'But I did return your sugarbowl,' my mother said politely. 'I put it on your bookshelf. You'll find it there.' When the stranger had left Mother turned to me and asked: 'How is your horrid country?'
'It's not horrid, Mother,' I said, 'and it's your country.'
'It's true that I travel on an American passport,' she said, 'but that's merely the sort of compromise one has to strike in dealing with a bureaucracy. It is, however, a horrid place. When I was in the Socialist Party with your father I said again and again that if American capitalism continued to exalt mercenary and dishonest men the economy would degenerate into the manufacture of drugs and ways of life that would make reflection-any sort of thoughtfulness or emotional depth-impossible. I was right.' She poked a finger at me. 'I see American magazines in the cafe and the bulk of their text is advertising for tobacco, alcohol and absurd motor cars that promise-quite literally promise-to enable you to forget the squalor, spiritual poverty and monotony of selfishness. Never, in the history of civilization, has one seen a great nation singlemindedly bent on drugging itself. I went out to California last year…'
'I didn't know you'd been home,' I said.
'Well I was,' she said. 'I didn't call you.'
'It doesn't matter,' I said.
'I knew it wouldn't,' she said harshly. 'Well, to make a long story short, I went out to see some friends in Los Angeles and they took me for a ride on the freeway and here I saw another example of forgetfulness, suicide, municipal corruption and the debauchery of natural resources. I won't go back again because if I did do you know what I'd do?'
'No, Mother.'
'I would settle in some place like Bullet Park. I would buy a house. I would be very inconspicuous. I would play bridge. I would engage in charities. I would entertain in order to conceal my purpose.'
'What would that be?'
'I would single out as an example some young man, preferably an advertising executive, married with two or three children, a good example of a life lived without any genuine emotion or value.'
'What would you do to him?'
'I would crucify him on the door of Christ's Church,' she said passionately. 'Nothing less than a crucifixion will wake that world.'
'How would you crucify him,' I asked.
'Oh, I haven't worked out the details,' she said. Suddenly she was a gentle, gray-haired old lady again. I suppose I'd drug him or poison him at some cocktail party. I wouldn't want him to suffer.'
I went into my room to unpack. The plaster wall was thin and I could hear my mother talking through the partition. At first I thought someone had joined her after I'd left but then I could tell by the level of her voice that she was talking to herself. I could hear her clearly. 'My father was a common quarry worker, often unemployed. I had read somewhere that the trajectory of a person's career could be plotted from their beginnings and given such humble beginnings I thought that if I accepted them I would end up as a waitress in a diner or at best a small- town librarian. I kept trying to tamper with my origins so that I would have more latitude for a career. Having been raised in a small town I was terrified of being confined to one…'
I went down the hall and opened her door. She had taken off her shoes and was lying on her bed, fully dressed, talking to the ceiling or the air.
'What in the world are you doing, Mother?'
'Oh, I'm analyzing myself,' she said cheerfully. 'I thought I might benefit from psychoanalysis. I went to a doctor in the village. He charged a hundred schillings an hour. I simply couldn't afford this and when I said so he suggested that I get rid of my car and cut down on my meals. Imagine. Then I decided to analyze myself. Now, three times a week, I lie down on my bed and talk to myself for an hour. Tm very frank. I don't spare myself any unpleasantness. The therapy seems to be quite effective and, of course, it doesn't cost me a cent. I still have three quarters of an hour to go and if you don't mind leaving me alone…'
I went out and closed the door but I stood in the hall long enough to hear her say: 'When I sleep flat on my back my dreams are very linear, composed and seemly. I often dream, on my back, of a Palladian villa. I mean an English house built along the lines of Palladio. When I sleep in a prenatal position my dreams are orotund, unsavory and sometimes erotic. When I sleep on my abdomen…'
I went back to my room and packed, the only son of a male caryatid holding up the three top floors of the Mercedes Hotel and a crazy old woman. I left her a note saying that I had suddenly gotten restless. To appear and disappear did not seem to me a dirty trick. I had the feeling that she was so wrapped up in her own eccentricities that she would hardly notice my going. I got a cab to the station and began my travels again. I was back in London that night in time for dinner. That was the twenty-third of December. After dinner I took a walk. It was snowing. I passed a theater or movie house where an evangelist, whose name I can't remember, was holding a meeting. I went in out of curiosity. The hall was about half full.
The evangelist was a plain man dressed plainly in gray-not ugly-but possessing one of those disconcerting faces that have no harmony. His nose was bulbous and red. His lips were delicate and thin. His hair and his ears seemed to have been slapped on as an afterthought. The house lights were on and I looked around at the congregation. There were plenty of rooming-house types-lonely old men and lonely old women whose devotions would be rooted in stupidity and boredom-but there were also clear faces, young faces, the faces of men and women putting up some creditable struggle for peace of mind. The ardor with which they bowed their heads in prayer and the sense of shared humanity moved me deeply. It seemed to me then that the cruel burdens of insularity, suspicion, loneliness, fear and worry had been lifted. Life was natural and we, together, were natural men and women. A man beside me seemed to plunge into the attitudes of prayer. At the end of the exhortation we were asked to come to the front of the theater, confess our sins and be forgiven. The congregation then, in small groups, went to the front of the theater and were blessed.
As they turned away, after the blessing, many of their faces were radiant, and what point would there be in my asking how long their exaltation would last? They must return, many of them, to empty rooms, the care of invalids, bankrupt marriages, contumely, ridicule and despair, but some promise had been made. I went down the aisle myself with one of the last groups. Oh Father I have sinned. I ate more than my share of sandwiches at the picnic. I have performed every known form of carnal indecency. I left my new bicycle out in the rain. I do not love my parents. I have admired myself in a looking glass. Cleanse and forgive me most merciful Father.
Then, standing there with my head bowed, I felt completely cleansed and forgiven. Life was simple, natural, a privilege. My life had a purpose although it was not revealed to me until later. I walked happily back to the hotel.
XIV
In my sophomore year at Yale I petitioned the New Haven court to have my name changed from Paul Hammer to Robert Levy. I'm not quite sure why. Hammer, of course, was no name at all. Levy had for me a pure and simple sound and, belonging really to no community, I suppose I hoped to insinuate myself into the Jewish community. My lawyer spoke eloquently of the fact that I had been born out of wedlock and had been named for a humble and rudimentary tool that had been seen passing a window. The judge, whose name was Weinstock, refused my petition. The New Haven paper carried the story, including the origin of my name, and as a result I was dropped from the social register and lost at least a dozen friends. I have always been astonished to find that bastardy remains a threat to organized society.
I'll skip school and college. When I was twenty-four and living in Cleveland I invested fifty thousand dollars of the money Grandmother left me in a publishing house run by a man I'd known in college. We were both inexperienced and the business went poorly. At the end of a year we mortgaged our firm to a larger publishing house who, six months later, foreclosed the mortgage and copped my investment. I don't think there was any connection-I still had an adequate income-but at about this time I began to suffer from melancholy-a cafard-a form of despair that sometimes seemed to have a tangible approach. Once or twice, I think, I seemed to glimpse some of its physical attributes. It was covered with hair-it was the classical bete noire-but it was as a rule no more visible than a moving column of thin air. I decided then to move to New York and translate the poetry of Eugenio
