -- genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are
willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh ...
The day is moving along at a fine tempo. I am up on the balcony at Tania's
place. The drama is going on down below in the drawing-room. The dramatist
is sick and from above his scalp looks more scabrous than ever. His hair is
made of straw. His ideas are straw. His wife too is straw, though still a
little damp. The whole house is made of straw. Here I am up on the balcony,
waiting for Boris to arrive. My last problem -- breakfast -- is gone. I
have simplified everything. If there are any new problems I can carry them in
my rucksack, along with my dirty wash. I am throwing away all my sous. What
need have I for money? I am a writing machine. The last screw has been added.
The thing flows. Between me and the machine there is no estrangement. I am
the machine ...
They have not told me yet what the new drama is about, but I can sense it.
They are trying to get rid of me. Yet here I am for my dinner, even a little
earlier than they expected. I have informed them where to sit, what to do. I
ask them politely if I shall be disturbing them, but what I really mean, and
they know it well, is -- will you be disturbing me? No, you blissful
cockroaches, you are not disturbing me. You are nourishing me. I see
you sitting there close together and I know there is a chasm between you.
Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I
withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.
Tania is in a hostile mood -- I can feel it. She resents my being filled with
anything but herself. She knows by the very calibre of my excitement that
her value is reduced to zero. She knows that I did not come this evening to
fertilize her. She knows there is something germinating inside me which will
destroy her. She is slow to realize, but she is realizing it ...
Sylvester looks more content. He will embrace her this evening at the dinner
table. Even now he is reading my manuscript, preparing to inflame my ego, to
set my ego against hers.
It will be a strange gathering this evening. The stage is being set. I hear
the tinkle of the glasses. The wine is being brought out. There will be
bumpers downed and Sylvester who is ill will come out of his illness.
It was only last night, at Cronstadt's, that we projected this setting. It
was ordained that the women must suffer, that off-stage there should be more
terror and violence, more disasters, more suffering, more woe and misery.
It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris. Paris is simply an
artificial stage, a revolving stage that permits the spectator to glimpse
all phases of the conflict. Of itself Paris initiates no dramas. They are
begun elsewhere. Paris is simply an obstetrical instrument that tears
the living embryo from the womb and puts it in the incubator. Paris is the
cradle of artificial births. Rocking here in the cradle each one slips back
into his soil: one dreams back to Berlin, New York, Chicago, Vienna, Minsk.
Vienna is never more Vienna than in Paris. Everything is raised to
apotheosis. The cradle gives up its babes and new ones take their places.
You can read here on the walls where Zola lived and Balzac and Dante and
Strindberg and everybody who ever was anything. Everyone has lived here
some time or other. Nobody dies here ...
They are talking downstairs. Their language is symbolic. The word
"struggle" enters into it. Sylvester, the sick dramatist, is saying: "I am
just reading the Manifesto." And Tania says -- "Whose?" Yes,
Tania, I heard you. I am up here writing about you and you divine it well.
Speak more, that I may record you. For when we go to table I shall
not be able to make any notes ... Suddenly Tania remarks: "There is no
prominent hall in this place." Now what does that mean, if anything?
They are putting up pictures now. That, too, is to impress me. See, they
wish to say, we are at home here, living the conjugal life. Making the home
attractive. We will even argue a little about the pictures, for your
benefit. And Tania remarks again: "How the eye deceives one!" Ah, Tania,
what things you say! Go on, carry out this farce a little longer. I am here
to get the dinner you promised me; I enjoy this comedy tremendously. And now
Sylvester takes the lead. He is trying to explain one of Borowski's
gouaches. "Come here, do you see? One of them is playing the guitar;
the other is holding a girl in his lap." True, Sylvester. Very true.
Borowski and his guitars! The girls in his lap! Only one never quite knows
what it is he holds in his lap, or whether it is really a man playing the
guitar ...
Soon Moldorf will be trotting in on all fours and Boris with that helpless
little laugh of his. There will be a golden pheasant for dinner and Anjou
and short fat cigars. And Cronstadt, when he gets the latest news, will
live a little harder, a little brighter, for five minutes; and then he will
subside again into the humus of his ideology
and perhaps a poem will be born, a big golden bell of a poem without a
tongue.
Had to knock off for an hour or so. Another customer to look at the
apartment. Upstairs the bloody Englishman is practising his Bach. It is
imperative now, when someone comes to look at the apartment, to run
upstairs and ask the pianist to lay off for a while.
Elsa is telephoning the greengrocer. The plumber is putting a new seat on
the toilet bowl. Whenever the doorbell rings Boris loses his equilibrium.
In the excitement he has dropped his glasses; he is on his hands and knees,
his frock coat is dragging the floor. It is a little like the Grand
Guignol -- the starving poet come to give the butcher's daughter lessons.
Every time the phone rings the poet's mouth waters. Mallarme sounds like a
sirloin steak, Victor Hugo like foie de veau. Elsa is ordering a
delicate little lunch for Boris -- "a nice juicy little pork chop," she says.
I see a whole flock of pink hams lying cold on the marble, wonderful hams
cushioned in white fat. I have a terrific hunger though we've only had
breakfast a few minutes ago -- it's the lunch that I'll have to skip. It's
only Wednesdays that I eat lunch, thanks to Borowski. Elsa is still
telephoning -- she forgot to order a piece of bacon. "Yes, a nice little piece
of bacon, not too fatty," she says ... Zut alors! Throw in some
sweetbreads, throw in some mountain oysters and some psst clams! Throw in
some fried liverwurst while you're at it; I could gobble up the fifteen
hundred plays of Lope de Vega in one sitting.
It is a beautiful woman who has come to look at the apartment. An American,
of course. I stand at the window with my back to her watching a sparrow
pecking at a fresh turd. Amazing how easily the sparrow is provided for. It
is raining a bit and the drops are very big. I used to think a bird couldn't
fly if its wings got wet. Amazing how these rich dames come to Paris and find
all the swell studios. A little talent and a big purse. If it rains they have
a chance to display their brand new slickers. Food is nothing: sometimes
they're so busy gadding about that they haven't time for lunch. Just a little
sandwich, a wafer, at the Cafe de la Paix or the Ritz Bar.
"For the daughters of gentlefolk only" -- that's what it says at the old
studio of Puvis de Chavannes. Happened to pass there the other day. Rich
American cunts with paint boxes slung over their shoulders. A little talent
and a fat purse.
The sparrow is hopping frantically from one cobble-stone to another. Truly
herculean efforts, if you stop to examine closely. Everywhere there is food
lying about -- in the gutter, I mean. The beautiful American woman is
inquiring about the toilet. The toilet! Let me show you, you velvet-snooted
gazelle! The toilet, you say? Par id, Madame. N'oubliez. pas que les
places numerotees sont reservees aux mutiles de la guerre.
Boris is rubbing his hands -- he is putting the finishing touches to the deal.
The dogs are barking in the courtyard; they bark like wolves. Upstairs Mrs.
Melverness is moving the furniture around. She had nothing to do all day,
she's bored; if she finds a crumb of dirt anywhere she cleans the whole
house. There's a bunch of green grapes on the table and a bottle of
wine -- vin de choix, 10 degrees. "Yes," says Boris, "I could make a
wash-stand for you, just come here, please. Yes, this is the toilet. There
is one upstairs too, of course. Yes, a thousand francs a month. You don't
care much for Utrillo, you say? No, this is it. It needs a new washer,
that's all ..."
She's going in a minute now. Boris hasn't even introduced me this time. The
son of a bitch! Whenever it's a rich cunt he forgets to introduce me. In a
few minutes I'll be able to sit down again and type. Somehow I don't feel
like it any more today. My spirit is dribbling away. She may come back in an
hour or so and take the chair from under my ass. How the hell can a man
write when he doesn't know where he's going to sit the next half hour? If
this rich bastard takes the place I won't even have a place to sleep. It's
hard to know, when you're in such a jam which is worse -- not having a place
to sleep or not having a place to work. One can sleep almost anywhere, but
one must have a place to work. Even if it's not a masterpiece you're doing.
Even a bad novel requires a chair to sit on and a bit of privacy. These rich
cunts never think of a thing like that. Whenever they want to lower their
soft behinds there's always a chair standing ready for them ...
Last night we left Sylvester and his God sitting together before the
hearth. Sylvester in his pajamas, Moldorf with a cigar between his lips.
Sylvester is peeling an orange. He puts the peel on the couch-cover.
Moldorf draws closer to him. He asks permission to read again that brilliant
parody The Gates of Heaven. We are getting ready to go, Boris and I.
We are too gay for this sick-room atmosphere. Tania is going with us. She is
gay because she is going to escape. Boris is gay because the God in Moldorf
is dead. I am gay because it is another act we are going to put on.
Moldorf's voice is reverent. "Can I stay with you, Sylvester, until you go
to bed?" He has been staying with him for the last six days, buying
medicine, running errands for Tania, comforting, consoling, guarding the
portals against malevolent intruders like Boris and his scallywags. He is
like a savage who has discovered that his idol was mutilated during the
night. There he sits, at the idol's feet, with breadfruit and grease and
jabber-wocky prayers. His voice goes out unctuously. His limbs are already
paralyzed.
To Tania he speaks as if she were a priestess who had broken her vows. "You
must make yourself worthy. Sylvester is your God." And while Sylvester is
upstairs suffering (he has a little wheeze in the chest) the priest and the
priestess devour the food. "You are polluting yourself," he says, the gravy
dripping from his lips. He has the capacity for eating and suffering at the
same time. While he fends off the dangerous ones he puts out his fat little
paw and strokes Tania's hair. "I am beginning to fall in love with you. You
are like my Fanny."
In other respects it has been a fine day for Moldorf. A letter arrived from
America. Moe is getting A's in everything. Murray is learning to ride the
bicycle. The victrola was repaired. You can see from the expression on his
face that there were other things in the letter besides report cards and
velocipedes. You can be sure of it because this afternoon he bought 325
francs worth of jewelry for his Fanny. In addition he wrote her a
twenty-page letter. The garcon brought him page after page, filled
his fountain pen, served his coffee and cigars, fanned him a little
when he perspired, brushed the crumbs from the table, lit his cigar when it
went out, bought stamps for him, danced on him, piroutted, salaamed ...
broke his spine damned near. The tip was fat. Bigger and fatter than a
Corona Corona. Moldorf probably mentioned it in his diary. It was for
Fanny's sake. The bracelet and the earrings, they were worth every sou he
spent. Better to spend it on Fanny than waste it on little strumpets like
Germaine and Odette. Yes, he told Tania so. He showed her his trunk. It is
crammed with gifts -- for Fanny, and for Moe and Murray.
"My Fanny is the most intelligent woman in the world. I have been searching
and searching to find a flaw in her -- but there's not one.
"She's perfect. I'll tell you what Fanny can do. She plays bridge like a
shark; she's interested in Zionism; you give her an old hat, for instance,
and see what she can do with it. A little twist here, a ribbon there, and
voila quelque chose de beau! Do you know what is perfect bliss? To
sit beside Fanny, when Moe and Murray have gone to bed, and listen to the
radio. She sits there so peacefully. I am rewarded for all my struggles and
heartaches in just watching her. She listens intelligently. When I think of
your stinking Montparnasse and then of my evenings in Bay Ridge with Fanny
after a big meal, I tell you there is no comparison. A simple thing like
food, the children, the soft lamps, and Fanny sitting there, a little tired,
but cheerful, contented, heavy with bread ... we just sit there for hours
without saying a word. That's bliss!
"Today she writes me a letter -- not one of those dull stock report letters.
She writes me from the heart, in language that even my little Murray could
understand. She's delicate about everything, Fanny. She says that the
children must continue their education but the expense worries her. It
will cost a thousand bucks to send little Murray to school. Moe, of course,
will get a scholarship. But little Murray, that little genius, Murray, what
are we going to do about him? I wrote Fanny not to worry. Send Murray to
school, I said. What's another thousand dollars? I'll make more money this
year than ever before. I'll do it for little Murray -- because he's a genius,
that kid."
I should like to be there when Fanny opens the trunk. "See, Fanny, this is
what I bought in Budapest from an old Jew ... This is what they wear in
Bulgaria -- it's pure wool . .. This belonged to the Duke of something or
other -- no, you don't wind it, you put it in the sun This I want you to wear,
Fanny, when we go to the Opera ... wear it with that comb I showed you ...
And this, Fanny, is something Tania picked up for me ... she's a little bit
on your type ..."
And Fanny is sitting there on the settee, just as she was in the oleograph,
with Moe on one side of her and little Murray, Murray the genius, on the
other. Her fat legs are a little too short to reach the floor. Her eyes have
a dull permanganate glow. Breasts like ripe red cabbage; they bobble a
little when she leans forward. But the sad thing about her is that the juice
has been cut off. She sits there like a dead storage battery; her face is
out of plumb -- it needs a little animation, a sudden spurt of juice to bring
it back into focus. Moldorf is jumping around in front of her like a fat
toad. His flesh quivers. He slips and it is difficult for him to roll over
again on his belly. She prods him with her thick toes. His eyes protrude a
little further. "Kick me again. Fanny, that was good!" She gives him a good
prod this time -- it leaves a permanent dent in his paunch. His face is close
to the carpet; the wattles are joggling in the nap of the rug. He livens up
a bit, flips around, springs from furniture to furniture. "Fanny, you are
marvellous!" He is sitting now on her shoulder. He bites a little piece from
her ear, just a little tip from the lobe where it doesn't hurt. But she's
still dead -- all storage battery and no juice. He falls on her lap and lies
there quivering like a toothache. He is all warm now and helpless. His
belly glistens like a patent-leather shoe. In the sockets of his eyes a pair
of fancy vest buttons. "Unbutton my eyes. Fanny, I want to see you better!"
Fanny carries him to bed and drops a little hot wax over his eyes.
She puts rings around his navel and a thermometer up his ass. She places him
and he quivers again. Suddenly he's dwindled, shrunk completely out of
sight. She searches all over for him, in her intestines, everywhere.
Something is tickling her -- she doesn't know where exactly. The bed is full
of toads and fancy vest buttons.
"Fanny, where are you?" Something is tickling her -- she can't say where. The
buttons are dropping off the bed. The toads are climbing the walls. A
tickling and a tickling. "Fanny, take the wax out of my eyes! I want to
look at you!" But Fanny is laughing, squirming with laughter. There is
something inside her, tickling and tickling. She'll die laughing if she
doesn't find it. "Fanny, the trunk is full of beautiful things. Fanny, do
you hear me?" Fanny is laughing, laughing like a fat worm. Her belly is
swollen with laughter. Her legs are getting blue. "O God, Morris, there is
something tickling me ... I can't help it!"
* * *
Sunday! Left the Villa Borghese a little before noon, just as Boris was
getting ready to sit down to lunch. I left out of a sense of delicacy,
because it really pains Boris to see me sitting there in the studio with an
empty belly. Why he doesn't invite me to lunch with him I don't know. He
says he can't afford it, but that's no excuse. Anyway, I'm delicate about
it. If it pains him to eat alone in my presence it would probably pain him
more to share his meal with me. It's not my place to pry into his secret
affairs.
Dropped in at the Cronstadts' and they were eating too. A young chicken with
wild rice. Pretended that I had eaten already, but I could have torn the
chicken from the baby's hands. This is not just false modesty -- it's a kind
of perversion, I'm thinking. Twice they asked me if I wouldn't join them.
No! No! Wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee after the meal. I'm
delicat, I am! On the way out I cast a lingering glance at the bones
lying on the baby's plate -- there was still meat on them.
Prowling around aimlessly. A beautiful day -- so far. The Rue de Buci is
alive, crawling. The bars wide open and the curbs lined with bicycles. All
the meat and vegetable markets are in full swing. Arms loaded with truck
bandaged in newspapers. A fine Catholic Sunday -- in the morning, at least.
High noon and here I am standing on an empty belly at the confluence of all
these crooked lanes that reek with the odor of food. Opposite me is the Hotel
de Louisiane. A grim old hostelry known to the bad boys of the Rue de Boci in
the good old days. Hotels and food, and I'm walking about like a leper with
crabs gnawing at my entrails. On Sunday mornings there's a fever in the
streets. Nothing like it anywhere, except perhaps on the East Side, or down
around Chatham Square. The Rue de l'Echaude is seething. The streets twist
and turn, at every angle a fresh hive of activity. Long queues of people with
vegetables under their arms, turning in here and there with crisp, sparkling
appetites. Nothing but food, food, food. Makes one delirious.
Pass the Square de Furstemberg. Looks different now, at high noon. The other
night when I passed by it was deserted, bleak, spectral. In the middle of
the square four black trees that have not yet begun to blossom.
Intellectual trees, nourished by the paving stones. Like T. S. Eliot's
verse. Here, by God, if Marie Laurencin ever brought her Lesbians out into
the open, would be the place for them to commune. Tres lesbienne id.
Sterile, hybrid, dry as Boris' heart.
In the little garden adjoining the Eglise St. Germain are a few dismounted
gargoyles. Monsters that jut forward with a terrifying plunge. On the
benches other monsters -- old people, idiots, cripples, epileptics. Snoozing
quietly, waiting for the dinner bell to ring. At the Galerie Zak across the
way some imbecile has made a picture of the cosmos -- on the flat. A
painter's cosmos! Full of odds and ends, bric-a-brac. In the lower left-hand
corner, however, there's an anchor -- and a dinner bell. Salute! Salute, O
Cosmos!
Still prowling around. Mid-aftemoon. Guts rattling. Beginning to rain now.
Notre-Dame rises tomb-like from the water. The gargoyles lean far out over
the lace facade. They hang there like an idee fixe in the mind of a
monomaniac. An old man with yellow whiskers approaches me. Has some
Jaworski nonsense in his hand. Comes up to me with his head thrown back and
the rain splashing in his face turns the golden sands to mud. Book store
with some of Raoul Dufy's drawings in the window. Drawings of charwomen with
rose bushes between their legs. A treatise on the philosophy of Joan Miro.
The philosophy, mind you!
In the same window: A Man Cut In Slices! Chapter one: the man in the
eyes of his family. Chapter two: the same in the eyes of his mistress.
Chapter three:--No chapter three. Have to come back tomorrow for chapters
three and four. Every day the window trimmer turns a fresh page. A man
cut in slices ... You can't imagine how furious I am not to have
thought of a title like that! Where is this bloke who writes "the same in
the eyes of his mistress ... the same in the eyes of ... the same ..."?
Where is this guy? Who is he? I want to hug him. I wish to Christ I had had
brains enough to think of a title like that -- instead of Crazy Cock
and the other fool things I invented. Well, fuck a duck! I congratulate him
just the same.
I wish him luck with his fine title. Here's another slice for you -- for your
next book! Ring me up some day. I'm living at the Villa Borghese. We're all
dead, or dying, or about to die. We need good titles. We need meat -- slices
and slices of meat -- juicy tenderloins, porterhouse steaks, kidneys, mountain
oysters, sweetbreads. Some day, when I'm standing at the corner of 42nd
Street and Broadway, I'm going to remember this title and I'm going to put
down everything that goes on in my noodle -- caviar, rain drops, axle-grease,
vermicelli, liverwurst -- slices and slices of it. And I'll tell no one why,
after I had put everything down, I suddenly went home and chopped the baby
along" -- very charming, charming indeed, as Borowski would say, but really
very painful, particularly when the thinker is nothing but a spavined horse.
Boris hands me money to buy liquor. Going for the liquor I am already
intoxicated. I know just how I'll begin when I get back to the house.
Walking down the street it commences, the grand speech inside me that's
gurgling like Mrs. Wren's loose laugh. Seems to me she had a slight edge on
already. Listens beautifully when she's tight. Coming out of the wine-shop I
hear the urinal gurgling. Everything is loose and splashy. I want Mrs. Wren
to listen ...
Boris is rubbing his hands again. Mr. Wren is still stuttering and
spluttering. I have a bottle between my legs and I'm shoving the corkscrew
in. Mrs. Wren has her mouth parted expectantly. The wine is splashing
between my legs, the sun is splashing through the bay window, and inside my
veins there is a bubble and splash of a thousand crazy things that commence
to gush out of me now pell-mell. I'm telling them everything that comes to
mind, everything that was bottled up inside me and which Mrs. Wren's loose
laugh has somehow released. With that bottle between my legs and the sun
splashing through the window I experience once again the splendor of those
miserable days when I first arrived in Paris, a bewildered, poverty-stricken
individual who haunted the streets like a ghost at a banquet. Everything
comes back to me in a rush -- the toilets that wouldn't work, the prince who
shined my shoes, the Cinema Splendide where I slept on the patron's
overcoat, the bars in the window, the feeling of suffocation, the fat
cockroaches, the drinking and carousing that went on between times. Rose
Cannaque and Naples dying in the sunlight. Dancing the streets on an empty
belly and now and then calling on strange people -- Madame Delorme, for
instance. How I ever got to Madame Delorme's, I can't imagine any more. But
I got there, got inside somehow, past the butler, past the maid with her
little white apron, got right inside the palace with my corduroy trousers
and my hunting jacket -- and not a button on my fly. Even now I can taste
again the golden ambiance of that room where Madame Delorme sat upon a
throne in her mannish rig, the goldfish in the bowls, the maps of the ancient
world, the beautifully bound books; I can feel again her heavy hand resting
upon my shoulder, frightening me a little with her heavy Lesbian air. More
comfortable down below in that thick stew pouring into the Gare St. Lazare,
the whores in the doorways, seltzer bottles on every table; a thick tide of
semen flooding the gutters. Nothing better, between five and seven than to be
pushed around in that throng, to follow a leg or a beautiful bust, to move
along with the tide and everything whirling in your brain. A weird sort of
contentment in those days. No appointments, no invitations for dinner, no
program, no dough. The golden period, when I had not a single friend. Each
morning the dreary walk to the American Express, and each morning the
inevitable answer from the clerk. Dashing here and there like a bedbug,
gathering butts now and then, sometimes furtively, sometimes brazenly;
sitting down on a bench and squeezing my guts to stop the gnawing, or walking
through the Jardin des Tuileries and getting an erection looking at the dumb
statues. Or wandering along the Seine at night, wandering and wandering, and
going mad with the beauty of it, the trees leaning to, the broken images in
the water, the rush of the current under the bloody lights of the bridges,
the women sleeping in doorways, sleeping on newspapers, sleeping in the rain;
everywhere the musty porches of the cathedrals and beggars and lice and old
hags full of St. Vitus' dance; pushcarts stacked up like wine barrels in the
side streets, the smell of berries in the market-place and the old church
surrounded with vegetables and blue arc lights, the gutters slippery with
garbage and women in satin pumps staggering through the filth and vermin at
the end of an all-night souse. The Place St. Sulpice, so quiet and deserted,
where toward midnight there came every night the woman with the busted
umbrella and the crazy veil; every night she slept there on a bench under her
torn umbrella, the ribs hanging down, her dress turning green, her bony
fingers and the odor of decay oozing from her body; and in the morning I'd be
sitting there myself, taking a quiet snooze in the sunshine, cursing the
goddamned pigeons gathering up the crumbs everywhere. St. Sulpice! The fat
belfries, the garish posters over the door, the candles flaming inside. The
Square so beloved of Anatole France, with that drone and buzz from the altar,
the splash of the fountain, the pigeons cooing, the crumbs disappearing like
magic and only a dull rumbling in the hollow of the guts. Here I would sit
day after day thinking of Germaine and that dirty little street near the
Bastille where she lived, and that buzz-buzz going on behind the altar, the
buses whizzing by, the sun beating down into the asphalt and the asphalt
working into me and Germaine, into the asphalt and all Paris in the big fat
belfries.
And it was down the Rue Bonaparte that only a year before Mona and I used to
walk every night, after we had taken leave of Borowski. St. Sulpice not
meaning much to me then, nor anything in Paris. Washed out with talk. Sick
of faces. Fed up with cathedrals and squares and menageries and what not.
Picking up a book in the red bedroom and the cane chair uncomfortable; tired
of sitting on my ass all day long, tired of red wallpaper, tired of seeing so
many people jabbering away about nothing. The red bedroom and the trunk
always open; her gowns lying about in a delirium of disorder. The red bedroom
with my goloshes and canes, the notebooks I never touched, the manuscripts
lying cold and dead. Paris! Meaning the Cafe Select, the D6me, the Flea
Market, the American Express. Paris! Meaning Borowski's canes, Borowski's
hats, Borowski's gouaches, Borowski's prehistoric fish -- and prehistoric
jokes. In that Paris of '28 only one night stands out in my memory -- the
night before sailing for America. A rare night, with Borowski slightly
pickled and a little disgusted with me because I'm dancing with every slut in
the place. But we're leaving in the morning! That's what I tell every cunt I
grab hold of -- leaving in the morning! That's what I'm telling the
blonde with agate-colored eyes. And while I'm telling her she takes my hand
and sqeeezes it between her legs. In the lavatory I stand before the bowl
with a tremendous erection; it seems light and heavy at the same time, like a
piece of lead with wings on it. And while I'm standing there like that two
cunts sail in -- Americans. I greet them cordially, prick in hand. They give
me a wink and pass on. In the vestibule, as I'm buttoning my fly, I notice
one of them waiting for her friend to come out of the can. The music
is still playing and maybe Mona'll be coming to fetch me, or Borowski
with his gold-knobbed cane, but I'm in her arms now and she has hold of me
and I don't care who comes or what happens. We wriggle into the cabinet and
there I stand her up, slap up against the wall, and I try to get it into her
but it won't work and so we sit down on the seat and try it that way but it
won't work either. No matter how we try it it won't work. And all the while
she's got hold of my prick, she's clutching it like a life-saver, but it's no
use, we're too hot, too eager. The music is still playing and so we waltz out
of the cabinet into the vestibule again and as we're dancing there in the
shit-house I come all over her beautiful gown and she's sore as hell about
it. I stumble back to the table and there's Borowski with his ruddy face and
Mona with her disapproving eye. And Borowski says "Let's all go to Brussels
tomorrow," and we agree, and when we get back to the hotel I vomit all over
the place, in the bed, in the washbowl, over the suits and gowns and the
goloshes and canes and the notebooks I never touched and the manuscripts
lying cold and dead.
A few months later. The same hotel, the same room. We look out on the
courtyard where the bicycles are parked, and there is the little room up
above, under the attic, where some smart young Alee played the phonograph
all day long and repeated clever little things at the top of his voice. I
say "we" but I'm getting ahead of myself, because Mona has been away a long
time and it's just today that I'm meeting her at the Gare St. Lazare. Toward
evening I'm standing there with my face squeezed between the bars, but
there's no Mona, and I read the cable over again but it doesn't help any. I
go back to the Quarter and just the same I put away a hearty meal. Strolling
past the D6me and a little later suddenly I see a pale, heavy face and
burning eyes -- and the little velvet suit that I always adored because under
the soft velvet there were always her warm breasts, the marble legs, cool,
firm, muscular. She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me,
embraces me passionately -- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles,
windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us and we in each other's arms
oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks -- a flood of talk. Wild
consumptive notes of histeria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because
she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.
We walk down the Rue du Chateau, looking for Eugene. Walk over the railroad
bridge where I used to watch the trains pulling out and feel all sick inside
wondering where the hell she could be. Everything soft and enchanting as we
walk over the bridge. Smoke coming up between our legs, the tracks
creaking, semaphores in our blood. I feel her body close to mine -- all mine
now -- and I stop to rub my hands over the warm velvet. Everything around us
is crumbling, crumbling and the warm body under the warm velvet is aching
for me ...
Back in the very same room and fifty francs to the good, thanks to Eugene/ I
look out on the court but the phonograph is silent. The trunk is open and
her things are lying around everywhere just as before. She lies down on the
bed with her clothes on. Once, twice, three times, four times ... I'm afraid
she'll go mad ... in bed, under the blankets, how good to feel her body
again! But for how long? Will it last this time? Already I have a
presentiment that it won't.
She talks to me so feverishly -- as if there will be no tomorrow. "Be quiet,
Mona! Just look at me ... don't talk!" Finally she drops off and I
pull my arm from under her. My eyes close. Her body is there beside me ...
it will be there till morning surely ... It was in February I pulled out of
the harbor in a blinding snowstorm. The last glimpse I had of her was in the
window waving good-bye to me. A man standing on the other side of the
street, at the corner, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his jowls resting
on his lapels. A foetus watching me. A foetus with a cigar in its mouth.
Mona at the window waving goodbye. White heavy face, hair streaming wild.
And now it is a heavy bedroom, breathing regularly through the gills, sap
still oozing from between her legs, a warm feline odor and her hair in my
mouth. My eyes are closed. We breathe warmly into each other's mouth. Close
together, America three thousand miles away. I never want to see it again.
To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth -- I
count that something of a miracle. Nothing can happen now till morning ...
I wake from a deep slumber to look at her. A pale light is trickling in. I
look at her beautiful wild hair. I feel something crawling down my neck. I
look at her again, closely. Her hair is alive! I pull back the sheet -- more
of them. They are swarming over the pillow.
It is a little after daybreak. We pack hurriedly and sneak out of the hotel.
The cafes are still closed. We walk, and as we walk we scratch ourselves.
The day opens in milky whiteness, streaks of salmon-pink sky, snails leaving
their shells. Paris. Paris. Everything happens here. Old, crumbling walls
and the pleasant sound of water running in the urinals. Men licking their
moustaches at the bar. Shutters going up with a bang and little streams
purling in the gutters. Amer Picon in huge scarlet letters.
Zigzag. Which way will we go and why or where or what?
Mona is hungry, her dress is thin. Nothing but evening wraps, bottles of
perfume, barbaric earrings, bracelets, depilatories. We sit down in a
billiard parlor on the Avenue due Maine and order hot coffee. The toilet is
out of order. We shall have to sit some time before we can go to another
hotel. Meanwhile we pick bedbugs out of each other's hair. Nervous. Mona is
losing her temper. Must have a bath. Must have this. Must have that. Must,
must, must ...
"How much money have you left?"
Money! Forgot all about that.
Hotel des Etats-Unis. An ascenseur. We go to bed in broad daylight.
When we get up it is dark and the first thing to do is to raise enough dough
to send a cable to America. A cable to the foetus with the long juicy cigar
in his mouth. Meanwhile there is the Spanish woman on the Boulevard
Raspail -- she's always good for a warm meal. By morning something will
happen. At least we're going to bed together. No more bedbugs now. The rainy
season has commenced. The sheets are immaculate ...
* * *
A new life opening up for me at the Villa Borghese. Only ten o'clock and we
have already had breakfast and been out for a walk. We have an Elsa here with
us now. "Step softly for a few days," cautions Boris.
The day begins gloriously: a bright sky, a fresh wind, the houses newly
washed. On our way to the Post Office Boris and I discussed the book. The
Last Book -- which is going to be written anonymously.
A new day is beginning. I felt it this morning as we stood before one of
Dufresne's glistening canvases, a sort of dejeuner intime in the 13th
century, sans vin. A fine, fleshy nude, solid, vibrant, pink as a
fingernail, with glistening billows of flesh; all the secondary
characteristics, and a few of the primary. A body that sings, that has the
moisture of dawn. A still life, only nothing is still, nothing dead here. The
table creaks with food; it is so heavy it is sliding out of the frame. A 13th
century repast -- with all the jungle notes that he has memorized so well. A
family of gazelles and zebras nipping the fronds of the palms.
And now we have Elsa. She was playing for us this morning while we were in
bed. Step softly for a few days ... Good! Elsa is the maid and I am
the guest. And Boris is the big cheese. A new drama is beginning. I'm
laughing to myself as I write this. He knows what is going to happen, that
lynx, Boris. He has a nose for things too. Step softly ...
Boris is on pins and needles. At any moment now his wife may appear on the
scene. She weighs well over 180 pounds, that wife of his. And Boris is only
a handful. There you have the situation. He tries to explain it to me on our
way home at night. It is so tragic and so ridiculous at the same time that I
am obliged to stop now and then and laugh in his face. "Why do you laugh so?"
he says gently, and then he commences himself, with that whimpering,
hysterical note in his voice, like a helpless wretch who realizes suddenly
that no matter how many frock coats he puts on he will never make a man. He
wants to run away, to take a new name. "She can have everything, that cow, if
only she leaves me alone," he whines. But first the apartment has to be
rented, and the deeds signed, and a thousand other details for which his
frock coat will come in handy. But the size of her! -- that's what really
worries him. If we were to find her suddenly standing on the doorstep when we
arrive he would faint -- that's how much he respects her!
And so we've got to go easy with Elsa for a while. Elsa is only there to
make breakfast -- and to show the apartment.
But Elsa is already undermining me. That German blood. Those melancholy
songs. Coming down the stairs this morning, with the fresh coffee in my
nostrils, I was humming softly ... "Es war' so schon gewesen." For
breakfast, that. And in a little while the English boy upstairs with his
Bach. As Elsa says -- "he needs a woman." And Elsa needs something too. I can
feel it. I didn't say anything to Boris about it, but while he was cleaning
his teeth this morning Elsa was giving me an earful about Berlin, about the
women who look so attractive from behind, and when they turn round -- wow,
syphilis!
It seems to me that Elsa looks at me rather wistfully. Something left over
from the breakfast table. This afternoon we were writing, back to back, in
the studio. She had begun a letter to her lover who is in Italy. The machine
got jammed. Boris had gone to look at a cheap room he will take as soon as
the apartment is rented. There was nothing for it but to make love to Elsa.
She wanted it. And yet I felt a little sorry for her. She had only written
the first line to her lover -- I read it out of the corner of my eye as I
bent over her. But it couldn't be helped. That damned German music, so
melancholy, so sentimental. It undermined me. And then her beady little eyes,
so hot and sorrowful at the same time.
After it was over I asked her to play something for me.
She's a musician, Elsa, even though it sounded like broken pots and skulls
clanking. She was weeping, too, as she played. I don't blame her. Everywhere
the same thing, she says. Everywhere a man, and then she has to leave, and
then there's an abortion and then a new job and then another man and nobody
gives a fuck about her except to use her. All this after she's played
Schumann for me -- Schumann, that slobbery, sentimental German bastard!
Somehow I feel sorry as hell for her and yet I don't give a damn. A cunt who
can play as she does ought to have better sense than be tripped up by every
guy with a big putz who happens to come along. But that Schumann gets into
my blood. She's still sniffling, Elsa; but my mind is far away. I'm thinking
of Tania and how she claws away at her adagio. I'm thinking of lots of
things that are gone and buried. Thinking of a summer afternoon in
Greenpoint when the Germans were romping over Belgium and we had not yet
lost enough money to be concerned over the rape of a neutral country. A
time when we were still innocent enough to listen to poets and to sit around
a table in the twilight rapping for departed spirits. All that afternoon and
evening the atmosphere is saturated with German music; the whole
neighborhood is German, more German even than Germany. We were brought up on
Schumann and Hugo Wolf and Sauerkraut and Kummel and potato
dumplings. Toward evening we're sitting around a big table with the curtains
drawn and some fool two-headed wench is rapping for Jesus Christ. We're
holding hands under the table and the dame next to me has two fingers in my
fly. And finally we lie on the floor, behind the piano, while someone sings
a dreary song. The air is stifling and her breath is boozy. The pedal is
moving up and down, stiffly, automatically, a crazy, futile movement, like a
tower of dung that takes twenty-seven years to build but keeps perfect time.
I pull her over me with the sounding board in my ears; the room is dark and
the carpet is sticky with the Kiimmel that has been spilled about. Suddenly
it seems as if the dawn were coming: it is like water purling over ice and
the ice is blue with a rising mist, glaciers sunk in emerald green, chamois
and antelope, golden groupers, sea-cows mouching along and the amber-jack
leaping over the Arctic rim ...
Elsa is sitting in my lap. Her eyes are like little belly-buttons. I look at
her large mouth, so wet and glistening, and I cover it. She is humming now
... "Es war' so schon gewesen ..." Ah, Elsa, you don't know yet what
that means to me, your Trompeter von Sackingen. German Singing
Societies, Schwaben Hall, the Turnverein ... links um, rechts um ...
and then a whack over the ass with the end of a rope.
Ah, the Germans! They take you all over like an omnibus. They give you
indigestion. In the same night one cannot visit the morgue, the infirmary,
the zoo, the signs of the zodiac, the limbos of philosophy, the caves of
epistemology, the arcana of Freud and Stekel ... On the merry-go-round one
doesn't get anywhere, whereas with the Germans one can go from Vega to Lope
de Vega, all in one night, and come away as foolish as Parsifal.
As I say, the day began gloriously. It was only this morning that I became
conscious again of this physical Paris of which I have been unaware for
weeks. Perhaps it is because the book has begun to grow inside me. I am
carrying it around with me everywhere. I walk through the streets big with
child and the cops escort me across the street. Women get up to offer me
their seats. Nobody pushes me rudely any more. I am pregnant. I waddle
awkwardly; my big stomach pressed against the weight of the world.
It was this morning, on our way to the Post Office, that we gave the book
its final imprimatur. We have evolved a new cosmogony of literature,
Boris and I. It is to be a new Bible -- The Last Book. All those who
have anything to say will say it here -- anonymously. We will exhaust
the age. After us not another book -- not for a generation, at least.
Heretofore we had been digging in the dark, with nothing but instinct to
guide us. Now we shall have a vessel in which to pour the vital fluid, a
bomb which, when we throw it, will set off the world. We shall put into it
enough to give the writers of tomorrow their plots, their dramas, their
poems, their myths, their sciences. The world will be able to feed on it for
a thousand years to come. It is colossal in its pretentiousness. The thought
of it almost shatters us.
For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And
not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put
a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is
rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it
needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have
in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds
of the air. We are going to put it down -- the evolution of this world which
has died but which has not been buried. We are swimming on the face of time
and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown. It will be enormous,
the Book. There will be oceans of space in which to move about, to
perambulate, to sing, to dance, to climb, to bathe, to leap somersaults, to
whine, to rape, to murder. A cathedral, a veritable cathedral, in the
building of which everybody will assist who has lost his identity. There
will be masses for the dead, prayers, confessions, hymns, a moaning and a
chattering, a sort of murderous insouciance; there will be rose windows and
gargoyles and acolytes and pallbearers. You can bring your horses in a
gallop through the aisles. You can butt your head against the walls -- they
won't give. You can pray in any language you choose, or you can curl up
outside and go to sleep. It will last a thousand years, at least, this
cathedral, and there will be no replica, for the builders will be dead and
the formula too. We will have postcards made and organize tours. We will
build a town around it and set up a free commune. We have no need for
genius -- genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are
willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh ...
The day is moving along at a fine tempo. I am up on the balcony at Tania's
place. The drama is going on down below in the drawing-room. The dramatist
is sick and from above his scalp looks more scabrous than ever. His hair is
made of straw. His ideas are straw. His wife too is straw, though still a
little damp. The whole house is made of straw. Here I am up on the balcony,
waiting for Boris to arrive. My last problem -- breakfast -- is gone. I
have simplified everything. If there are any new problems I can carry them in
my rucksack, along with my dirty wash. I am throwing away all my sous. What
need have I for money? I am a writing machine. The last screw has been added.
The thing flows. Between me and the machine there is no estrangement. I am
the machine ...
They have not told me yet what the new drama is about, but I can sense it.
They are trying to get rid of me. Yet here I am for my dinner, even a little
earlier than they expected. I have informed them where to sit, what to do. I
ask them politely if I shall be disturbing them, but what I really mean, and
they know it well, is -- will you be disturbing me? No, you blissful
cockroaches, you are not disturbing me. You are nourishing me. I see
you sitting there close together and I know there is a chasm between you.
Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I
withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.
Tania is in a hostile mood -- I can feel it. She resents my being filled with
anything but herself. She knows by the very calibre of my excitement that
her value is reduced to zero. She knows that I did not come this evening to
fertilize her. She knows there is something germinating inside me which will
destroy her. She is slow to realize, but she is realizing it ...
Sylvester looks more content. He will embrace her this evening at the dinner
table. Even now he is reading my manuscript, preparing to inflame my ego, to
set my ego against hers.
It will be a strange gathering this evening. The stage is being set. I hear
the tinkle of the glasses. The wine is being brought out. There will be
bumpers downed and Sylvester who is ill will come out of his illness.
It was only last night, at Cronstadt's, that we projected this setting. It
was ordained that the women must suffer, that off-stage there should be more
terror and violence, more disasters, more suffering, more woe and misery.
It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris. Paris is simply an
artificial stage, a revolving stage that permits the spectator to glimpse
all phases of the conflict. Of itself Paris initiates no dramas. They are
begun elsewhere. Paris is simply an obstetrical instrument that tears
the living embryo from the womb and puts it in the incubator. Paris is the
cradle of artificial births. Rocking here in the cradle each one slips back
into his soil: one dreams back to Berlin, New York, Chicago, Vienna, Minsk.
Vienna is never more Vienna than in Paris. Everything is raised to
apotheosis. The cradle gives up its babes and new ones take their places.
You can read here on the walls where Zola lived and Balzac and Dante and
Strindberg and everybody who ever was anything. Everyone has lived here
some time or other. Nobody dies here ...
They are talking downstairs. Their language is symbolic. The word
"struggle" enters into it. Sylvester, the sick dramatist, is saying: "I am
just reading the Manifesto." And Tania says -- "Whose?" Yes,
Tania, I heard you. I am up here writing about you and you divine it well.
Speak more, that I may record you. For when we go to table I shall
not be able to make any notes ... Suddenly Tania remarks: "There is no
prominent hall in this place." Now what does that mean, if anything?
They are putting up pictures now. That, too, is to impress me. See, they
wish to say, we are at home here, living the conjugal life. Making the home
attractive. We will even argue a little about the pictures, for your
benefit. And Tania remarks again: "How the eye deceives one!" Ah, Tania,
what things you say! Go on, carry out this farce a little longer. I am here
to get the dinner you promised me; I enjoy this comedy tremendously. And now
Sylvester takes the lead. He is trying to explain one of Borowski's
gouaches. "Come here, do you see? One of them is playing the guitar;
the other is holding a girl in his lap." True, Sylvester. Very true.
Borowski and his guitars! The girls in his lap! Only one never quite knows
what it is he holds in his lap, or whether it is really a man playing the
guitar ...
Soon Moldorf will be trotting in on all fours and Boris with that helpless
little laugh of his. There will be a golden pheasant for dinner and Anjou
and short fat cigars. And Cronstadt, when he gets the latest news, will
live a little harder, a little brighter, for five minutes; and then he will
subside again into the humus of his ideology
and perhaps a poem will be born, a big golden bell of a poem without a
tongue.
Had to knock off for an hour or so. Another customer to look at the
apartment. Upstairs the bloody Englishman is practising his Bach. It is
imperative now, when someone comes to look at the apartment, to run
upstairs and ask the pianist to lay off for a while.
Elsa is telephoning the greengrocer. The plumber is putting a new seat on
the toilet bowl. Whenever the doorbell rings Boris loses his equilibrium.
In the excitement he has dropped his glasses; he is on his hands and knees,
his frock coat is dragging the floor. It is a little like the Grand
Guignol -- the starving poet come to give the butcher's daughter lessons.
Every time the phone rings the poet's mouth waters. Mallarme sounds like a
sirloin steak, Victor Hugo like foie de veau. Elsa is ordering a
delicate little lunch for Boris -- "a nice juicy little pork chop," she says.
I see a whole flock of pink hams lying cold on the marble, wonderful hams
cushioned in white fat. I have a terrific hunger though we've only had
breakfast a few minutes ago -- it's the lunch that I'll have to skip. It's
only Wednesdays that I eat lunch, thanks to Borowski. Elsa is still
telephoning -- she forgot to order a piece of bacon. "Yes, a nice little piece
of bacon, not too fatty," she says ... Zut alors! Throw in some
sweetbreads, throw in some mountain oysters and some psst clams! Throw in
some fried liverwurst while you're at it; I could gobble up the fifteen
hundred plays of Lope de Vega in one sitting.
It is a beautiful woman who has come to look at the apartment. An American,
of course. I stand at the window with my back to her watching a sparrow
pecking at a fresh turd. Amazing how easily the sparrow is provided for. It
is raining a bit and the drops are very big. I used to think a bird couldn't
fly if its wings got wet. Amazing how these rich dames come to Paris and find
all the swell studios. A little talent and a big purse. If it rains they have
a chance to display their brand new slickers. Food is nothing: sometimes
they're so busy gadding about that they haven't time for lunch. Just a little
sandwich, a wafer, at the Cafe de la Paix or the Ritz Bar.
"For the daughters of gentlefolk only" -- that's what it says at the old
studio of Puvis de Chavannes. Happened to pass there the other day. Rich
American cunts with paint boxes slung over their shoulders. A little talent
and a fat purse.
The sparrow is hopping frantically from one cobble-stone to another. Truly
herculean efforts, if you stop to examine closely. Everywhere there is food
lying about -- in the gutter, I mean. The beautiful American woman is
inquiring about the toilet. The toilet! Let me show you, you velvet-snooted
gazelle! The toilet, you say? Par id, Madame. N'oubliez. pas que les
places numerotees sont reservees aux mutiles de la guerre.
Boris is rubbing his hands -- he is putting the finishing touches to the deal.
The dogs are barking in the courtyard; they bark like wolves. Upstairs Mrs.
Melverness is moving the furniture around. She had nothing to do all day,
she's bored; if she finds a crumb of dirt anywhere she cleans the whole
house. There's a bunch of green grapes on the table and a bottle of
wine -- vin de choix, 10 degrees. "Yes," says Boris, "I could make a
wash-stand for you, just come here, please. Yes, this is the toilet. There
is one upstairs too, of course. Yes, a thousand francs a month. You don't
care much for Utrillo, you say? No, this is it. It needs a new washer,
that's all ..."
She's going in a minute now. Boris hasn't even introduced me this time. The
son of a bitch! Whenever it's a rich cunt he forgets to introduce me. In a
few minutes I'll be able to sit down again and type. Somehow I don't feel
like it any more today. My spirit is dribbling away. She may come back in an
hour or so and take the chair from under my ass. How the hell can a man
write when he doesn't know where he's going to sit the next half hour? If
this rich bastard takes the place I won't even have a place to sleep. It's
hard to know, when you're in such a jam which is worse -- not having a place
to sleep or not having a place to work. One can sleep almost anywhere, but
one must have a place to work. Even if it's not a masterpiece you're doing.
Even a bad novel requires a chair to sit on and a bit of privacy. These rich
cunts never think of a thing like that. Whenever they want to lower their
soft behinds there's always a chair standing ready for them ...
Last night we left Sylvester and his God sitting together before the
hearth. Sylvester in his pajamas, Moldorf with a cigar between his lips.
Sylvester is peeling an orange. He puts the peel on the couch-cover.
Moldorf draws closer to him. He asks permission to read again that brilliant
parody The Gates of Heaven. We are getting ready to go, Boris and I.
We are too gay for this sick-room atmosphere. Tania is going with us. She is
gay because she is going to escape. Boris is gay because the God in Moldorf
is dead. I am gay because it is another act we are going to put on.
Moldorf's voice is reverent. "Can I stay with you, Sylvester, until you go
to bed?" He has been staying with him for the last six days, buying
medicine, running errands for Tania, comforting, consoling, guarding the
portals against malevolent intruders like Boris and his scallywags. He is
like a savage who has discovered that his idol was mutilated during the
night. There he sits, at the idol's feet, with breadfruit and grease and
jabber-wocky prayers. His voice goes out unctuously. His limbs are already
paralyzed.
To Tania he speaks as if she were a priestess who had broken her vows. "You
must make yourself worthy. Sylvester is your God." And while Sylvester is
upstairs suffering (he has a little wheeze in the chest) the priest and the
priestess devour the food. "You are polluting yourself," he says, the gravy
dripping from his lips. He has the capacity for eating and suffering at the
same time. While he fends off the dangerous ones he puts out his fat little
paw and strokes Tania's hair. "I am beginning to fall in love with you. You
are like my Fanny."
In other respects it has been a fine day for Moldorf. A letter arrived from
America. Moe is getting A's in everything. Murray is learning to ride the
bicycle. The victrola was repaired. You can see from the expression on his
face that there were other things in the letter besides report cards and
velocipedes. You can be sure of it because this afternoon he bought 325
francs worth of jewelry for his Fanny. In addition he wrote her a
twenty-page letter. The garcon brought him page after page, filled
his fountain pen, served his coffee and cigars, fanned him a little
when he perspired, brushed the crumbs from the table, lit his cigar when it
went out, bought stamps for him, danced on him, piroutted, salaamed ...
broke his spine damned near. The tip was fat. Bigger and fatter than a
Corona Corona. Moldorf probably mentioned it in his diary. It was for
Fanny's sake. The bracelet and the earrings, they were worth every sou he
spent. Better to spend it on Fanny than waste it on little strumpets like
Germaine and Odette. Yes, he told Tania so. He showed her his trunk. It is
crammed with gifts -- for Fanny, and for Moe and Murray.
"My Fanny is the most intelligent woman in the world. I have been searching
and searching to find a flaw in her -- but there's not one.
"She's perfect. I'll tell you what Fanny can do. She plays bridge like a
shark; she's interested in Zionism; you give her an old hat, for instance,
and see what she can do with it. A little twist here, a ribbon there, and
voila quelque chose de beau! Do you know what is perfect bliss? To
sit beside Fanny, when Moe and Murray have gone to bed, and listen to the
radio. She sits there so peacefully. I am rewarded for all my struggles and
heartaches in just watching her. She listens intelligently. When I think of
your stinking Montparnasse and then of my evenings in Bay Ridge with Fanny
after a big meal, I tell you there is no comparison. A simple thing like
food, the children, the soft lamps, and Fanny sitting there, a little tired,
but cheerful, contented, heavy with bread ... we just sit there for hours
without saying a word. That's bliss!
"Today she writes me a letter -- not one of those dull stock report letters.
She writes me from the heart, in language that even my little Murray could
understand. She's delicate about everything, Fanny. She says that the
children must continue their education but the expense worries her. It
will cost a thousand bucks to send little Murray to school. Moe, of course,
will get a scholarship. But little Murray, that little genius, Murray, what
are we going to do about him? I wrote Fanny not to worry. Send Murray to
school, I said. What's another thousand dollars? I'll make more money this
year than ever before. I'll do it for little Murray -- because he's a genius,
that kid."
I should like to be there when Fanny opens the trunk. "See, Fanny, this is
what I bought in Budapest from an old Jew ... This is what they wear in
Bulgaria -- it's pure wool . .. This belonged to the Duke of something or
other -- no, you don't wind it, you put it in the sun This I want you to wear,
Fanny, when we go to the Opera ... wear it with that comb I showed you ...
And this, Fanny, is something Tania picked up for me ... she's a little bit
on your type ..."
And Fanny is sitting there on the settee, just as she was in the oleograph,
with Moe on one side of her and little Murray, Murray the genius, on the
other. Her fat legs are a little too short to reach the floor. Her eyes have
a dull permanganate glow. Breasts like ripe red cabbage; they bobble a
little when she leans forward. But the sad thing about her is that the juice
has been cut off. She sits there like a dead storage battery; her face is
out of plumb -- it needs a little animation, a sudden spurt of juice to bring
it back into focus. Moldorf is jumping around in front of her like a fat
toad. His flesh quivers. He slips and it is difficult for him to roll over
again on his belly. She prods him with her thick toes. His eyes protrude a
little further. "Kick me again. Fanny, that was good!" She gives him a good
prod this time -- it leaves a permanent dent in his paunch. His face is close
to the carpet; the wattles are joggling in the nap of the rug. He livens up
a bit, flips around, springs from furniture to furniture. "Fanny, you are
marvellous!" He is sitting now on her shoulder. He bites a little piece from
her ear, just a little tip from the lobe where it doesn't hurt. But she's
still dead -- all storage battery and no juice. He falls on her lap and lies
there quivering like a toothache. He is all warm now and helpless. His
belly glistens like a patent-leather shoe. In the sockets of his eyes a pair
of fancy vest buttons. "Unbutton my eyes. Fanny, I want to see you better!"
Fanny carries him to bed and drops a little hot wax over his eyes.
She puts rings around his navel and a thermometer up his ass. She places him
and he quivers again. Suddenly he's dwindled, shrunk completely out of
sight. She searches all over for him, in her intestines, everywhere.
Something is tickling her -- she doesn't know where exactly. The bed is full
of toads and fancy vest buttons.
"Fanny, where are you?" Something is tickling her -- she can't say where. The
buttons are dropping off the bed. The toads are climbing the walls. A
tickling and a tickling. "Fanny, take the wax out of my eyes! I want to
look at you!" But Fanny is laughing, squirming with laughter. There is
something inside her, tickling and tickling. She'll die laughing if she
doesn't find it. "Fanny, the trunk is full of beautiful things. Fanny, do
you hear me?" Fanny is laughing, laughing like a fat worm. Her belly is
swollen with laughter. Her legs are getting blue. "O God, Morris, there is
something tickling me ... I can't help it!"
* * *
Sunday! Left the Villa Borghese a little before noon, just as Boris was
getting ready to sit down to lunch. I left out of a sense of delicacy,
because it really pains Boris to see me sitting there in the studio with an
empty belly. Why he doesn't invite me to lunch with him I don't know. He
says he can't afford it, but that's no excuse. Anyway, I'm delicate about
it. If it pains him to eat alone in my presence it would probably pain him
more to share his meal with me. It's not my place to pry into his secret
affairs.
Dropped in at the Cronstadts' and they were eating too. A young chicken with
wild rice. Pretended that I had eaten already, but I could have torn the
chicken from the baby's hands. This is not just false modesty -- it's a kind
of perversion, I'm thinking. Twice they asked me if I wouldn't join them.
No! No! Wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee after the meal. I'm
delicat, I am! On the way out I cast a lingering glance at the bones
lying on the baby's plate -- there was still meat on them.
Prowling around aimlessly. A beautiful day -- so far. The Rue de Buci is
alive, crawling. The bars wide open and the curbs lined with bicycles. All
the meat and vegetable markets are in full swing. Arms loaded with truck
bandaged in newspapers. A fine Catholic Sunday -- in the morning, at least.
High noon and here I am standing on an empty belly at the confluence of all
these crooked lanes that reek with the odor of food. Opposite me is the Hotel
de Louisiane. A grim old hostelry known to the bad boys of the Rue de Boci in
the good old days. Hotels and food, and I'm walking about like a leper with
crabs gnawing at my entrails. On Sunday mornings there's a fever in the
streets. Nothing like it anywhere, except perhaps on the East Side, or down
around Chatham Square. The Rue de l'Echaude is seething. The streets twist
and turn, at every angle a fresh hive of activity. Long queues of people with
vegetables under their arms, turning in here and there with crisp, sparkling
appetites. Nothing but food, food, food. Makes one delirious.
Pass the Square de Furstemberg. Looks different now, at high noon. The other
night when I passed by it was deserted, bleak, spectral. In the middle of
the square four black trees that have not yet begun to blossom.
Intellectual trees, nourished by the paving stones. Like T. S. Eliot's
verse. Here, by God, if Marie Laurencin ever brought her Lesbians out into
the open, would be the place for them to commune. Tres lesbienne id.
Sterile, hybrid, dry as Boris' heart.
In the little garden adjoining the Eglise St. Germain are a few dismounted
gargoyles. Monsters that jut forward with a terrifying plunge. On the
benches other monsters -- old people, idiots, cripples, epileptics. Snoozing
quietly, waiting for the dinner bell to ring. At the Galerie Zak across the
way some imbecile has made a picture of the cosmos -- on the flat. A
painter's cosmos! Full of odds and ends, bric-a-brac. In the lower left-hand
corner, however, there's an anchor -- and a dinner bell. Salute! Salute, O
Cosmos!
Still prowling around. Mid-aftemoon. Guts rattling. Beginning to rain now.
Notre-Dame rises tomb-like from the water. The gargoyles lean far out over
the lace facade. They hang there like an idee fixe in the mind of a
monomaniac. An old man with yellow whiskers approaches me. Has some
Jaworski nonsense in his hand. Comes up to me with his head thrown back and
the rain splashing in his face turns the golden sands to mud. Book store
with some of Raoul Dufy's drawings in the window. Drawings of charwomen with
rose bushes between their legs. A treatise on the philosophy of Joan Miro.
The philosophy, mind you!
In the same window: A Man Cut In Slices! Chapter one: the man in the
eyes of his family. Chapter two: the same in the eyes of his mistress.
Chapter three:--No chapter three. Have to come back tomorrow for chapters
three and four. Every day the window trimmer turns a fresh page. A man
cut in slices ... You can't imagine how furious I am not to have
thought of a title like that! Where is this bloke who writes "the same in
the eyes of his mistress ... the same in the eyes of ... the same ..."?
Where is this guy? Who is he? I want to hug him. I wish to Christ I had had
brains enough to think of a title like that -- instead of Crazy Cock
and the other fool things I invented. Well, fuck a duck! I congratulate him
just the same.
I wish him luck with his fine title. Here's another slice for you -- for your
next book! Ring me up some day. I'm living at the Villa Borghese. We're all
dead, or dying, or about to die. We need good titles. We need meat -- slices
and slices of meat -- juicy tenderloins, porterhouse steaks, kidneys, mountain
oysters, sweetbreads. Some day, when I'm standing at the corner of 42nd
Street and Broadway, I'm going to remember this title and I'm going to put
down everything that goes on in my noodle -- caviar, rain drops, axle-grease,
vermicelli, liverwurst -- slices and slices of it. And I'll tell no one why,
after I had put everything down, I suddenly went home and chopped the baby