a child of him.»
«But if he knew what you were doing?»
«He'll never know. I won't let anybody tell him. My mother threatened to tell him once: I told her I'd kill her if she did.» She smiled bitterly. «Do you know what my mother said? She said I had been trying to poison her.»
At this point Kronski suggested that we continue the conversation uptown at the home of a friend of his who was away. He said we could spend the night there if we liked. In the subway his mood changed; he became again the leering, bantering, diabolical, pale-faced toad that he usually was. This meant that he considered himself seductive, felt empowered to ogle the attractive looking females. The perspiration was pouring down his face, wilting his collar. His talk became hectic, scattered, altogether without continuity. In his distorted way he was trying to create an atmosphere of drama; he flapped his arms loosely, like a demented bat caught between two powerful search-lights.
To my disgust Mara appeared to be amused by this spectacle. «He's quite mad, your friend,» she said, «but I like him.»
Kronski overheard the remark. He grinned tragically and the perspiration began flowing more freely. The more he grinned, the more he clowned and aped it, the more melancholy he looked. He never wanted anybody to think him sad. He was Kronski, the big, vital, healthy, jovial, negligent, reckless, carefree fellow who solved everybody's problems. He could talk for hours on end—for days, if you had the courage to listen to him. He awoke talking, plunging immediately into hair-splitting arguments, always about the fate of the world, about its bio-chemical nature, its astrophysical constitution, its politico-economic configuration. The world was in a disastrous state: he knew, because he was always amassing facts about the shortage of wheat or the shortage of petroleum, or making researches into the condition of the Soviet Army or the condition of our arsenals and fortifications. He would say, as if it were a fact beyond dispute, that the soldiers of the Soviet Army could not make war this winter because they had only so many overcoats, so many shoes, etc. He talked about carbohydrates, fats, sugar, etc. He talked about world supplies as though he were running the world. He knew more about international law than the most famous authority on the subject. There wasn't any subject under the sun about which he did not appear to have a complete and exhaustive knowledge. As yet he was only an interne in a city hospital, but in a few years he would be a celebrated surgeon or psychiatrist, or perhaps something else, he didn't know yet what he would elect to be. «Why don't you decide to become President of the United States?» his friends would inquire ironically. «Because I'm not a half-wit,» he would answer, making a sour puss. «You think I couldn't become President if I wanted to? Listen, you don't think it takes brains to become President of the United States, do you? No, I want a real job. I want to help people, I don't want to bamboozle them. If I were to take this country over I'd clean house from top to bottom. To begin with I'd have guys like you castrated....» He'd go on this way for an hour or two, cleaning up the world, putting the big house in order, paving the way for the brotherhood of man and the empire of free thought. Every day of his life he went over the affairs of the world with a fine comb, cleaning out the lice that made men's thinking lousy. One day he'd be all heated up about the condition of the slaves on the Gold Coast, quoting you the price of bullion on the half-shell or some other fabulous statistical concoction which inadvertently made men hate one another and created superfluous jobs for spineless, weak-chested men on financial dope sheets, thus adding to the burden of intangible political economies. Another day he'd be up in arms about chromium or permanganate, because Germany perhaps or Roumania had cornered the market on something or other which would make it difficult for the surgeons in the Soviet Army to operate when the big day arrived. Or he would have just garnered the latest dope on a new and startling pest which would soon reduce the civilized world to anarchy unless we acted at once and with the greatest wisdom. How the world staggered along day after day without Dr. Kronski's guidance was a mystery which he never cleared up. Dr. Kronski was never in doubt about his analyses of world conditions. Depressions, panics, floods, revolutions, plagues, all these phenomena were manifesting themselves simply to corroborate his judgment. Calamities and catastrophes made him gleeful; he croaked and chortled like the world toad in embryo. How were things going with him personally—nobody ever asked him that question. Personally it was no go. He was chopping up arms and legs for the moment, since nobody had the perspicacity to ask anything better of him. His first wife had died because of a medical blunder and his second wife would soon be going crazy, if he knew what he were talking about. He could plan the most wonderful model houses for the New Republic of Mankind but oddly enough he couldn't keep his own little nest free of bedbugs and other vermin, and because of his preoccupation with world events, setting things to right in Africa, Guadaloupe, Singapore, and so on, his own place was always just a trifle upset, that is to say, dishes unwashed, beds unmade, furniture falling apart, butter running rancid, toilet stopped up, tubs leaking, dirty combs lying on the table and in general a pleasing, wretched, mildly insane state of dilapidation which manifested itself in the person of Dr. Kronski personally in the form of dandruff, eczema, boils, blisters, fallen arches, warts, wens, halitosis, indigestion and other minor disorders, none of them serious because once the world order was established everything pertaining to the past would disappear and man would shine forth in a new skin like a new-born lamb.
The friend whose house he was taking us to was an artist, he informed us. Being a friend of the great Dr. Kronski that meant an uncommon artist, one who would be recognized only when the millenium had been ushered in. His friend was both a painter and a musician—equally great in both realms. The music we wouldn't be able to hear, owing to his friend's absence, but we would be able to see his paintings— some of them, that is, because the great bulk of them he had destroyed. If it weren't for Kronski he would have destroyed everything. I inquired casually what his friend was doing at the moment. He was running a model farm for defective children in the wilds of Canada. Kronski had organized the movement himself but was too busy thinking things out to bother with the practical details of management. Besides, his friend was a consumptive, and he would have to remain up there forever most likely. Kronski telegraphed him now and then to advise him about this and that. It was only a beginning—soon he would empty the hospitals and asylums of their inmates, prove to the world that the poor can take care of the poor and the weak the weak and the crippled the crippled and the defective the defective.
«Is that one of your friend's paintings?» I asked, as he switched on the light and a huge vomit of yellowish green bile leaped out from the wall.
«That's one of his early things,» said Kronski. «He keeps it for sentimental reasons. I've put his best things away in storage. But here's a little one that gives you some idea of what he can do.» He looked at it with pride, as if it were the work of his own off-spring. «It's marvelous, isn't it?»
«Terrible,» I said. «He has a shit complex; he must have been born in the gutter, in a pool of stale horse piss on a sullen day in February near a gas house.»
«You
«Your friend may be revolutionary but he's no painter,» I insisted. «He hasn't any love in him; he just hates, and what's more he can't even paint what he hates. He's fog-eyed. You say he's a consumptive: I say he's bilious. He stinks, your friend, and so does his place. Why don't you open the windows? It smells as though a dog had died here.»
«Guinea pigs, you mean. I've been using the place as a laboratory, that's why it stinks a bit. Your nose is too sensitive, Mister Miller. You're an aesthete.»
«Is there anything to drink here?» I asked.
There wasn't, of course, but Kronski offered to run out and get something. «Bring something strong,» I said, «this place makes you retch. No wonder the poor bastard got consumptive.»
Kronski trotted off rather sheepishly, I looked at Mara. «What do you think? Will we wait for him or shall we beat it?»
«You're very unkind. No, let's wait. I'd like to hear him talk some more—he's interesting. And he really thinks a lot of you. I can see that by the way he looks at you.»
«He's only interesting the first time,» I said. «Frankly, he bores me stiff. I've been listening to this stuff for years. It's sheer crap. He may be intelligent but he's got a screw loose somewhere. He'll commit suicide one day, mark my words. Besides, he brings bad luck. Whenever I meet that guy things turn out wrong. He carries death around with him, don't you feel that? If he isn't croaking he's gibbering like an ape. How can you be friends with a guy like that? He wants you to be a friend of his sorrow. What's eating him I don't know. He's worried about the world. I don't give a shit about the world. I can't make the world right, neither can he... neither can anybody. Why doesn't he try to live? The world mightn't be so bad if we tried to enjoy ourselves a little more. No, he riles me.»
Kronski came back with some vile liquor he claimed was all he could find at that hour. He seldom drank more
