Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (41 page)

It’s drizzling as I step out of the Métro at Vavin. I’ve decided I must have a
drink all by my lonesome. Does not the Capricorn love solitude?
Ouais!
Solitude in
the midst of hubbub. Not heavenly solitude. Earthly solitude.
Abandoned places
.

The drizzle turns into a light rain, a gray, sweetly melancholy rain. A
beggar’s rain. My thoughts drift. Suddenly I’m gazing at the huge chrysanthemums my mother
loved to raise in our dismal back yard in the street of early sorrows. They are hanging there
before my eyes, like an artificial bloom, just opposite the lilac bush which Mr. Fuchs, the
hundski picker, gave us one summer.

Yes, the Capricorn is a beast of solitude. Slow, steady, persevering. Lives on
several levels at once. Thinks in circles. Fascinated by death. Ever climbing, climbing. In
search of the edelweiss, presumably. Or could it be the
immortelle?
Knows no mother.
Only “the mothers.” Laughs little and usually on the wrong side of the face. Collects friends
as easily as postage stamps, but is unsociable. Speaks truthfully instead of kindly.
Metaphysics, abstractions, electromagnetic displays. Dives to the depths. Sees stars, comets,
asteroids where others see only moles, warts, pimples. Feeds on himself when tired of playing
the man-eating shark. A paranoiac. An
ambulatory
paranoiac. But constant in his
affections—
and his hatreds. Ouais!

From the time the war broke out until 1947 not a word from Moricand. I had
given him up for dead. Then, shortly after we had installed ourselves in our new home on
Partington Ridge, a
thick envelope arrived bearing the return address of
an Italian princess. In it was enclosed a letter from Moricand, six months old, which he had
requested the princess to forward should she ever discover my address. He gave as his address
a village near Vevey, Switzerland, where he said he had been living since the end of the war.
I answered immediately, telling him how glad I was to know that he was still alive and
inquiring what I could do for him. Like a cannon ball came his reply, giving a detailed
account of his circumstances which, as I might have guessed, had not improved. He was living
in a miserable pension, in a room without heat, starving as usual, and without even the little
it takes to buy cigarettes. Immediately we began sending him foodstuffs and other necessities
of which he was apparently deprived. And what money we could spare. I also sent him
international postal coupons so that he would not be obliged to waste money on stamps.

Soon the letters began to fly back and forth. With each succeeding letter the
situation grew worse. Obviously the little sums we dispatched didn’t go very far in
Switzerland. His landlady was constantly threatening to turn him out, his health was getting
worse, his room was insupportable, he had not enough to eat, it was impossible to find work of
any kind,
and
—in Switzerland you don’t beg!

To send him larger sums was impossible. We simply didn’t have that kind of
money. What to do? I pondered the situation over and over. There seemed to be no solution.

Meanwhile his letters poured in, always on good stationery, always airmail,
always begging, supplicating, the tone growing more and more desperate. Unless I did something
drastic he was done for. That he made painfully clear.

Finally I conceived what I thought to be a brilliant idea. Genial, nothing
less. It was to invite him to come and live with us, share what we had, regard our home as his
own for the rest of his days. It was such a simple solution I wondered why it had never
occurred to me before.

I kept the idea to myself for a few days before broaching it to
my wife. I knew that it would take some persuading to convince her of the
necessity for such a move. Not that she was ungenerous, but that he was hardly the type to
make life more interesting. It was like inviting Melancholia to come and perch on your
shoulder.

“Where would you put him up?” were her first words, when finally I summoned
the courage to broach the subject. We had only a living room, in which we slept, and a tiny
wing adjoining it where little Val slept.

“I’ll give him my studio,” I said. This was a separate cubicle hardly bigger
than the one Val slept in. Above it was the garage which had been partly converted into a
workroom. My thought was to use that for myself.

Then came the big question: “How will you raise the passage money?”

“That I have to think about,” I replied. “The main thing is, are you willing
to risk it?”

We argued it back and forth for several days. Her mind was full of
premonitions and forebodings. She pleaded with me to abandon the idea. “I know you’ll only
regret it,” she croaked.

What she could not understand was why I felt it imperative to assume such a
responsibility for one who had never really been an intimate friend. “If it were Perlés,” she
said, “it would be different; he means something to you. Or your Russian friend, Eugene. But
Moricand? What do you owe
him?”

This last touched me off. What did I owe Moricand? Nothing.
And
everything
. Who was it put
Seraphita
in my hands?

I endeavored to explain the point. Halfway along I gave up. I saw how absurd
it was to attempt to make such a point. A mere book! One must be insane to fall back on such
an argument.

Naturally I had other reasons. But I persisted in making
Seraphita
my
advocate. Why? I tried to get to the bottom of it. Finally I grew ashamed of myself. Why did I
have to justify myself? Why make excuses? The man was starving. He was ill. He was penniless.
He was at the end of his rope. Weren’t these
reason enough? To be sure,
he had been a pauper, a miserable pauper, all the years I had known him. The war hadn’t
changed anything; it had only rendered his situation more hopeless. But why quibble about his
being an intimate friend or just a friend? Even if he had been a stranger, the fact that he
was throwing himself on my mercy was enough. One doesn’t let a drowning man sink.

“I’ve just got to do it!” I exclaimed. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it,
but I will. I’m writing him today.” And then, to throw her a bone, I added: “Perhaps he won’t
like the idea.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, “he’ll grab at a straw.”

So I wrote and explained the whole situation to him. I even drew a diagram of
the place, giving the dimensions of his room, the fact that it was without heat, and adding
that we were far from any city. “You may find it very dull here,” I said, “with no one to talk
to but us, no library to go to, no cafés, and the nearest cinema forty miles away. But at
least you will not have to worry anymore about food and shelter.” I concluded by saying that
once here he would be his own master, could devote his time to whatever pleased him, in fact
he could loaf the rest of his days away, if that was his wish.

He wrote back immediately, telling me that he was overjoyed, calling me a
saint and a savior, et cetera, et cetera.

The next few months were consumed in raising the necessary funds. I borrowed
whatever I could, diverted what few francs I had to his account, borrowed in advance on my
royalties, and finally made definite arrangements for him to fly from Switzerland to England,
there take the
Queen Mary
or
Elizabeth
, whichever it was, to New York, and
fly from New York to San Francisco, where I would pick him up.

During these few months when we were borrowing and scraping I managed to
maintain him in better style. He had to be fattened up or I would have an invalid on my hands.
There was just one item I had failed to settle satisfactorily, that was to liquidate his back
rent. The best I could do, under the circumstances, was to
send a letter
which he was to show his landlady, a letter in which I promised to wipe out his debt just as
soon as I possibly could. I gave her my word of honor.

Just before leaving he dispatched a last letter. It was to reassure me that,
as regards the landlady, everything was jake. To allay her anxiety, he wrote, he had
reluctantly given her a lay. Of course he couched it in more elegant terms. But he made it
clear that, disgusting though it was, he had done his duty.

It was just a few days before Christmas when he landed at the airport in San
Francisco. Since my car had broken down I asked my friend Lilik (Schatz) to meet him and put
him up at his home in Berkeley until I could come and fetch him.

As soon as Moricand stepped off the plane he heard his name being called.
“Monsieur Moricand! Monsieur Moricand!
Attention!”
He stopped dead and listened with
open mouth. A beautiful contralto voice was speaking to him over the air in excellent French,
telling him to step to the information desk, where someone was waiting for him.

He was dumbfounded. What a country! What service! For a moment he felt like a
potentate.

It was Lilik who was waiting for him at the information desk. Lilik who had
coached the girl. Lilik who whisked him away, fixed him a good meal, sat up with him until
dawn and plied him with the best Scotch he could buy. And to top it off he had given him a
picture of Big Sur which made it sound like the paradise which it is. He was a happy man,
Conrad Moricand, when he finally hit the hay.

In a way, it worked out better than if I had gone to meet him myself.

When a few days passed and I found myself still unable to get to San
Francisco, I telephoned Lilik and asked him to drive Moricand down.

They arrived the next day about nine in the evening.

I had gone through so many inner convulsions prior to his
arrival that when I opened the door and watched him descend the garden steps I was
virtually numb. (Besides, the Capricorn seldom reveals his feelings all at once.)

As for Moricand, he was visibly moved. As we pulled away from an embrace I saw
two big tears roll down his cheeks. He was “home” at last. Safe, sound, secure.

The little studio which I had turned over to him to sleep and work in was
about half the size of his attic room in the Hotel Modial. It was just big enough to hold a
cot, a writing table, a chiffonier. When the two oil lamps were lit it gave off a glow. A Van
Gogh would have found it charming.

I could not help but notice how quickly he had arranged everything in his
customary neat, orderly way. I had left him alone for a few minutes to unpack his bags and say
an Ave Maria. When I returned to say goodnight I saw the writing table arranged as of yore—the
block of paper resting slantwise on the triangular ruler, the large blotting pad spread out,
and beside it his ink bottle and pen together with an assortment of pencils, all sharpened to
a fine point. On the dresser, which had a mirror affixed to it, were laid out his comb and
brush, his manicure scissors and nail file, a portable clock, his clothes brush and a pair of
small framed photographs. He had already tacked up a few flags and pennants, just like a
college boy. All that was missing to complete the picture was his birth chart.

I tried to explain how the Aladdin lamp worked, but it was too complicated for
him to grasp all at once. He lit two candles instead. Then, apologizing for the close quarters
he was to occupy, referring to it jokingly as a comfortable little tomb, I bade him goodnight.
He followed me out to have a look at the stars and inhale a draught of clean, fragrant night
air, assuring me that he would be perfectly comfortable in his cell.

When I went to call him the next morning I found him standing at the head of
the stairs fully dressed. He was gazing out at the sea. The sun was low and bright in the sky,
the atmosphere
extremely clear, the temperature that of a day in late
spring. He seemed entranced by the vast expanse of the Pacific, by the far off horizon so
sharp and clear, by the bright blue immensity of it all. A vulture hove into sight, made a low
sweep in front of the house, then swooned away. He seemed stupefied by the sight. Then
suddenly he realized how warm it was. “My God,” he said, “and it is almost the first of
January!”

“C’est un vrai paradis,”
he mumbled as he descended the steps.

Breakfast over, he showed me how to set and wind the clock which he had
brought me as a gift. It was an heirloom, his last possession, he explained. It had been in
the family for generations. Every quarter of an hour the chimes struck. Very softly,
melodiously. He handled it with the utmost care while explaining at great length the
complicated mechanism. He had even taken the precaution to look up a watch-maker in San
Francisco, a reliable one, to whom I was to entrust the clock should anything go wrong with
it.

I tried to express my appreciation of the marvelous gift he had made me, but
somehow, deep inside, I was against the bloody clock. There was not a single possession of
ours which was precious to me. Now I was saddled with an object which demanded care and
attention. “A white elephant!” I said to myself. Aloud I suggested that
he
watch over
it, regulate it, wind it, oil it, and so on. “You’re used to it,” I said. I wondered how long
it would be before little Val—she was only a little over two—would begin tinkering with it in
order to hear the music.

To my surprise, my wife did not find him too somber, too morbid, too aged, too
decrepit. On the contrary, she remarked that he had a great deal of charm—and
savoir-faire
. She was rather impressed by his neatness and elegance. “Did you
notice his hands? How beautiful! The hands of a musician.” It was true, he had good strong
hands with spatulate fingers and well-kept nails, which were always polished.

“Did you bring any old clothes?” I asked. He looked so
citified in his dark business suit.

He had no old clothes, it turned out. Or rather he had the same good clothes
which were neither new nor old. I noticed that he was eyeing me up and down with mild
curiosity. I no longer owned a suit. I wore corduroy pants, a sweater with holes in it,
somebody’s hand-me-down jacket, and sneakers. My slouch hat—the last I was to own—had
ventilators all around the sweat band.