talk, the mention of travel, of strange cities ... of a new life. Or that I had successfully prevented our talk from degenerating into a quarrel. (It was such a delicate subject, Stasia.) Or perhaps it was the Jew, Sid Essen, and the stir of racial memories. Or perhaps nothing more than the Tightness of our quarters, the feeling of snugness, cosiness, at homeness.
Anyway, as she was clearing the table, I said: If only one could write as one talks ... write like Gorky, Gogol, or Knut Hamsun!
She gave me a look such as a mother sometimes directs at the child she is holding in her arms.
Why write like them? she said. Write like you are, that's so much better.
I wish I thought so. Christ! Do you know what's the matter with me? I'm a chameleon. Every author I fall in love with I want to imitate. If only I could imitate my self I
When are you going to show me some pages? she said. I'm dying to see what you've done so far.
Soon, I said.
Is it about us?
I suppose so. What else could I write about?
You could write about anything, Val.
That's what you think. You never seem to realize my limitations. You don't know what a struggle I go through. Sometimes I feel thoroughly licked. Sometimes I wonder what ever gave me the notion that I could write. A few minutes ago, though, I was writing like a madman. In my head, again. But the moment I sit down to the machine I become a clod. It gets me. It gets me down.
Did you know, I said, that toward the end of his life Gogol went to Palestine? A strange fellow, Gogol. Imagine a crazy Russian like that dying in Rome! I wonder where I'll die.
What's the matter with you, Val? What are you talking about? You've got eighty more years to live. Write! Don't talk about dying.
I felt I owed it to her to tell her a little about the novel. Guess what I call myself in the book! I said. She couldn't. I took your uncle's name, the one who lives in Vienna. You told me he was in the Hussars, I think. Somehow I can't picture him as the colonel of a death's head regiment. And a Jew. But I like him ... I like everything you told me about him. That's why I took his name...
Pause.
What I'd like to do with this bloody novel—only Pop might not feel the same way—is to charge through it like a drunken Cossack. Russia, Russia, where are you heading? On, on, like the whirlwind! The only way I can be myself is to smash things. I'll never write a book to suit the publishers. I've written too many books. Sleep-walking books. You know what I mean. Millions and millions of words—all in the head. They're banging around up there, like gold pieces. I'm tired of making gold pieces. I'm sick of these cavalry charges ... in the dark. Every word I put down now must be an arrow that goes straight to the mark. A poisoned arrow. I want to kill off books, writers, publishers, readers. To write for the public doesn't mean a thing to me. What I'd like is to write for madmen—or for the angels.
I paused and a curious smile came over my face at the thought which had entered my head.
That landlady of ours, I wonder what she'd think if she heard me talking this way? She's too good to us, don't you think? She doesn't know us. She'd never believe what a walking pogrom I am. Nor has she any idea why I'm so crazy about Sirota and that bloody synagogue music. I pulled up short. What the hell has Sirota got to do with it anyway?
Yes, Val, you're excited. Put it in the book. Don't waste yourself in talk I
13
Sometimes I would sit at the machine for hours without writing a line. Fired by an idea, often an irrelevant one, my thoughts would come too fast to be transcribed. I would be dragged along at a gallop, like a stricken warrior tied to his chariot.
On the wall at my right there were all sorts of memoranda tacked up: a long list of words, words that bewitched me and which I intended to drag in by the scalp if necessary; reproductions of paintings, by Uccello, della Francesca, Breughel, Giotto, Memling; titles of books from which I mean to deftly lift passages; phrases filched from my favorite authors, not to quote but to remind me how to twist things occasionally; for ex: The worm that would gnaw her bladder or the pulp which had deglutinized behind his forehead. In the Bible were slips of paper to indicate where gems were to be found. The Bible was a veritable diamond mine. Every time I looked up a passage I became intoxicated. In the dictionary were place marks for lists of one kind or another: flowers, birds, trees, reptiles, gems, poisons, and so on. In short, I had fortified myself with a complete arsenal.
But what was the result? Pondering over a word like praxis, for example, or pleroma, my mind would wander like a drunken wasp. I might end up in a desperate struggle to recall the name of that Russian composer, the mystic, or Theosophist, who had left unfinished his greatest work. The one of whom some one had written—He, the messiah in his own imagination, who had dreamed of leading mankind toward ‘the last festival', who had imagined himself God, and everything, including himself, his own creation, who had dreamed by the force of his tones to overthrow the universe, died of a pimple. Scriabin, that's who it was. Yes, Scriabin could derail me for days. Every time his name popped into my head I was back on Second Avenue, in the rear of some cafe, surrounded by Russians (white ones usually) and Russian Jews, listening to some unknown genius reel off the sonatas, preludes and etudes of the divine Scriabin. From Scriabin to Prokofiev, to the night I first heard him, Carnegie Hall probably, high up in the gallery, and so excited that when I stood up to applaud or to yell—we all yelled like madmen in those days—I nearly tumbled out of the gallery. A tall, gaunt figure he was, in a frock coat, like something out of the Drei Groschen Oper, like Monsieur les Pompes Funebres. From Prokofiev to Luke Ralston, now departed, an ascetic also, with a face like the death mask of Monsieur Arouet. A good friend, Luke Ralston, who after visiting the merchant tailors up and down Fifth Avenue with his samples of imported woolens, would go home and practise German Lieder while his dear old mother, who had ruined him with her love, would make him pigs’ knuckles and sauerkraut and tell him for the ten thousandth time what a dear, good son he was. His thin, cultivated voice too weak, unfortunately, to cope with the freight-laden melodies of his beloved Hugo Wolf with which he always larded his programs. At thirty-three he dies—of pneumonia, they said, but it was probably a broken heart ... And in between come memories of other forgotten figures—Minnesingers, flutists, ‘cellists, pianists in skirts, like the homely one who always included Schubert's
