the sleeping guide: Heimweh. Hodie tibi, cras mihi.
And as I walked about that afternoon, up one street and down another, I was already saying good-bye to the familiar scenes of horror and ennui, of morbid monotony, of sanitary sterility and loveless love. Passing down Fifth Avenue, cutting through the shoppers and drifters like a wire eel, my contempt and loathing for all that met my eye almost suffocated me. Pray God, I would not have long to endure the sight of these snuffed out Jack-o'-Lanterns, these decrepit New World buildings, these hideous, mournful churches, these parks dotted with pigeons and derelicts. From the street of the tailor shop on down to the Bowery (the course of my ancient walk) I lived again the days of my apprenticeship, and they were like a thousand years of misery, of mishap, of misfortune. A thousand years of alienation. Approaching Cooper Union, ever the low-water mark of my sagging spirits, passages of those books I once wrote in my head came back, like the curled edges of a dream which refuse to flatten out. They would always be flapping there, those curled edges ... flapping from the cornices of those dingy shit-brown shanties, those slat-faced saloons, those foul rescue and shelter places where the bleary-eyed codfish-faced bums hung about like lazy flies, and O God, how miserable they looked, how wasted, how blenched, how withered and hollowed out! Yet it was here in this bombed out world that John Cowper Powys had lectured, had sent forth into the soot-laden, stench-filled airs his tidings of the eternal world of the spirit—the spirit of Europe, his Europe, our Europe, the Europe of Sophocles. Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, Ibsen. In this same area other fiery zealots had appeared and addressed the mob, invoking other great names: Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Engels, Shelley, Blake. The streets looked the same as ever, worse indeed, breathing less hope, less justice, less beauty, less harmony. Small chance now for a Thoreau to appear, or a Whitman, or a John Brown—or a Robert E. Lee. The man of the masses was coming into his own: a sad, weird- looking creature animated by a central switchboard, capable of saying neither Yes nor No, recognizing neither right nor wrong, but always in step, the lock step, always chanting the Dead March. Good-bye, good-bye! I kept saying, as I marched along. Good-bye to all this! And not a soul responding, not even a pigeon.—Are you deaf, you slumbering maniacs?
I am walking down the middle of civilization, and this is how it is. On the one side culture running like an open sewer; on the other the abattoirs where everything hangs on the hooks, split open, gory, swarming with flies and maggots. The boulevard of life in the twentieth Century. One Arc de Triomphe after another. Robots advancing with the Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other. Lemmings rushing to the sea. Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war ... Hurrah for the Karamazovs! What gay wisdom! Encore un petit effort, si vous voulez etre republicains!
Down the middle of the road. Stepping gingerly amidst the piles of horse manure. What dirt and humbug we have to stumble through! Ah, Harry, Harry! Harry Haller, Harry Heller, Harry Smith, Harry Miller, Harry Harried. Coming, Asmodeus, coming! On two sticks, like a crippled Satan. But laden with medals. Such medals! The Iron Cross, the Victoria Cross, the Croix de guerre ... in gold, in silver, in bronze, in iron, in zinc, in wood, in tin ... Take your pick!
And poor Jesus had to carry his own cross!
The air grows more pungent. Chatham Square. Good old Chinatown. Below the pavement a honeycomb of booths. Opium dens. Lotus land. Nirvana. Rest in peace, the workers of the world are working. We are all working—to usher in eternity.
Now the Brooklyn Bridge swinging like a lyre between the skyscrapers and Brooklyn Heights. Once again the weary pedestrian wends his way homeward, pockets empty, stomach empty, heart empty. Gorgonzola hobbling along on two burned stumps. The river below, the sea gulls above. And above the gulls the stars invisible. What a glorious day! A walk such as Pomander himself might have enjoyed. Or Anaxagoras. Or that arbiter of perverted taste: Petronius.
The winter of life, as some one should have said, begins at birth. The hardest years are from one to ninety. After that, smooth sailing.
Howeward the swallows fly. Each one carrying in his bill a crumb, a dead twig, a spark of hope. E pluribus unum.
The orchestra pit is rising, all sixty-four players donned in spotless white. Above, the stars are beginning to show through the midnight blue of the domed ceiling. The greatest show on earth is about to be ushered in, complete with trained seals, ventriloquists and aerial acrobats. The master of ceremonies is Uncle Sam himself, that long, lean striped-like-a-zebra humorist who straddles the world with his Baron Munchausen legs and, come wind, hail, snow, frost or dry rot, is ever ready to cry Cock-a doodledoo!
19
Sailing out one bright and lovely morning to take my constitutional, I find MacGregor waiting for me at the doorstep.
Hi there! he says, switching on his electric grin. So it's you, in the flesh? Trapped you at last, eh? He puts out his hand. Hen, why do I have to lay in wait for you like this? Can't you spare five minutes occasionally for an old friend? What are you running away from? How are you anyway? How's the book coming along? Mind if I walk a ways with you ?
I suppose the landlady told you I was out?
How did you guess it?
I started walking; he fell in step with me, as if we were on parade.
Hen, you'll never change, I guess. (Sounded frighteningly like my mother.) Once upon a time I could call you any hour of the day or night and you'd come. Now you're a writer ... an important man ... no time for old friends.
Come on, I replied, cut it. You know that's not it.
What is it then?
This ... I'm done wasting time. These problems of yours—I can't solve them. No one can, except yourself. You're not the first man who's been jilted.
What about yourself? Have you forgotten how you used to keep me up all night bending my ear about Una Gifford ?
We were twenty-one then.
One's never too old to fall in love. At this age it's even worse. I can't afford to lose her.
