Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (11 page)

But what I want to say about Anderson Creek—aside from the house that Jack
built, complete with shower and toilet for less than three hundred dollars—is this…. Not only
writers and artists live there, but ping-pong and chess players. (It was at Anderson Creek,
let me say, that I rediscovered that curious book by a Chinese on the relation between the
strategy employed by the Japanese at the Battle of Port Arthur and the Chinese game of chess.
A most curious book, and if not as singular as the
I Ching
or
Book of
Changes
, which Keyserling described as the most unique book ever written, it is
nevertheless worth having a look at.) To begin with, I want to say that I have been playing
chess ever since I was eight years old. I must add immediately that my game has improved but
little in the last fifty-five years. Now and again my interest in the game is rekindled,
sometimes through conversations with an expert like Ephraim Doner or through conversations
with a man like Norman Mini, when he is talking military strategy. The last time it happened
was as a result of talking with Charley Levitsky—of Anderson Creek.

Charley is one of those amiable, flexible, lovable persons who can play any
game well, a man who plays for the love of playing, not merely to win. He will play any game
you like—and beat you at it. It isn’t that he
tries
so hard to win, he just can’t
help winning. After I had played a few games with him he suggested one day that it might prove
more interesting if he were to give me a Queen. “A Queen and anything else you wish,” is the
way he put it. He won hands down, of course, and in short order. The experience promptly
discouraged me. The following day, recounting the affair to my friend Perlès, who was then
staying with us, I almost fell off my chair when he said: “A Queen and a rook, that’s nothing!
I’ll give you all my pawns—and beat you.” And by God, he did! He did it
three times in succession. Thinking that perhaps there was an unsuspected advantage in
making this kind of sacrifice, I said: “The next game we play I’ll give
you
all my
pawns.” I did and lost in ten moves.

The moral of this story is: “Don’t be gay when you’re full of shit!”

Inch Connecticut was the name of the leading character in a day-by-day serial which Paul Rink cooked up for the kids on Partington Ridge. It began of itself, the serial, one morning while he and the kids were waiting for the school bus to appear. It was a fantastic yarn, by all accounts, which Paul managed to drag out over a period of a year or more.

When I heard the name—Inch Connecticut—I was full of envy. So much better than Isaac Dust or Saul Delirium! I wondered if it was really his own invention.

The Inch Connecticut business was somewhat of a spur to me inasmuch as I had just begun a serial of my own by way of entertaining the kids at dinner every evening. Mine had to do with a little girl called Chama. (Pronounced
Chah
-ma.) Chama was the real name of a real girl, the daughter of Merle Armitage. Merle and his family had been to visit us one day, and his little girl, Chama, who was about Valentine’s age, had cast a spell over everyone. She was very beautiful, quite self-possessed, and had the air of an
Indian princess. From the time she left until weeks later I heard nothing but Chama, Chama, Chama.

One night at dinner Val asked me where Chama was. (“Right now.”) We were having a delicious meal, the wine was of the best, and the usual friction was absent. I was in fine fettle.

“Where’s Chama?” I repeated. “Why, in New York, I guess.”

“Where in New York?”

“At the St. Regis, most likely. That’s a hotel.” (I gave the St. Regis because I thought the name was colorful.)

“What is she doing there? Is her mother with her?”

Suddenly I had an inspiration. Why not give them a spiel about this beautiful little girl all alone in a swanky hotel in the middle of New York? Nothing to it! And with that I began what, all unknowingly, turned out to be a serial for the next few weeks.

Naturally they wanted me to serve it up at
every
meal, not just at dinner. But I squelched that idea quickly. I said that
if they behaved themselves
—what a loathsome expression—I would continue the story every evening, at dinner.

“Every evening?”
queried little Tony, strangely moved.

“Yes,
every evening,”
I repeated. That is,
if you behave your-selves!”

They didn’t, of course. What kids do? And of course I didn’t serve it up to them every evening, as I said I would, but that wasn’t because they misbehaved.

We always resumed the yarn by having Chama ring for the elevator. For some reason that elevator—I suppose the St. Regis
has
elevators!—intrigued them more than any other detail in my graphic description of scenes and events. It used to irritate me sometimes, the elevator business, because in working up the story I took pride in inventing the craziest sort of situations. Just the same, we always had to start the session with Chama ringing for the elevator.

(“Make her go up and down the elevator again, Daddy!”)

The angle which never ceased to puzzle them was—how did
Chama, who was just a little girl, manage all by herself in a great big city like New York? To be sure, I had laid the ground for this by giving them a bird’s-eye view of New York. (Tony had never been farther than Monterey and Val had been to San Francisco just once.)

“How many people are there in New York, Daddy?” Tony would ask over and over.

And I would say, over and over: “About ten million.”

“That’s a lot, ain’t it?” he would say.

“You bet! A hell of a lot! More than you can count.”

“I bet there’s a hundred million people in New York, aren’t there, Daddy? A thousand million million.”

“That’s right, Tony.”

Then Val: “There are
not
a hundred million people in New York, are there, Daddy?”

“Of course not!”

To get them off the subject… “Listen, nobody knows how many people there are in New York. That’s the truth. Where were we, anyway?”

Then one of them would pipe up: “She’s in bed having her breakfast, don’t you remember?”

“Yeah, she just rang for the bellhop to come so she could tell him what she wants for breakfast. He has to take the elevator from the bottom, don’t he, Dad?”

Of course I had endowed Chama with the most elegant, sophisticated manners. Had she been anything like the girl I described, in real life, her father would have disowned her. But Val and Tony thought she was real smart. Real cute, if you know what I mean.

“What did she always say, Daddy, when the boy knocked at her door?”

“Entrez, s’il vous plaît!”

“That’s French, ain’t it, Daddy?”

“It sure is. But Chama could speak several languages, did you know that?”

“Like what?”

“Like Spanish, like Italian, like Polish, like Arabic….”

“That’s no language!”

“What ain’t no language?”

“Arabic.”

“O.K., Tony, me lad, what is it then?”

“It’s a bird … or somethin’.”

“It is
not
a bird, is it, Daddy?” pipes Val.

“It’s a language,” I said, “but nobody speaks it except the Arabs.”

(Nothing like giving them correct information right from the cradle.)

“We don’t really care what she spoke,” said Val. “Go on! What did she do after breakfast?”

That was a good lead. I had been wondering myself what Chama was to do after breakfast. Now I had to think fast.

Maybe a bus ride wouldn’t be so bad. Up Fifth Avenue to the Bronx Zoo. The Zoo ought to hold them for three nights in a row….

Getting Chama showered and dressed, ringing for the maid to do her hair and that sort of thing, telephoning the manager to find out which bus to take and, above all, waiting for the elevator to climb to the 59th story, took considerable time and ingenuity. By the time Chama hit the sidewalk, dressed like a starlet and ready to do the sights, I was beginning to weaken. My desire was to transfer her to the Zoo as quickly as possible, but no, they insisted on learning what caught Chama’s eye (she was on the top deck) as the bus slowly wended its way up Fifth Avenue.

I gave them as good a description as I could of the streets and the sights I loathe. I didn’t start from Fifty-ninth Street either, but from the Flatiron Building at Twenty-third Street and Broadway. To be exact, I started from the Western Union office there, from the ground floor, where I once had my headquarters, my last headquarters. They weren’t much impressed, I must say, by the news that a new life had begun for me the day I walked out of that office
and strolled up Broadway feeling like an emancipated slave. They wanted to look at the stores and shops, the signs, the crowds; they wanted to know all about that fruit juice stand at Times Square where for a dime one could get the tallest glass of delicious ice-cold fresh fruit juice, any and all flavors. (California, the land of milk and honey, of nuts and fruit, has no such stands.)

Chama meanwhile, seated beside a garrulous old woman with a bag of peanuts, is all agog. The woman is pointing out the high spots and Chama is helping her get rid of the peanuts. “You must keep an eye on your purse,” says the old lady. “New York is full of thieves.”

“You were a thief once, weren’t you, Dad?” says Tony.

I try to brush him off but he wants to go into it.

“You were in prison and you escaped by digging a hole in the wall,” says Val. “That was in Africa, when you were in the Foreign Legion, wasn’t it, Daddy?”

“That’s right, Val.”

“But you
were
a thief, weren’t you, Dad?” says Tony.

“Well, yes and no. I was a horse thief. That’s a little different. I never stole money from children.”

“You see, Val!”

Fortunately, we were just passing Rockefeller Center. I pointed out the ice skaters.

“Why doesn’t it ever freeze in California?” asked Tony.

“Because it never gets cold enough.” (That was an easy one.)

Central Park impressed them. So big, so beautiful. I didn’t say anything about the cops creeping around in the bushes at night, looking for hungry lovers. Instead I told them how I used to go horseback riding every morning before going to work.

“You promised us a horse, remember?”

“Yeah, when are we going to get it?”

Passing an old mansion on the right, I thought of the days when I used to deliver clothes for Isaac Walker & Sons along this forbidding stretch. I thought of old man Hendrix particularly and
how he lived all alone with a retinue of liveried servants. What a testy bugger he was, even when his liver gave him no trouble! I thought also of the Roosevelt family, the father, Emlen, and his three tall sons, all bankers, walking four abreast every morning, winter or summer, rain or shine, down Fifth Avenue to Wall Street, and back again after “work.” They wore canes but no overcoats, no gloves. Wonderful to take a promenade like that every day, if you can afford it. My “promenades” up and down Fifth Avenue were of quite another character. More of a prowl than an airing. And without a cane, of course.

I cut the narrative that evening at the entrance to the Zoo. I forgot, beginning the next instalment, that I had left Chama searching for the elephants. Absent-mindedly I had switched to the Aquarium, down at the Battery. (The Aquarium was quite a hangout of mine in the days of the Atlas Portland Cement Company. Lacking the money to eat lunch, I used to pass the time studying marine life.) Anyway, just as I had worked them up over the ink fish, Val suddenly remembered that Chama was at the Zoo. So, back to the Zoo, where we strolled about for seven nights, not three or four. In fact, I began to think we’d never be able to extricate ourselves from the fascinating haunts of the beasts.

Thus it went, from one scene to another, including a ferryboat ride to Staten Island (the home of the damned) and another to Bedloe’s Island, where we climbed up the inside of the Statue of Liberty. (Here a digression on the little statue of liberty at the Pont de Grenelle, Paris.) Night after night it went on, with detours and switchbacks, and now and then a trip to Coney Island or Rockaway Beach. Sometimes it was summer and sometimes it was winter; they didn’t seem to notice the sudden changes of season.

Occasionally they demanded to know where Chama got all the money she was spending day in and day out. I answered (expertly) by explaining that her father was a rich man and that he had entrusted a sum of money to the manager of the hotel to be doled out to Chama as the manager saw fit.

“Never more than two dollars at a time,” I added.

“That’s a lot of money, ain’t it, Dad?” From Tony.

“It’s a lot for a little girl, yes. But then New York is a very expensive place to live.” I didn’t dare tell him what some little girls get for spending money from their rich parents.

“You never give us more than a quarter,” said Val pensively.

“That’s because we live in the country,” said I. “There’s no way to spend money here, is there?”

“There is
too,”
said Tony. “I spent a dollar once at the State Park.”

“Yeah, and you got sick afterwards,” said Val.

“I don’t like quarters,” said Tony. “I like pennies.”

“That’s fine,” said I. “The next time you ask for a quarter I’m going to give you pennies.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-five.”

“That’s more than a quarter, ain’t it?”

“A lot more,” said I. “Especially for little boys.”

When I had about run out of material I decided to fly Chama home to her parents, who were then living in New Mexico. I thought it would give them a thrill to get a description of the wonders of our vast and glorious continent from the air. So I hustled Chama off on one of the cheap lines which make frequent stops and a lot of crazy detours in order to take on freight.

From the La Guardia airport Chama took off one fine morning in the spring, headed west. I explained that the West only begins when you cross the Great Divide. They didn’t seem to catch on very well, so I said: “The real West is the Far West… where the cowboys live and Indians and rattlesnakes.” That meant California to them, especially the rattlesnakes. Anyhow, as I explained it, Chama would have to change planes at Denver. “Denver is off the path,” I said, “but the plane has to stop there to pick up a live corpse.”