Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (39 page)

Using what little wits I possessed, for I was scarcely
more capable than he in practical matters, I finally hit upon the idea of asking my friends to
have Moricand do their horoscopes for a modest fee. I believe I suggested a hundred frances as
a fee, but it may only have been fifty. One could then get a very decent meal for from twelve
to fifteen francs. As for Moricand’s room rent, it could not have been more than three hundred
francs per month, possibly less.

All went well until I exhausted my list of friends and acquaintances. Then,
not to let Moricand down, I began inventing people. That is to say, I would give him the name,
sex, date, hour and place of birth of individuals who did not exist. I paid for these
horoscopes out of my own pocket, naturally. According to Moricand, who had not the least
suspicion of the turn things had taken, these imaginary subjects comprised an astounding
variety of characters. Occasionally, faced with a most incongruous chart, he would express a
desire to meet the subject, or would press me for intimate details which of course I would
offer with the ease and nonchalance of one who knew whereof he spoke.

When it came to reading personalities, Moricand impressed one as possessing
certain powers of divination. His sixth sense, as he called it, served him well in
interpreting a chart. But often he had no need of a chart, no need of dates, places, and so
on. Never shall I forget the banquet given by the group sponsoring the revue
Volontés
which was directed by Georges Pelorson. Eugene Jolas and I were the only Americans in the
group, the rest were all French. There must have been about twenty of us at table that
evening. The food was excellent and the wine and liqueurs plentiful. Moricand sat opposite me.
On one side of him sat Jolas and on the other, I believe, Raymond Queneau. Every one was in
excellent spirits, the conversation running high.

With Moricand in our midst, it was inevitable that sooner or later the subject
of astrology must come up for discussion. There he was, Moricand, cool as a cucumber, and
filling his breadbasket
to the best of his ability. Lying in wait, as it
were, for the jeers and derision which he doubtless anticipated.

And then it came—an innocent question by an unsuspecting nobody. Immediately a
sort of mild insanity pervaded the atmosphere. Questions were being hurled from all
directions. It was as if a fanatic had suddenly been uncovered—or worse, a lunatic. Jolas, who
was a little under the weather by now and consequently more aggressive than usual, insisted
that Moricand give demonstrable proofs. He challenged Moricand to single out the various
zodiacal types seated about him. Now Moricand had undoubtedly made such classification in his
head during the course of his conversation with this one and that. He could not help doing so
by virtue of his calling. It was everyday routine with him, when talking to an individual, to
observe the person’s manner of speech, his gestures, his tics and idiosyncrasies, his mental
and physical build, and so on. He was acute enough, adept enough, to distinguish and classify
the more pronounced types present at the table. So, addressing himself to one after another
whom he had singled out, he named them: Leo, Taurus, Libra, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn, and so
on. Then, turning to Jolas, he quietly informed him that he believed he could tell him the
year and day of his birth, perhaps the hour too. So saying, he took a good pause, raised his
head slightly, as if studying the look of the heavens on the appointed day, then gave the
exact date and, after a further pause, the approximate hour. He had hit it right on the nose.
Jolas, who was dumbfounded, was still catching his breath as Moricand went on to relate some
of the more intimate details of his past, facts which not even Jolas’ close friends were aware
of. He told him what he liked and what he disliked; he told him what maladies he had suffered
from and was likely to suffer from in the future; he told him all manner of things which only
a mind-reader could possibly divulge. If I am not mistaken, he even told him the location of a
birthmark. (A shot in the dark like this was a trump card that Moricand loved to play when he
had things well in hand. It was like putting his signature to a horoscope.)

That was one occasion when he ran true to form. There
were others, some of them more eerie, more disturbing. Whenever it happened it was a good act.
Far better than a spiritualistic séance.

Thinking of these performances, my mind always reverts to the room he occupied
on the top floor of his hotel. There was no elevator service, naturally. One had to climb the
five or six flights to the attic. Once inside, the world outside was completely forgotten. It
was an irregular shaped room, large enough to pace up and down in, and furnished entirely with
what belongings Moricand had managed to salvage from the wreck. The first impression one had,
on entering, was that of orderliness. Everything was in place, but exactly in place. A few
millimeters this way or that in the disposal of a chair, an
objet d’art
, a paper
knife, and the effect would have been lost—in Moricand’s mind, at least. Even the arrangement
of his writing table revealed this obsession with order. Nowhere at any time was there ever
any trace of dust or dirt. All was immaculate.

He was the same about his own person. He always appeared in clean, starched
linen, coat and pants pressed (he probably pressed them himself), shoes polished, cravat
arranged just so and to match his shirt of course, hat, overcoat, rubbers and suchlike neatly
arranged in the clothes closet. One of the most vivid remembrances he had of his experience in
the First World War—he had served in the Foreign Legion—was of the filth which he had been
obliged to endure. He once recounted to me at great length how he had stripped and washed
himself from head to toe with wet snow (in the trenches) after a night in which one of his
comrades had vomited all over him. I had the impression that he would far rather have suffered
a bullet wound than an ordeal of this nature.

What sticks in my crop about this period, when he was so desperately poor and
miserable, is the air of elegance and fastidiousness which clung to him. He always seemed more
like a stockbroker weathering a bad period than a man utterly without resources. The clothes
he wore, all of excellent cut as well as of the best material, would obviously last another
ten years, considering the care and
attention he gave them. Even had they
been patched, he would still have looked the well-dressed gentleman. Unlike myself, it never
occurred to him to pawn or sell his clothes in order to eat. He had need of his good clothes.
He had to preserve a front were he to maintain even interrupted relations with
le
monde
. Even for ordinary correspondence he employed good stationery. Slightly perfumed
too. His handwriting, which was distinctive, was also invested with the traits I have
underlined. His letters, like his manuscripts and his astrological portraits, bore the stamp
of a royal emissary, of a man who weighed every word carefully and would vouch for his
opinions with his life.

One of the objects in this den he inhabited I shall never forget as long as I
live. The dresser. Towards the end of an evening, usually a long one, I would edge toward this
dresser, wait for a propitious moment when his glance was averted, and deftly slip a fifty- or
hundred-franc note under the statuette which stood on top of the dresser. I had to repeat this
performance over and over because it would have embarrassed him, to say the least, had I
handed him the money or sent it to him in the mail. I always had the feeling, on leaving, that
he would give me just time enough to reach the nearest Métro station, then duck out and buy
himself a
choucroute garnie
at a nearby
brasserie
.

I must also say that I had to be very careful about expressing a liking for
anything he possessed, for if I did he would thrust it on me in the manner of a Spaniard. It
made no difference whether I admired a cravat he was wearing or a walking stick, of which he
still had a number. It was thus I inadvertently acquired a beautiful cane which Moïse Kisling
had once given him. On one occasion it demanded all my powers of persuasion to prevent him
from giving me his only pair of gold cuff links. Why he was still wearing starched cuffs and
cuff links I never dared ask him. He would probably have answered that he had no other kind of
shirts.

On the wall by the window, where he had arranged his writing
table caticornered, there were always pinned up two or three charts of subjects whose
horoscopes he was studying. He kept them there at his elbow just as a chess player keeps a
board handy on which he has a problem arranged. He believed in allowing time for his
interpretations to simmer. His own chart hung beside the others in a special niche.

He regarded it at frequent intervals, much as a mariner would a barometer. He
was always waiting for an “opening.” In a chart, he told me, death manifested itself when all
the exits were blocked. It was difficult, he averred, to detect the advent of death in
advance. It was much easier to see it after a person had died; then everything became crystal
clear, dramatic from a graphic standpoint.

What I recall most vividly are the red and blue pencil marks he employed to
indicate the progress or regression of the span of chance in his chart. It was like watching
the movement of a pendulum, a slow moving pendulum which only a man of infinite patience would
bother to follow. If it swung a little this way, he was almost jubilant; if it swung a little
the other way, he was depressed. What he expected of an “opening” I still do not know, since
he was never prepared to make any apparent effort to improve his situation. Perhaps he
expected no more than a breather. All he could possibly hope for, given his temperament, was a
windfall. Certainly nothing in the way of a job could have meant anything to him. His one and
only desire was to continue his researches. Seemingly, he had reconciled himself to his
limitations. He was not a man of action, not a brilliant writer who might some day hope to
liberate himself by the pen, nor was he flexible and yielding enough to beg his way. He was
simply Moricand, the personality so clearly revealed by the chart which he himself had drawn
up. A “subject” with a bad Saturn, among other things. A sad wizard who in moments of
desperation would endeavor to extract a thin ray of promise from his star Regulus. In short, a
victim doomed to live a dolorous, circumscribed life.

“We all get a break some time or other,” I used to say to him.
“It can’t rain all the time! And what about that saying—‘It’s an ill wind
that blows no one some good’?”

If he was in a mood to listen I might even go further and say: “Why don’t you
forget the stars for a while? Why not take a vacation and act
as if
fortune were
yours? Who knows what might happen? You might meet a man in the street, an utter stranger, who
would be the means of opening these doors you regard as locked. There is such a thing as grace
too. It could happen, you know, if you were in the right mood, if you were prepared to let
something happen. And if you forgot what was written in the sky.”

To a speech of this sort he would give me one of those strange looks which
signified many things. He would even throw me a smile, one of those tender, wistful smiles
which an indulgent parent gives a child who poses an impossible problem. Nor would he rush to
offer the answer which he had ever at his disposal and which, no doubt, he was weary of
stating when thus cornered. In the pause which followed he gave the impression that he was
first testing his own convictions, that he was rapidly surveying (for the thousandth time) all
that he had ever said or thought about the subject, that he was even giving himself an
injection of doubt, widening and deepening the problem, giving it dimensions which neither I
nor anyone else could imagine, before slowly, ponderously, coldly and logically formulating
the opening phrases of his defense.

“Mon vieux,”
I can hear him saying, “One must understand what is
meant by chance. The universe operates according to law, and these laws obtain as much for
man’s destiny as for the birth and movements of the planets.” Leaning back in his comfortable
swivel chair, veering slightly round to focus better on his chart, he would add: “Look at
that!”
He meant the peculiar and particular impasse in which he was fixed at the
moment. Then, extracting my chart from the portfolio which he always kept handy, he would beg
me to examine it with him. “The only chance for me at this moment,” he would say most
solemnly, “is
you
. There
you
are!” And he would indicate how and where I
fitted into the picture.
“You and that angel, Anaïs. Without you two I
would be a goner!”

“But why don’t you look at it more positively?” I would exclaim. “If we are
there, Anaïs and I, if we are all that you credit us with being, why don’t you put all your
faith and trust in us? Why don’t you let us help you to free yourself? There are no limits to
what one person can do for another, is that not so?”

Of course he had an answer to that. His great failing was that he had an
answer for everything. He did not deny the power of faith. What he would say quite simply was
that he was a man to whom faith had been denied. It was there in his chart, the absence of
faith. What could one do? What he failed to add was that he had chosen the path of knowledge,
and that in doing so he had clipped his own wings.

Only years later did he offer me a glimpse into the nature and origin of this
castration which he referred to as lack of faith. It had to do with his boyhood, with the
neglect and indifference of his parents, the perverse cruelty of his schoolmasters, one in
particular, who had humiliated and tortured him in inhuman fashion. It was an ugly, woeful
story, quite enough to account for his loss of morale, his spiritual degradation.