The Haunted Life Page 11

  At night he gets his mother mad at him and anxious by stating that a married man can always go out and get drunk as much as he wants, married or not . . . saying this with real disrespect. His father has given up trying to talk to him about these things, he doesn’t even shake his head as in the old days—he just stares down thinking of his imminent death. Oh the horror of his last days, and Peter there—!

  Peter lays down in his room and wonders if he shouldn’t stop doing these things, and become good again—like a good little boy. Again he doesn’t care. He realizes that some great sorrow will straighten him out, or just his disrespectful decision to go at things differently “sometimes.” He just piles up horror after horror upon himself.

  Dostoevsky—“ . . . An innocent soul, yet one touched with the terrible possibility of corruption, and with that wideness with which a soul still pure consciously entertains vice in his thoughts, nourishes it in his heart, and is caressed by it in his furtive yet wild and audacious dreams—all this naturally connected with his strength, his reason, and even more truthfully, with God.”

  There’s No Use Denying It (1945)

  THERE’S NO USE DENYING IT: WHEN YOU HAVEN’T ANY MONEY IT’S EXTREMELY difficult to feel freely indignant about the stupidities of others. When you haven’t any money and never had any in your life it’s just as plausible to turn on yourself and let loose a series of self-recriminating blasts. But as I rode away from Queens on the subway, spun in my own little cocoon of indignance, as the subway smashed and crashed along towards Manhattan, I forgot all about never having any money, and made faces at the article I was reading. It was one of those wartime things, a “letter from France,” in the New York Times Book Review, and it was supposed to give American readers an idea of what the French were thinking and writing now that the Germans had been cleared out and chased pell-mell across the Rhine.

  The author was a professional imbecile, of the phony Liberal kind that now have American letters monopolized. One of those strangely neo-Puritan people who spend all day thinking about how best [to] achieve the common good of all, but never for a moment realizing that such a thing is impossible while there still exist people like themselves. Because people like themselves only want one thing—like everyone else, naturally. Only a lot of other people aren’t making hypocrisy a rallying cry and a profession. It is these professional imbeciles, I said to myself, blue with unimportant rage, it is these people who have the press, the radio, the cinema, and letters by the balls. I read on with an increasing desire to be hostile.

  Now this phony bastard was trying to tell me that outside of what he had already reviewed—and that, by the way, was a series of dull hack pieces about the heroism of the Resistance and such other completely irrelevant crap—now he was trying to tell me that all else he found on the bookstalls and kiosks was not worth reviewing because it had no “political significance” in it. He mentioned something Pablo Picasso had written, and from what I could gather, Picasso had amused himself with a little allegorical trifle, charming and light, as the saying goes. Our friend the professional journalist and bull-thrower found that absolutely irreverent in view of the great heroic and epic period France had just survived.

  I had an urge to spit in the newspaper, but that is the sort of thing that is not done in America unless you’re a refugee just off the boat crawling with the verminous hates of Europe and spitting them in a shower of jealousy into the white-tiled kitchens of Ozone Park. So I just folded the paper and jammed it inside a handle of the sliding doors, and gave myself over to a session of scowling.

  I was thinking that for God’s sake literature should be the last form of expression we have, uncontaminated by this new form of high pressure all-out professional and official Phonyism. I was thinking that sometimes you could find a book—maybe something by John O’Hara on this side or by Julian Green on the other side—and could relax in a limitless sea of natural and unconstrained saying. Not always coming up against a wall of generalities and radio lyrics. Radio lyrics, you know, cover a lot of ground: they serve to assure us that the bumpy road of life sometimes leads, if we have courage, to a bed of roses. All the way from that to glorifying our already half-hammered-in idea that the Germans are much meaner than we could ever get to be, because we have raised our children to believe in massaging their gums before brushing their teeth, like we elders do, and to believe that God is on our side because we water our lawns, trim our hedges, keep the garage clean, fuss around the workshop behind the kitchen, and go to church on Sundays where the priest assures us that we are united against religious intolerance, the undemocratic way of life, and something called aggression. Across my mind flashes all the symbols of the radio lyric, if you want to call it that. I saw Philadelphia gentlemen drinking whiskey in a paneled room, sometimes over stamp collections or chessboards, other times, by God, over blueprints. I saw pretty young things rushing into a soda fountain. I saw their fathers reclining in a beach chair on the lawn, with a glass of beer and something like the Saturday Evening Post. I saw their mothers mixing batter in the aforementioned white-tiled Ozone Park kitchen. I saw young boys eating cereal and getting healthy right before your very eyes. And whenever I saw a soldier, he was either on furlough, rushing into a soda fountain, or reclining on a beach chair on the lawn, or eating the freshly made cake in the white-tiled kitchen, but never, mind you, drinking whiskey. Or I saw the soldier lying in a foxhole thinking about all the above things except the whiskey, covered over with a three-day beard, and taking a bead with his rifle on some grinning monkey of a Jap. I saw all these things and realized how amazed I would be if I ever actually saw them in the flesh.

  Not always coming against a wall of generalities like that. That’s what I wished. And all the time I was thinking these things, having my little round brooding gripe, I realized that I had some friends in Manhattan who never even bothered to read the New York Times Book Review. I thought of them laughing at my unimportant little angers. To them, all this nonsense was something to be expected. They were shrewder than me, that’s certain. They even probably thought of making hay while the sun shone. What did they care? They had long ago learned that hypocrisy pays. And that’s what they wanted, these smiling friends of mine, they wanted to get paid.

  But someday, I resolved, I would vent my opinions to them, and let them laugh. At least I would have made my position clear.

  What angered me the most was what one of them, Bleistein, had to say about my view of things. He said that I was burning myself out getting fierce over questions that were already passé. He called me a Romantic. To Bleistein, a Romantic is a neurotic. Personally, he, Bleistein, didn’t mind hypocrisy; as a matter of fact, I was certain that he thrived on it, and washed in a big bathtub of it. I could see him splashing about happily in the dirty water with everybody else, happy as long as there remained for him the opportunity to feel someone’s leg.

  Then I had another friend, by the name of Bill Dennison, who not exactly liked to wash in the dirty water, but preferred to sit somewhere nearby, in a beach chair maybe with a mint julep, or a pipeful of opium, and watch the fun. He annoyed me most of all.

  As for me, with all my hatred for the dirty bath, there I was in the middle of it trying to get out. This amused Bill Dennison to no end. Everything amused him.

  I got off the subway at Radio City and got up on the street. It was about seven o’clock in the morning. A fine May morning, with the little Sixth Avenue trees all arrayed in new leaves and everybody walking around in the sun. Some of them doubtlessly on their way to murder and robbery, but nevertheless, they were happy to be out in the May sun. Even the Broadway Sams I passed on my way to the Polyclinic Hospital, those so-called Runyon characters who linger about on the corner of 50th street and Broadway, even they looked happy. They stood around counting their money, as usual, but this morning they were doing it with a certain zest and delight. It’s really frightening to realize that these sallow-faced monsters, with their perpetual expression of pouting
and pained anxiety, faces like crumpled, sagging old dollar bills, even in the younger ones, are human. For then you realize that you are brother to a monster, and a possible monster yourself.

  I walked west towards Eighth Avenue. There were some more Broadway Sams on that corner, the Madison Square Garden variety who bet on the prize fights and basketball games, and even on the circus trapeze acrobats, I strongly suspect.

  The Polyclinic Hospital is between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. It is the most miserable hospital I have ever seen. It is a hospital for the poor, that’s why. The floor cleaners are all Bowery bums who drink bay rum mixed with cheap wine. In the wards, you see sickness and smell sickness and become sick yourself. There are some good doctors, there, however; but of course, I know nothing about medicine. It always stands to reason that hospitals like these are, by some sort of slow biological process, bound to become miserable, in spite of the original condition and atmosphere of the place, because the poor, and particularly, the sick poor, seem to love to breathe out misery in a way that eventually lends that misery to everything around them. Like the British working class of the 1930’s who used their new bathtubs for coal bins.

  As I got off the elevator on the fourth floor, sure enough, in front of my eyes, was the sick poor, and more miserable a crew I have never seen. These people were sitting on benches in a hallway waiting to be given some sort of electrical shock for their deafness, partial or otherwise. The living symbol of the sick poor was there, vividly and sickeningly, in the form of a woman and her young daughter. These two were dressed in what is popularly recognized to be the garb of the refugee, the woman with her cumbersome shoes and thick cotton stockings and the little girl with a silly shawl. I watched them with disgust, sitting as I was, directly across the hallway from them. They both wore a mooning expression that seemed to whine for pity. Both of them had large dark eyes and long faces and they didn’t seem to know where to put their hands. It must not be said, however, that they felt out of place. They were right in their element, and there was even a kind of little impertinence in the way they ignored the sensation they were creating in me. I watched them unceasingly. Still they sat there, drooping with misery, resigned, as they say, to a wretched pathetic fate. They did not move, they completely ignored their companions in ear trouble who sat all about talking and gesticulating. I would have sat there all the rest of the morning watching them if Alexander hadn’t happened to see me from the fire escape.

  He switched down the hall towards me, with that splendid unconcern of the aristocrat. It’s amazing how little democracy there really is, in America or anywhere else. I thought Alexander would walk over their heads.

  “Joe, why don’t you come out on the fire escape,” he cried, lumbering around their benches.

  “Where’s everybody?”

  “We’re the first ones.”

  I got up and followed Alexander out to the fire escape, first turning to see what the old woman and her daughter would think about that. They had both turned their mooning faces in my direction. There was a certain amount of awe in their expressions, as though going out on the fire escape were something beyond their rights. Which is just what they wanted to think, I’m sure. People like that wash in a dirty bath, too; they just love misery, more and more of it, and the dirtier the better. You can do no worse than relieve them of their misery, for then they won’t be properly allowed to moon around.

  The first thing I wanted to do was tell Alexander what I had been thinking about on the subway. He was clever enough to see through hypocrisy, of course, but I suspect that he went me one better, and was clever enough again not to bother about it. In any event, he started to talk before I did, and the more he talked, the less I desired to tell him about the damnable little “letter from France” that had so incensed me. Because John Alexander is a subtle young man. He was one of Bleistein’s “moderns” who went beyond the passé and concerned themselves with the new problems. And the new problems were all subtle. In this realm, hypocrisy, as a matter of fact, had little meaning. A psychoanalyst did not accuse you of hypocrisy when you withheld psychic facts and information; he only saw that there was strong resistance in your subconscious. Well, I was young enough to wade into new ponds, confusedly, of course, but happily.

  Alexander was clearly upset over some dreams he’d been having. It was funny to see him being upset. This big adolescent hulk, with the dreamy Casanova eyes, the perfect profile, the good family, the buxom intelligent mistress, the good clothes and well fed look, and the sophisticated, semi-effeminate manners, was being upset. You saw him bubble with surprise when the latest homosexual scandal came out, or when it was learned that a certain Gotham society matron had given so much to so-and-so. The rest of the time he sat around with his mistress cooing about jewelry or women’s hats, about sex or a clever line in Henry James. Now he was all upset about his dreams.

  He had a boyish laugh that crinkled up his eyes gaily. It was also a loud laugh that burst out of his enormous body and rumbled around. “I was so upset, Joe, I had to leave Joan’s and go get a room in William Hall . . .”

  “Why on earth?”

  “I don’t know! I just couldn’t stand it. I was frightened by the hallway there. Don’t you think it’s interesting!”

  “I certainly do,” I said frankly. “What the hell were your dreams about?”

  “About women’s hats!” he roared. “It’s the damnedest thing. It seems as though I were sitting on a roof next to a lot of other roofs, all different in size. And then again it seems that these roofs were only women’s hats. Joan thinks I was sitting in a cradle.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “If so, Joe old boy, I’m sure it must be the remembrance of something that happened long ago, had something to do with women’s hats and one of mother’s long-forgotten teas.”

  “Maybe some old matron came up and gave it a diddle, hey John?”

  “Or maybe she wanted to throw me out of the window. Gad knows!”

  He was shimmying all over with laughter. He let out a long sigh and giggled a bit. “I was so upset! And Joan is all worried about it now. She’s all for calling in a psychoanalyst immediately.”

  “Especially if you insist on being chased away from her by these . . . by these inconvenient nightmares.”

  Always when I was with Alexander, I spent all my energy trying to contrive wry and humorous remarks. But it never worked out. The remarks always came out lame. And he was so good at it. I’m sure I bored him.

  “Where is that Hosker!” John said, with some annoyance, glancing at his wristwatch.

  “Late as usual,” I said, to fill the gap.

  “When these people get out we’ll have some room to sit.” John was referring to the sick, poor, and deaf. They were slowly disappearing, as the electrical shocks were being meted out full tilt now in the antechamber and the line was thinning. To John they were something that filled up seats, these people. To me too, for all I know. When there’s a crowd in your way you always think of machine guns. I’ve mowed down my share on Times Square.

  Hosker now came prancing around the corner of the corridor, clacking his heels smartly, with that trail of cigarette smoke that always followed his vigorous movements around.

  “Hup! Hup!” he yelled up the hallway, seeing us on the fire escape. He rushed up to see if we were smoking. “Won’t be long now, boys. Where the hell are the girls?”

  John and I followed Hosker back into the hall. The last of the ear patients was just leaving, a big man with handle-bar mustaches who was always cupping an enormous hand to his ear. He turned around and grinned at us, cupping his ear. I filled the void by yelling, “So long, Pop!”

  He nodded vigorously and went.

  “You boys didn’t smoke did you?” Hosker said.

  “Had my last one yesterday morning,” I lied.

  “Where are these people!” John exclaimed painfully. “I’ve got to do some shopping this afternoon.”

  We were waiting for
the other kids who were in on this racket with us. Every once in a while, about twice a week, Hosker had us up there for throat tests. He had a kind of colorescent machine that made readings on the relative inflammation of your throat after smoking so many cigarettes. Hosker was connected with a certain cigarette company; he was a chemical engineer, and had himself invented the fantastic gadget inside. The whole idea of the tests, which fortunately dragged on for months, was to prove that his company’s brand of cigarettes had less inflammatory effect on one’s throat than other brands. It was all scientific, you see. We were not supposed to smoke for twelve hours previous to the tests. After the first reading, we were all given cigarettes and told to smoke like hell, which we did. We all smoked different brands. We all sat around smoking, talking, while Hosker rushed around making his readings, for a few hours at a visit, and for that we all got five dollars. Hosker was our happy, vigorous, good-natured little gold mine. He was really a very nice person. This is proven by the fact that after a while, the kids just simply called him “Hosker” and even made cracks about his invention. Hosker took it all, as I have shown, with a great good nature. On top of that, Hosker had a good job and he didn’t give a damn one way or the other. These men always prove to be the best. They bear no ill-feelings of the kind that come out and bite you.

  Around the corner now swept the good Dr. Schoenfeldt. He gave these tests a dash of medical legitimacy. Hosker was supposed to be Schoenfeldt’s assistant, but you could tell right away that Hosker knew more about it. I suppose Schoenfeldt had been hired by the cigarette company just for his name and prestige, and as I say, to give the tests, the experiments, that needed professional sanction. Schoenfeldt was a distinguished looking German refugee doctor. He knew something about Hosker’s colorescent machine, of course, and about everything else that went with the tests of course. But in the matter of these tests, I had the feeling that he should have acted more like Hosker’s assistant than anything else. Hosker had invented the thing, and when it broke down, he repaired it himself. At any rate, they were both good fellows, and we were getting our five dollars a throw.