Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, book 1)

friends rightaway...»

It was in bed that night that we began to talk about Europe. «We've got to go to Europe,» Mona was saying.

«Yeah, but how?»

«I don't know, Val, but we'll find a way.»

«Do you realize how much money it takes to go to Europe?»

«That doesn't matter. If we want to go we'll raise the money somehow...»

We were lying flat on our backs, hands clasped behind our heads, looking straight up into the darkness—and voyaging like mad. I had boarded the Orient Express for Baghdad. It was a familiar journey to me because I had read about this trip in one of Dos Passo's books. Vienna, Budapest, Sofia, Belgrade, Athens, Constantinople... Perhaps if we got that far we might also get to Timbuctoo. I knew a lot about Timbuctoo also—from books. Mustn't forget Taormina! And that cemetery in Stamboul which Pierre Loti had written about. And Jerusalem...

«What are you thinking about now?» I asked, nudging her gently.

«I was visiting my folks in Roumanian «In Roumania? Whereabouts in Roumania?» «I don't know exactly. Somewhere in the Carpathian mountains.»

«I had a messenger once, a crazy Dutchman, who used to write me long letters from the Carpathian mountains. He was staying at the palace of the Queen...»

«Wouldn't you like to go to Africa too—Morocco, Algeria, Egypt?»

«That's just what I was dreaming about a moment ago.»

«I've always wanted to go into the desert... and get lost there.»

«That's funny, so have I. I'm crazy about the desert.»

Silence. Lost in the desert-Somebody is talking to me. We've been having a long conversation. And I'm not in the desert any more but on Sixth Avenue under an elevated station.

My friend Ulric is placing his hand on my shoulder and smiling at me reassuringly. He is repeating what he said a moment ago—that I will be happy in Europe. He talks again about Mt. Aetna, about grapes, about leisure, idleness, good food, sunshine. He drops a seed in me.

Sixteen years later on a Sunday morning, accompanied by a native of the Argentine and a French whore from Montmartre, I am strolling leisurely through a cathedral in Naples. I feel as though I have at least seen a house of worship that I would enjoy praying in. It belongs not to God or the Pope, but to the Italian people. It's a huge, barn-like place, fitted out in the worst taste, with all the trappings dear to the Catholic heart. There is plenty of floor space, empty floor space, I mean. People sail in through the various portals and walk about with the utmost freedom. They give the impression of being on a holiday. Children gambol about like lambs, some with little nose- gays in their hand. People walk up to one another and exchange greetings, quite as if they were in the street. Along the walls are statues of the martyrs in various postures; they reek of suffering. I have a strong desire to run my hand over the cold marble, as if to urge them not to suffer too much, it's indecent. As I approach one of the statues I notice out of the corner of my eye a woman all in black kneeling before a sacred object. She is the image of piety. But I can't help noticing that she is also the possessor of an exquisite ass, a musical ass, I might say. (The ass tells you everything about a woman, her character, her temperament, whether she is sanguine, morbid, gay or fickle, whether she is responsive or unresponsive, whether she is maternal or pleasure-loving, whether she is truthful or lying by nature.)

I was interested in that ass, as well as the piety in which it was smothered. I looked at it so intently that finally the owner of it turned round, her hands still raised in prayer, her lips moving as if she were chewing oats in her sleep. She gave me a look of reproach, blushed deeply, then turned her gaze back to the object of adoration, which I now observed was one of the saints, a dejected crippled martyr who seemed to be climbing up a hill with a broken back.

I respectfully moved away in search of my companions. The activity of the throng reminded me of the lobby of the Hotel Astor—and of the canvases of Uccello (that fascinating world of perspective!). It reminded me also of the Caledonian market, London, with its vast clutter of gimcrackery. It was beginning to remind me of a lot of things, of everything, in fact, but the house of worship which it was. I half expected to see Malvolio or Mercutio enter in full tights. I saw one man, obviously a barber, who reminded me vividly of Werner Krause in Othello. I recognized an organ grinder from New York whom I had once tracked to his lair behind the City Hall.

Above all I was fascinated by they tremendous Gorgon-like heads of the old men of Naples. They seemed to emerge full-blown out of the Renaissance: great lethal cabbages with fiery coals in their foreheads. Like the Urizens of William Blake's imagination. They moved about condescendingly, these animated heads, as if patronizing the nefarious Mysteries of the mundane Church and her spew of scarlet-robed pimps.

I felt very very much at home. It was a bazaar which made sense. It was operatic, mercurial, tonsorial. The buzz-buzz at the altar was discreet and elegant, a sort of veiled boudoir atmosphere in which the priest, assisted by his gelded acolytes, washed his socks in holy water. Behind the glittering surplices were little trellised doors, such as the mountebanks used in the popular street shows of medieval times. Anything might spring out at you from those mysterious little doors. Here was the altar of confusion, bangled and diademed with baubles, smelling of grease paint, incense, sweat and dereliction. It was like the last act of a gaudy comedy, a banal play dealing with prostitution and ending in prophylactics. The performers inspired affection and sympathy; they were not sinners, they were vagrants. Two thousand years of fraud and humbug had culminated in this side-show. It was all flip and tutti-frutti, a gaudy, obscene carnival in which the Redeemer, made of plaster of Paris, took on the appearance of a eunuch in petticoats. The women prayed for children and the men prayed for food to stuff the hungry mouths. Outside, on the sidewalk, were heaps of vegetables, fruits, flowers and sweets. The barber shops were wide open and little boys, resembling the progeny of Fra Angelico, stood with big fans and drove the flies away. A beautiful city, alive in every member, and drenched with sunlight. In the background Vesuvius, a sleepy cone emitting a lazy curl of smoke. I was in Italy—I was certain of it. It was all that I had expected it to be. And then suddenly I realized that she was not with me, and for a moment I was saddened. Then I wondered... wondered about the seed and its fruition. For that night, when we went to bed hungering for Europe, something quickened in me. Years had rolled by... short, terrible years, in which every seed that had ever quickened seemed to be mashed to a pulp. Our rhythm had speeded up, hers in a physical way, mine in a more subtle way. She leaped forward feverishly, her very walk changing over into the lope of an antelope. I seemed to stand still, making no progress, but spinning like a top. She had her eyes set on the goal, but the faster she moved the farther removed became the goal. I knew I could never reach the goal this way. I moved my body about obediently, but always with an eye on the seed within. When I slipped and fell I fell softly, like a cat, or like a pregnant woman, always mindful of that which was growing inside me. Europe, Europe.... it was with me always, even when we were quarreling, shouting at each other like maniacs. Like a man obsessed, I brought every conversation back to the subject which alone interested me: Europe. Nights when we prowled about the city, searching like alley cats for scraps of food, the cities and peoples of Europe were in my mind. I was like a slave who dreams of freedom, whose whole being is saturated with one idea: escape. Nobody could have convinced me then that if I were offered the choice between her and my dream of Europe I would choose the latter. It would have seemed utterly fantastic, then, to suppose that it would be she herself who would offer me this choice. And perhaps even more fantastic still that the day I would sail for Europe I would have to ask my friend Ulric for ten dollars so as to have something in my pocket on touching my beloved European soil.

That half-voiced dream in the dark, that night alone in the desert, the voice of Ulric comforting me, the Carpathian mountains moving up from under the moon, Timbuctoo, the camel bells, the smell of leather and of dry, scorched dung, («What are you thinking of?» «I too!») the tense, richly-filled silence, the blank, dead walls of the tenement opposite, the fact that Arthur Raymond was asleep, that in the morning he would continue his exercises, forever and ever, but that I had changed, that there were exits, loopholes, even though only in the imaginations, all this acted like a ferment and dynamized the days, months, years that lay ahead. It dynamized my love for her.

It made me believe that what I could not accomplish alone I could accomplish with her, for her, through her, because of her. She became the water-sprinkler, the fertilizer, the hot-house, the mule pack, the pathfinder, the bread-winner, the gyroscope, the extra vitamin, the flame-thrower, the go-getter.

From that day on things moved on greased skids. Get married? Sure, why not? Right away. Have you got the