Carnaval on her program. (Reminded me so much of Maude: the nun become virtuoso.) There were others too, short-haired and long-haired, all perfectos, like Havana cigars. Some, with chests like bulls, could shatter the chandeliers with their Wagnerian shrieks. Some were like lovely Jessicas, their hair parted in the middle and pasted down: benign madonnas (Jewish mostly) who had not yet taken to rifling the ice-box at all hours of the night. And then the fiddlers, in skirts, left-handed sometimes, often with red hair or dirty orange, and bosoms which got in the way of the bow...
Just looking at a word, as I say. Or a painting, or a book. The title alone, sometimes. Like Heart of Darkness or Under the Autumn Star. How did it begin again, that Wonderful tale? Have a look-see. Read a few pages, then throw the book down. Inimitable. And how had I begun? I read it over once again, my imaginary Paul Morphy opening. Weak, wretchedly weak. Something falls off the table. I get down to search for it. There, on hands and knees, a crack in the floor intrigues me. It reminds me of something. What? I stay like that, as if waiting to be served, like a ewe. Thoughts whirl through my bean and out through the vent at the top of my skull. I reach for a pad and jot down a few words. More thoughts, plaguey thoughts. (What dropped from the table was a match- box.) How to fit these thoughts into the novel. Always the same dilemma. And then I think of Twelve Men. If only somewhere I could do one little section which would have the warmth, the tenderness, the pathos of that chapter on Paul Dressier. But I'm not a Dreiser. And I have no brother Paul. It's far away, the banks of the Wabash. Farther, much farther, than Moscow or Kronstadt, or the warm, utterly romantic Crimea. Why?
Russia, where are you leading us? Forward! Ech konee, konee.
I think of Gorky, the baker's helper, his face white with flour, and the big fat peasant (in his nightshirt) rolling in the mud with his beloved sows. The University of Life. Gorky: mother, father, comrade. Gorky, the beloved vagabond, who whether tramping, weeping, pissing, praying or cursing, writes. Gorky: who wrote in blood. A writer true as the sun dial...
Just looking at a title, as I say.
Thus, like a piano concerto for the left hand, the day would slip by. Lucky if there were a page or two to show for all the torture and the inspiration. Writing! It was like pulling up poison oak by the roots. Or searching for mangolds.
When now and then she asked: How is it coming, dear Val? I wanted to bury my head in my hands and sob.
Don't push yourself, Val!
But I have pushed. I've pushed and pushed till there's not a drop of caca in me. Often it's just when she says—Dinner's ready! that the flow begins. What the hell! Maybe after dinner. Maybe after she's gone to sleep.
Mariana.
At table I talk about the work as if I were another Alexandra Dumas or a Balzac. Always what I intend to do, never what I have done. I have a genius for the impalpable, for the inchoate, for the not yet born.
And your day? I'll say sometimes. What was your day like? (More to get relief from the devils who plagued me than to hear the trivia which I already knew by heart.)
Listening with one ear I could see Pop waiting like a faithful hound for the bone he was to receive. Would there be enough fat on it? Would it splinter in his mouth? And I would remind myself that it wasn't really the book pages he was waiting for but a more juicy morsel—her. He would be patient, he would be content—for a while at least—with literary discussions. As long as she kept herself looking lovely, as long as she continued to wear the delightful gowns which he urged her to select for herself, as long as she accepted with good grace all the little favors he heaped upon her. As long, in other words, as she treated him like a human being. As long as she wasn't ashamed to be seen with him. (Did he really think, as she averred, that he looked like a toad?) With eyes half- closed I could see him waiting, waiting On a street corner, or in the lobby of a semi-fashionable hotel, or in some outlandish cafe'(in another incarnation), a cafe such as Zum Hiddigeigei. I always saw him dressed like a gentleman, with or without spats and cane. A Sort of inconspicuous millionaire, fur trader or stock broker, not the predatory type but, as the paunch indicated, the kind who prefers the good things of life to the almighty dollar. A man who once played the violin. A man of taste, indisputably. In brief, no dummox. Average perhaps, but not ordinary. Conspicuous by his in-conspicuousness. Probably full of watermelon seeds and other pips. And saddled with an invalid wife, one he wouldn't dream of hurting. (Look, darling, see what I've brought you! Some Maatjes herring, some lachs, and a jar of pickled antlers from the reindeer land.)
And when he reads the opening pages, this pipsqueaking millionaire, will he exclaim: Aha! I smell a rat! Or, putting his wiry brains to sleep, will he simply murmur to himself: A lovely piece of tripe, a romance out of the Dark Ages.
And our landlady, the good Mrs. Skolsky, what would she think if she had a squint at these pages? Would she wet her panties with excitement? Or would she hear music where there were only seismographic disturbances? (I could see her running to the synagogue looking for rams’ horns.) One day she and I have got to have it out, about the writing business. Either more strudels, more Sirota, or—the garotte. If only I knew a little Yiddish!
Call me Reb! Those were Sid Essen's parting words.
Such exquisite torture, this writing humbuggery! Bughouse reveries mixed with choking fits and what the Swedes call mardrommen. Squat images roped with diamond tiaras. Baroque architecture. Cabalistic logarithms. Mezuzahs and prayer-wheels. Portentous phrases. (Let no one, said the auk, look upon this man with favor!) Skies of blue-green copper, filagreed with lacy striata; umbrella ribs, obscene graffiti. Balaam the ass licking his hind parts. Weasels spouting nonsense. A sow menstruating...
All because, as she once put it, I had the chance of a lifetime.
Sometimes I sailed into it with huge black wings. Then everything came out pell-mell and arsey-versy. Pages and pages. Reams of it. None of it belonged in the novel. Nor even in The Book of Perennial Gloom. Reading them over I had the impression of examining an old print: a room in a medieval dwelling, the old woman sitting on the pot, the doctor standing by with red hot tongs, a mouse creeping toward a piece of cheese in the corner near the crucifix. A ground-floor view, so to speak. A chapter from the history of everlasting misery. Depravity, insomnia, gluttony posing as the three graces. All described in quicksilver, benzine and potassium permanganate.
Another day my hands might wander over the keys with the felicity of a Borgia's murderous paw. Choosing the staccato technique, I would ape the quibblers and quipsters of the Ghibellines. Or put it on, like a saltimbanque performing for a feeble-minded monarch.
The next day a quadruped: everything in hoof beats, clots of phlegm, snorts and farts. A stallion (ech!) racing over a frozen lake with torpedoes in his bowels. All bravura, so to say.
And then, as when the hurricane abates, it would flow like a song—quietly, evenly, with the steady lustre of
