Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (38 page)

Except for the gangsters, who are getting smarter every day, more efficient,
more cunning, more business-like, more progressive, more honorable, so to speak, and who are
indoctrinating the young (through comics, movies, radio, television), infiltrating the ranks,
so that sometimes it is difficult to tell whether the man seated next to you is one of them or
just a lawyer, judge, banker, congressman or minister of the gospel… except for the gangsters,
I say, the ones who really seem to have it best, who know perfectly well what they are doing
and like it, who show the least wear and tear, who get the most enjoyment out of life, are the
fifty-, and one-hundred-dollars-per-call call girls, most of them highly intelligent, well
educated, pleasant to look at, always well dressed, well read, simple and unaffected in
deportment, less noisy, vulgar and vain-glorious, very much so, than the wives or mistresses
of the men they cater to. Even a Supreme Court judge would find it pleasant, profitable and
instructive to spend an hour or two with one of their calling. The pity is that they are not
available to the rank and file!

As a minnesinger of the lumpen proletariat, I know that no respectable
American will take the foregoing seriously. Any more than he will take seriously that fact
that, by the latest count, 13,976,238 men and women, including a percentage of children as
well, are rotting away in prisons, reformatories, hospitals, insane asylums, institutions for
the mentally defective and similar establishments throughout the land. I may be off on my
figures this way or that, but the facts are correct. As Lord Buckley says: “You lay it down,
Nazz, and we’ll pick it up!”

These are the kind of facts, needless to say, that one would hate to rub under
a kitten’s nose by way of house-breaking it. Even a whiff of such facts would give a plover or
an osprey mental diarrhea. Better not present them to your children until they are ready for
their master’s degree. Better keep the young on lemons and lavender until they’ve reached the
age of discretion.

REFERENCE TABLE FOR THE PRECEDING POTPOURRI

PART THREE

PARADISE LOST

It was Anaïs Nin who introduced me to Conrad Moricand.
She brought him to my studio in the Villa Seurat one day in the fall of 1936. My first
impressions were not altogether favorable. The man seemed somber, didactic, opinionated,
self-centered. A fatalistic quality pervaded his whole being.

It was late afternoon when he arrived, and after chatting a while, we went to
eat in a little restaurant on the Avenue d’Orléans. The way he surveyed the menu told me at
once that he was finicky. Throughout the meal he talked incessantly, without its spoiling his
enjoyment of the food. But it was the kind of talk that does not go with food, the kind that
makes food indigestible.

There was an odor about him which I could not help but be aware of. It was a
mélange of bay rum, wet ashes and
tabac gris
, tinctured with a dash of some elusive,
elegant perfume. Later these would resolve themselves into one unmistakable scent—the aroma of
death.

I had already been introduced to astrologic circles before meeting Moricand.
And in Eduardo Sanchez, a cousin of Anaïs Nin, I had found a man of immense erudition, who, on
the advice of his analyst, had taken up astrology therapeutically, so to speak. Eduardo often
reminded me of the earthworm, one of God’s most useful creatures, it is said. His powers of
ingestion and digestion were stupendous. Like the worm, his labors were primarily for the
benefit of others, not himself. At the time Eduardo was engrossed in a study of the
Pluto-Neptune-Uranus conjunctions. He had delved deep into history, metaphysics and biography
in search of material to corroborate his intuitions. And finally he had begun work on the
great theme: Apocatastasis.

With Moricand I entered new waters. Moricand was not only an
astrologer and a scholar steeped in the hermetic philosophies, but an occultist. In
appearance there was something of the mage about him. Rather tall, well built, broad
shouldered, heavy and slow in his movements, he might have been taken for a descendant of the
American Indian family. He liked to think, he later confided, that there was a connection
between the name Moricand and Mohican. In moments of sorrow there was something slightly
ludicrous about his expression, as if he were consciously identifying himself with the last of
the Mohicans. It was in such moments that his square head with its high cheek bones, his
stolidity and impassivity, gave him the look of anguished granite.

Inwardly he was a disturbed being, a man of nerves, caprices and stubborn
will. Accustomed to a set routine, he lived the disciplined life of a hermit or ascetic. It
was difficult to tell whether he had adapted himself to this mode of life or accepted it
against the grain. He never spoke of the kind of life he would have liked to lead. He behaved
as one who, already buffeted and battered, had resigned himself to his fate. As one who could
assimilate punishment better than good fortune. There was a strong feminine streak in him
which was not without charm but which he exploited to his own detriment. He was an incurable
dandy living the life of a beggar. And living wholly in the past!

Perhaps the closest description I can give of him at the outset of our
acquaintance is that of a Stoic dragging his tomb about with him. Yet he was a man of many
sides, as I gradually came to discover. He had a tender skin, was extremely susceptible,
particularly to disturbing emanations, and could be as fickle and emotional as a girl of
sixteen. Though he was basically not fair-minded, he did his utmost to be fair, to be
impartial, to be just. And to be loyal, though by nature I felt that he was essentially
treacherous. In fact, it was this undefinable treachery which I was first aware of in him,
though I had nothing on which to base my feelings. I remember that I deliberately banished the
thought from my mind, replacing it with the vague notion that here was an intelligence which
was suspect.

What I looked like to him in those early days is a matter
of conjecture on my part. He did not know my writings except for a few fragments which had
appeared in translation in French revues. He, of course, knew my date of birth and had
presented me with my horoscope shortly after I became acquainted with him. (If I am not
mistaken, it was he who detected the error in my hour of birth which I had given as midnight
instead of noon.)

All our intercourse was in French, in which I was none too fluent. A great
pity, because he was not only a born conversationalist but a man who had an ear for language,
a man who spoke French like a poet. Above all, a man who loved subtleties and nuances! It was
a dual pleasure I enjoyed whenever we came together—the pleasure of receiving instruction (not
only in astrology) and the pleasure of listening to a musician, for he used the language much
as a musician would his instrument. In addition there was the thrill of listening to personal
anecdotes about celebrities whom I knew only through books.

In brief, I was an ideal listener. And for a man who loves to talk, for a
monologist especially, what greater pleasure could there be for him than in having an
attentive, eager, appreciative listener?

I also knew how to put questions. Fruitful questions.

All in all, I must have been a strange animal in his eyes. An expatriate from
Brooklyn, a francophile, a vagabond, a writer only at the beginning of his career, naive,
enthusiastic, absorbent as a sponge, interested in everything and seemingly rudderless. Such
is the image I retain of myself at this period. Above all, I was gregarious. (He was anything
but.) And a Capricorn, though not of the same decan. In age we were but a few years apart.

Apparently I was something of a stimulant to him. My native optimism and
recklessness complemented his ingrained pessimism and cautiousness. I was frank and outspoken,
he judicious and reserved. My tendency was to exfoliate in all directions; he, on the other
hand, had narrowed his interests and focused on them with his whole being. He had all the
reason and logic of the French, whereas I often contradicted myself and flew off at
tangents.

What we had in common was the basic nature of the
Capricorn. In his
Miroir d’Astrologie
*
he has summed up succinctly and
discriminatingly these common factors to be found in the Capricorn type. Under
“Analogies”
he puts it thus, to give a few fragments:

“Philosophers. Inquisitors. Sorcerers. Hermits. Gravediggers. Beggars.

“Profundity. Solitude. Anguish.

“Chasms. Caverns. Abandoned places.”

Here are a few Capricorns of varying types which he gives: “Dante,
Michelangelo, Dostoevsky, El Greco, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Cézanne, Edgar Allan Poe, Maxim
Gorky….”

Let me add a few of the more common qualities they possess, according to
Moricand.

“Grave, taciturn, closed. Love solitude, all that is mysterious, are
contemplative.

“They are sad and heavy.

“They are born old.

“They see the bad before the good. The weakness in everything leaps
immediately to their eyes.

“Penitence, regrets, perpetual remorse.

“Cling to the remembrance of injuries done them.

“Seldom or never laugh; when they do, it is a sardonic laugh.

“Profound but heavy. Burgeon slowly and with difficulty. Obstinate and
persevering. Indefatigable workers. Take advantage of everything to amass or progress.

“Insatiable for knowledge. Undertake long-winded projects. Given to the study
of complicated and abstract things.

“Live on several levels at once. Can hold several thoughts at one and the same
time.

“They illumine only the abysses.”

There are the three decans or divisions to each house. For the first decan—I
was born the 26th of December—he gives this:

“Very patient and tenacious. Capable of anything in order
to succeed. Arrive by dint of perseverance, but step by step…. Tendency to exaggerate the
importance of earthly life. Avaricious of self. Constant in their affections and in their
hatreds. Have a high opinion of themselves.”

I quote these observations for several reasons. The reader will discover, each
in his own way, the importance which may or may not be attached to them.

But to get on…. When I first met him, Moricand was living—
existing
would be better—in a very modest hotel called the Hotel Modial in the rue Notre Dame de
Lorette. He had but recently weathered a great crisis—the loss of his fortune. Completely
destitute, and with no ability or concern for practical affairs, he was leading a
hand-to-mouth existence. For breakfast he had his coffee and croissants in his room, and often
he had the same for dinner too, with no lunch in between.

Anaïs was a godsend. She aided him with modest sums as best she could. But
there were others, quite a few indeed, whom she likewise felt compelled to aid. What Moricand
never suspected was that, in presenting him to me, Anaïs hoped to unload some of her burden.
She did it gently, tactfully, discreetly, as she did all things. But she was definitely
finished with him.

Anaïs knew quite well that I was unable to support him, unless morally, but
she also knew that I was ingenious and resourceful, that I had all manner of friends and
acquaintances, and that if I was sufficiently interested I would probably find a way to help
him, at least temporarily.

She was not far wrong in this surmise.

Naturally, from my standpoint, the first and most important thing was to see
that the poor devil ate more regularly, and more abundantly. I hadn’t the means to guarantee
him three meals a day, but I could and did throw a meal into him now and then. Sometimes I
invited him out to lunch or dinner; more often I invited him to my quarters where I would cook
as bountiful and
delicious a meal as possible. Half-starved as he was
most of the time, it was small wonder that by the end of the meal he was usually drunk. Drunk
not with wine, though he drank copiously, but with food, food which his impoverished organism
was unable to assimilate in such quantities. The ironic thing was—and how well I understood
it!—that by the time he had walked home he was hungry all over again. Poor Moricand! How very,
very familiar to me was this ludicrous aspect of his tribulations! Walking on an empty
stomach, walking on a full stomach, walking to digest a meal, walking in search of a meal,
walking because it is the only recreation one’s pocketbook permits, as Balzac discovered when
he came to Paris. Walking to lay the ghost. Walking instead of weeping. Walking in the vain
and desperate hope of meeting a friendly face. Walking, walking, walking…. But why go into it?
Let’s dismiss it with the label—“ambulatory paranoia.”

To be sure, Moricand’s tribulations were without number. Like Job, he was
afflicted in every way. Altogether devoid of the latter’s faith, he nevertheless displayed
remarkable fortitude. Perhaps all the more remarkable in that it was without foundation. He
did his best to keep face. Rarely did he break down, in my presence at least. When he did,
when tears got the better of him, it was more than I could bear. It left me speechless and
impotent. It was a special kind of anguish he experienced, the anguish of a man who is
incapable of understanding why he of all men should be singled out for punishment. He led me
to believe, always indirectly, that never had he done his fellow-man an injury with intent and
deliberation. On the contrary, he had always tried to be of help. He liked to believe, and I
have no doubt he was sincere, that he harbored no evil thoughts, bore no one any ill will. It
is true, for example, that he never spoke ill of the man who was responsible for his comedown
in the world. He attributed this misfortune entirely to the fact that he was too trusting. As
though it were his own fault and not the fault of the one who had taken advantage of his
confidence.