Hell, I said, it wouldn't have mattered to me if you hadn't finished grammar school. I have no respect for learning. It's sheer crap, this business of grammar and rhetoric. The less you know about such things the better. Especially if you're a writer.
But supposing he points out errors. What then?
Say—'Maybe you're right. I'll think about it.’ Or better yet, say—'How would you phrase it?’ Then you've got him. on the defensive, see?
I wish you were in my place sometimes.
So do I. Then I'd know if the bugger was sincere or not.
To-day, she said, ignoring the remark, he was talking about Europe. It was as if he were reading my thoughts. He was talking about American writers who had lived and studied abroad. Said it was important to live in such an atmosphere, that it nourished the soul.
What else did he say?
She hesitated a moment before coming out with it.
He said that if I completed the book he would give me the money to stay in Europe for a year or two.
Wonderful, I said. But what about your invalid mother? Me, in other words.
She had thought of that too. I'll probably have to kill her off. She added that whatever he forked up would surely be enough to see the both of us through. Pop was generous.
You see, she said, I wasn't wrong about Pop. Val, I don't want to push you, but...
You wish I would hurry and finish the book, eh?
Yes. How long do you think it will take?
I said I hadn't the slightest idea.
Three months?
I don't know.
Is it all clear, what you have to do?
No, it isn't.
Doesn't that bother you?
Of course. But what can I do? I'm forging ahead as best I know how.
You won't go off the trolley?
If I do I'll get back on again. I hope so, any way.
You do want to go to Europe, don't you?
I gave her a long look before answering.
Do I want to go to Europe? Woman, I want to go everywhere ... Asia, Africa, Australia, Peru, Mexico, Siam, Arabia, Java, Borneo ... Tibet too, and China. Once we take off I want to stay away for good. I want to forget that I was ever born here. I want to keep moving, wandering, roaming the world. I want to go to the end of every road...
And when will you write?
As I go along.
Val, you're a dreamer.
Sure I am. But I'm an active dreamer. There's a difference.
Then I added: We're all dreamers, only some of us wake up in time to put down a few words. Certainly I want to write. But I don't think it's the end all and be all. How shall I put it? Writing is like the caca that you make in your sleep. Delicious caca, to be sure, but first comes life, then the caca. Life is change, movement, quest ... a going forward to meet the unknown, the unexpected. Only a very few men can say of themselves—'I have lived!’ That's why we have books—so that men may live vicariously. But when the author also lives vicariously—
She broke in. When I listen to you sometimes, Val, I feel that you want to live a thousand lives in one. You're eternally dissatisfied—with life as it is, with yourself, with just about everything. You're a Mongol. You belong on the steppes of Central Asia.
You know, I said, getting worked up now, one of the reasons why I feel so disjointed is that there's a little of everything in me. I can put myself in any period and feel at home in it. When I read about the Renaissance I feel like a man of the Renaissance; when I read about one of the Chinese dynasties I feel exactly like a Chinese of that epoch. Whatever the race, the period, the people, Egyptian, Aztec, Hindu or Chaldean, I'm thoroughly in it, and it's always a rich, tapestried world whose wonders are inexhaustible. That's what I crave—a humanly created world, a world responsive to man's thoughts, man's dreams, man's desires. What gets me about (his life of ours, this American life, is that we kill everything we touch. Talk of the Mongols and the Huns—they were cavaliers compared to us. This is a hideous, empty, desolate land. I see my compatriots through the eyes of my ancestors. I see clean through them—and they're hollow, worm-eaten...
I took the bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin and refilled the glasses. There was enough for one good swallow.
To Napoleon! I said. A man who lived life to the fullest.
Val, you frighten me sometimes, the way you speak about America. Do you really hate it that much?
Maybe it's love, I said. Inverted love. I don't know.
I hope you're not going to work any of that off in the novel.
