Henry Miller
THE ROSY CRUCIFIXION, BOOK THREE: NEXUS
1
Woof! Woof woof! Woof! Woof!
Barking in the night. Barking, barking. I shriek but no one answers. I scream but there's not even an echo.
Which do you want—the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ?
Alone—with eczema of the brain.
Alone at last. How marvelous! Only it is not what I expected it to be. If only I were alone with God!
Woof! Woof! woof!
Eyes closed, I summon her image. There it is, floating in the dark, a mask emerging from the spindrift: the Tilla Durieux bouche, like a bow; white, even teeth; eyes dark with mascara, the lids a viscous, glistening blue; hair streaming wild, black as ebony. The actress from the Carpathians and the roof-tops of Vienna. Risen like Venus from the flatlands of Brooklyn.
Woof! Woof woof! Woof! Woof!
I shout, but it sounds for all the world like a whisper.
My name is Isaac Dust. I am in Dante's fifth heaven. Like Strindberg in his delirium, I repeat: What does it matter? Whether one is the only one, or whether one has a rival, what does it matter?
Why do these bizarre names suddenly come to mind? All class-mates from the dear old Alma Mater: Morton Schnadig, William Marvin, Israel Siegel, Bernard Pistner, Louis Schneider, Clarence Donohue, William Overend, John Kurtz, Pat McCaffrey, William Korb, Arthur Convissar, Sally Liebowitz, Frances Glanty ... Not one of them has ever raised his head. Stricken from the ledger. Scotched like vipers.
Are you there, comrades?
No answer.
Is that you, dear August, raising your head in the gloom? Yes, it is Strindberg, the Strindberg with two horns protruding from his forehead. Le cocu magnifique.
In some happy time—when? how distant? what planet?—I used to move from wall to wall greeting this one and that, all old friends: Leon Bakst, Whistler, Lovis Corinth, Breughel the Elder, Botticelli, Bosch, Giotto, Cimabue, Piero della Francesca, Grunewald, Holbein, Lucas Cranach, Van Gogh, Utrillo, Gauguin, Piranesi, Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige—and the Wailing Wall. Goya too, and Turner. Each one had something precious to impart. But particularly Tilla Durieux, she with the eloquent, sensual lips dark as rose petals.
The walls are bare now. Even if they were crowded with masterpieces I would recognize nothing. Darkness has closed in. Like Balzac, I live with imaginary paintings. Even the frames are imaginary.
Isaac Dust, born of the dust and returning to dust. Dust to dust. Add a codicil for old times’ sake.
Anastasia, alias Hegoroboru, alias Bertha Filigree of Lake Tahoe-Titicaca and the Imperial Court of the Czars, is temporarily in the Observation Ward. She went there of her own accord, to find out if she were in her right mind or not. Saul barks in his delirium, believing he is Isaac Dust. We are snow-bound-in a hall bedroom with a private sink and twin beds. Lightning flashes intermittently. Count Bruga, that darling of a puppet, reposes on the bureau surrounded by Javanese and Tibetan idols. He has the leer of a madman quaffing a bowl of sterno. His wig, made of purple strings, is surmounted by a miniature hat, a la Boheme, imported from la Galerie Dufayel. His back rests against a few choice volumes deposited with us by Stasia before taking off for the asylum. From left to right they read—
The Imperial Orgy—The Vatican Swindle—A Season in Hell—Death in Venice—Anathema—A Hero of our Time—The Tragic Sense of Life—The Devil's Dictionary—November Boughs—Beyond the Pleasure Principle— Lysistrata—Marius the Epicurean—The Golden Ass—Jude the Obscure—The Mysterious Stranger—Peter Whiffle— The Little Flowers—Virginibus Puerisque—Queen Mab—The Great God Pan—The Travels of Marco Polo—Songs of Bilitis—The Unknown Life of Jesus—Tristram Shandy—The Crock of Gold—Black Bryony—The Root and the Flower.
Only a single lacuna: Rozanov's Metaphysics of Sex.
In her own handwriting (on a slip of butcher's paper) I find the following, a quotation obviously, from one of the volumes: That strange thinker, N. Federov, a Russian of the Russians, will found his own original form of anarchism, one hostile to the State.
Were I to show this to Kronski he would run immediately to the bughouse and offer it as proof. Proof of what? Proof that Stasia is in her right mind.
Yesterday was it? Yes, yesterday, about four in the morning, while walking to the subway station to look for Mona, who should I spy sauntering leisurely through the drifting snow but Mona and her wrestler friend Jim Driscoll. You would think, to see them, that they were looking for violets in a golden meadow. No thought of snow or ice, no concern for the polar blasts from the river, no fear of God or man. Just strolling along, laughing, talking, humming. Free as meadow-larks.
Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings!
I followed them a distance, almost infected myself by their utter nonchalance. Suddenly I took an oblique left turn in the direction of Osiecki's flat. His chambers, I should say. Sure enough, the lights were on and the pianola softly giving out morceaux choisis de Dohnanyi.
Hail to you, sweet lice, I thought, and passed on. A mist was rising over toward Gowanus Canal. Probably a glacier melting.
Arriving home I found her creaming her face.
Where in God's name have you been? she demands, almost accusingly.
