Of course!
Above the Equator, under the Equator ... no rest, no surcease. Never nothing nowhere. Worlds so bright, so full, so rich, but linked with concrete and barbed wire. Always the next place, and the next. Always the hand stretched forth, begging, imploring, beseeching. Deaf, the world. Stone deaf. Rifles cracking, cannons booming, and men, women and children everywhere lying stiff in their own dark blood. Now and then a flower. A violet, perhaps, and a million rotting corpses to fertilize it. You follow me?
Of course!
I went mad, mad, mad.
Naturally!
So he takes the ax, so sharp, so bright, and he takes to chopping ... here a head, there an arm or leg, then fingers and toes. Chop, chop, chop. Like chopping spinach. And of course they're looking for him. And when they find him they'll run the juice through him. Justice will be served. For every million slaughtered like pigs one lone wretched monster is executed humanly.
Do I understand? Perfectly.
What is a writer but a fellow criminal, a judge, an executioner? Was I not versed in the art of deception since childhood? Am I not riddled with traumas and complexes? Have. I not been stained with all the guilt and sin of the medieval monk?
What more natural, more understandable, more human and forgivable than these monstrous rampages of the isolated poet?
As inexplicably as they entered my sphere they left, these nomads.
Wandering the streets on an empty belly puts one on the qui vive. One knows instinctively which way to turn, what to look for: one never fails to recognize a fellow traveler.
When all is lost the soul steps forth...
I referred to them as angels in disguise. So they were, but I usually awoke to the fact only after they had departed. Seldom does the angel appear trailing clouds of glory, Now and then, however, the drooling simpleton one stops to gaze at suddenly fits the door like a key. And the door opens.
It was the door called Death which always swung open, and I saw that there was no death, nor were there any judges or executioners save in our imagining. How desperately I strove then to make restitution! And I did make restitution. Full and complete. The rajah stripping himself naked. Only an ego left, but an ego puffed and swollen like a hideous toad. And then the utter insanity of it would overwhelm me. Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is—in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were dead and blind, as if He were in a space beyond space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.
One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.
4
And so, moving about in the dark or standing for hours like a hat rack in a corner of the room, I fell deeper and deeper into the pit. Hysteria became the norm. The snow never melted.
While hatching the most diabolical schemes to drive Stasia really mad, and thus do away with her for good, I also dreamed up the most asinine plan of campaign for a second courtship. In every shop window I passed I saw gifts which I wanted to buy her. Women adore gifts, especially costly ones. They also love little nothings, dependent on their moods. Between a pair of antique ear rings, very expensive, and a large black candle, I could spend the whole livelong day debating which to get her. Never would I admit to myself that the expensive object was out of reach. No, were I able to convince myself that the ear rings would please her more, I could also convince myself that I could find the way to purchase them. I could convince myself of this, I say, because in the bottom of my heart I knew I would never decide on either. It was a pastime. True, I might better have passed the time debating higher issues, whether, for example, the soul was corruptible or incorruptible, but to the mind- machine one problem is as good as another. In this same spirit I could work up the urge to walk five or ten miles in order to borrow a dollar, and feel just as triumphant if I succeeded in scrounging a dime or even a nickel. What I might have hoped to do with a dollar was unimportant; it was the effort I was still capable of making which counted. It meant, in my deteriorated view of things, that I still had one foot in the world.
Yes, it was truly important to remind myself of such things occasionally and not carry on like the Akond of Swot. It was also good to give them a jolt once in a while, to say when they came home at three A.M. empty- handed: Don't let it bother you, I'll go buy myself a sandwich. Sometimes, to be sure, I ate only an imaginary sandwich. But it did me good to let them think that I was not altogether without resources. Once or twice I actually convinced them that I had eaten a steak. I did it to rile them, of course. (What business had I to eat a steak when they had passed hours away sitting in a cafeteria waiting for some one to offer them a bite?)
Occasionally I would greet them thus: So you did manage to get something to eat?
The question always seemed to disconcert them.
I thought you were starving, I would say.
Whereupon they would inform me that they were not interested in starving. There was no reason for me to starve either, they were sure to add. I did it only to torment them.
If they were in a jovial mood they would enlarge on the subject. What new deviltry was I planning? Had I seen Kronski lately? And then the smoke screen talk would begin—about their new-found friends, the dives they had discovered, the side trips to Harlem, the studio Stasia was going to rent, and so on and so forth. Oh yes, and they had forgotten to tell me about Barley, Stasia's poet friend, whom they had run across the other night. He was going to drop in some afternoon. Wanted to meet me.
One evening Stasia took to reminiscing. Truthful reminiscences, as far as I could gather. About the trees she used to rub herself against in the moonlight, about the perverted millionaire who fell in love with her because of her hairy legs, about the Russian girl who tried to make love to her but whom she repulsed because she was too
