Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (6 page)

PART TWO

PEACE AND SOLITUDE:

A POTPOURRI

I had gone to bed to nurse a cold when it started, the hemorrhage. Whenever
I take to bed (in broad daylight), which is my way of curing colds, hemorrhoids, melancholia
or any ailment real or imaginary, I always put beside the bed a little bench laden with
cigarettes, ash tray and reading matter. Just in case….

After I had whiled away an hour or two in delicious reverie, I reached for the
issue of
La Nouvelle Revue Française
which my friend Gerald Robitaille had sent me.
It was the issue dedicated to Charles-Albert Cingria, who had passed away a few months before.
In his letter Gerald asked if I had ever heard of Cingria. I had indeed. It so happens that I
met Cingria, for the first and only time, at the home of Bravig Imbs, in Paris. It was a whole
afternoon and evening that I spent, most fortunately, in Cingria’s company. These few short
hours stand out as one of the events in my life.

What I had not known, until I picked up the
revue
, was that at the
time of this meeting Cingria was traversing one of the worst periods in his life. Who would
have suspected that this man who had the look of a clown, or a defrocked priest, this man who
never ceased talking, joking, laughing, drinking—it was New Year’s Eve and we were consuming
pitchers of eggnog—who would have dreamed, as I say, that this man would leave us to return to
a miserable hole in the hall, where crusts of bread were hidden away under bureaus and
commodes and where he could plainly hear the noises made by everyone who went to the W.C.
*

As I read the tributes that were paid him, as I perceived
what a remarkable personality his was, what a fantastic life he had led, what precious things
he had written, my head began to whirl. Thrusting the
revue
aside—I couldn’t possibly
read another line—the hemorrhage suddenly broke loose. Like a drunken boat I tossed about,
wallowing in the flood of memories which assailed me. After a time I rose, found a notebook,
and began inditing cryptic cues. It went on for several hours. I forgot that I had a cold,
forgot what time it was.

It was after midnight when I reluctantly laid down the pencil and switched off
the lights. As I closed my eyes I said to myself: “Now is the time to tell about your life in
Big Sur.”

And so I shall tell it, in the same disorderly fashion that it came to me the
other day as I lay abed….

I suspect that many who read my books, or talk about my life, believe that I
am living in an ivory tower. If I am, it is a tower without walls in which fabulous and often
“anachronistic” things happen. In following this fantasia the reader should bear in mind that
cause and event, chronology, order of any kind—except the illogical order of life itself—is
absent.

Picture a day, for example, an excruciating one, in which I have been
interrupted at least half a dozen times, and then … well, after an exciting talk with a writer
who has just come from Paris (or Rome or Athens), after another talk with a bore who wants to
know every detail about my life, past and present, and whom I discover (too late) has never
read a single one of my books, after examining the cesspool to see why it doesn’t work, after
shooing away three students who stand at the door and apologetically explain that all they
want of me is my opinion of Job—yes, Job, no less!—and they are not joking, only too serious,
alas! after one thing and another, with intermittent attempts to resume where I left off (the
middle of a sentence), comes the incomparable Varda with a bouquet of
“jeunes filles en
fleur.”
Observing that I am unusually quiet, and not realizing that it is a result of
exhaustion, he exclaims: “And
here I have been telling these girls what a
wonderful
raconteur
you are! Come, do tell them something about your ‘anecdotal
life’!” (A phrase of Zadkine’s.)

Strangely enough, at one in the morning, the table littered with empty
glasses, bread crumbs and bits of rind, the guests departed at last, silence once again
enveloping us, what is it that is singing in my head but a line from one of Cendrars’ books,
an enigmatic line, in his own inimitable French, which had me electrified a few nights before.
There is no relation whatsoever between this line of Cendrars’ and the multitudinous events of
the day. We, Varda and I, had not even mentioned Cendrars’ name, which is unusual because,
with certain of my friends—Varda, Gerhart Muensch, Giles Healey, Ephraim Doner—we sound off
with Cendrars and finish with Cendrars. So there I sit with that curious, tantalizing line of
his, trying to recall what evoked it and wondering how I shall finish the sentence I left on
the roller hours and hours ago. I ask myself—I’ve asked it over and over—how ever did this
extraordinary man, Cendrars, turn out so many books in such a short time (I refer to the
period right after the Occupation) with only one hand, his left hand, and no secretary to aid
him, no heat, little food, his beloved sons killed in the war, his huge library destroyed by
the Huns, and so on. I sit there reliving, or trying to relive, his life, his books, his
thoughts, his emotions. My day, full as it was, only begins there in the ocean of his
prodigious being….

It was “one of those days” when a woman with whom I had exchanged some
correspondence arrived from Holland. My wife had only reecntly left me and I was alone with my
little girl. She was only in the room a few minutes when I sensed that an instantaneous and
mutual antipathy had sprung up between the two. I apologized to my visitor for continuing with
the chores—I had decided to wash the floor and wax it—and felt most grateful when she offered
to do the dishes for me. Meanwhile Val, my daughter, was making things even more difficult
than usual; she seemed to take a perverse delight in interrupting our conversation,
erratic as it was with all the hopping about I was doing. Then she went to
the toilet, only to announce a moment later that it wouldn’t flush. At once I dropped the mop,
dashed for the pickaxe, and began removing the dirt which covers the septic tank. I had hardly
begun when it started to rain. I continued nevertheless, somewhat annoyed, I confess, by my
visitor’s frequent comings and goings, by her hysterical exhortations to abandon the task.
Finally I managed to get my arm into the inlet which, as usual, was encrusted with snarled
roots. As I pulled the blockage away, out came the water—and with it what had been dropped in
the toilet bowl. I was a pretty sight when I came back to the house to clean up. The floor, of
course, was a mess, and the furniture still piled on the table and the bed.

My visitor, who had built up a picture of me as a world-famous writer, a man
living apart in that sublime place called Big Sur, began to berate me—or perhaps she thought
she was consoling me—for trying to do so many things which had nothing to do with my work. Her
talk sounded so absurd to me that, somewhat flabbergasted, I asked her curtly who she thought
was to do the dirty work …
God?
She continued in her vague way to dwell on what I
ought not to be doing, meaning cleaning, cooking, gardening, taking care of a child, fixing
cesspools and so on. I was getting hot under the collar when suddenly I thought I heard a car
pull up in the turn around. I stepped outside and, sure enough, there was Varda tripping down
the steps, followed by his usual retinue of friends and admirers.

“Well, well! How are you? What a surprise!”

Handshakes, introductions all around. The usual exclamations. “What a
marvelous place!” (Even in the rain.)

My visitor from Holland drew me aside. With an imploring look she whispered:
“What do we do now?”

“Put a good face on it,” I said, and turned my back on her.

A few minutes later she tugged at my sleeve again to inquire plaintively if
I
would have to prepare a meal for all these people.

I skip what followed during the next few hours to give you
her parting words: “I never dreamed that Big Sur was like this!”

Under my breath I added: “Nor did I!”

And there stands Ralph! Though it’s midsummer he’s wearing a heavy overcoat
and fur-lined gloves. He has a book in his hand and, like a Tibetan monk, he’s leisurely
pacing back and forth, back and forth. I had been so occupied pulling up weeds that I hadn’t
noticed him immediately. It was only when I lifted my head to go in search of a mattock, which
I had left near the fence, that I was aware of his presence in the turn around. Realizing that
he was a queer one, I thought I might snatch the implement and sneak away without being
hooked. I would just pay no attention to him; he might be sensitive and move off in a huff.
But as I started toward the fence this queer apparition approached and started speaking to me.
He spoke in such a low tone that I was obliged to move in closer. That was the clincher.

“Are you Henry Miller?” he says.

I nodded, though my impulse was to say no.

“I came to see you because I want to have a talk with you.”

(“Christ, here it begins,” I said to myself.)

“I was just driven away”—brutally or insultingly, I believe he added—“by a
woman. Maybe it was your wife.”

To this I simply grunted.

He continued by informing me that he too was a writer, that he had run away
from it all (meaning job and home) to live his own life.

“I came to join the cult of sex and anarchy,” he said, quietly and evenly, as
if he were talking about toast and coffee.

I told him there was no such colony.

“But I read about it in the papers,” he insisted. He started to pull a
newspaper out of his pocket.

“That was all an invention,” said I. “You musn’t believe
everything you see in the papers.” I gave a forced laugh.

He seemed to doubt my words. Went on to tell me why he thought he would make
an eligible member—even if there were no colony.
(sic)
I cut him short. Told him I
had work to do. He would have to excuse me.

Now his feelings were hurt. There followed a brief exchange of question and
answer—rather impertinent questions, rather caustic answers—which only seemed to increase his
disturbance. Suddenly he opened the book he was holding and, turning the pages rapidly, he
found the passage he was looking for. He then proceeded to read it aloud.

It was a passage from the
Hamlet
letters in which my friend and
co-author, Michael Fraenkel, had raked me over the coals. Had excoriated me, in fact.

When he had finished reading he looked at me coldly and accusingly, to say: “I
guess that fits, doesn’t it?”

I opened the gate and said: “Ralph, what in hell’s the matter with you? Come
on down and talk it over!”

I ushered him into my little den, sat him down, handed him a cigarette and
urged him to unbosom himself.

In a few minutes he was in tears. Just a poor, defenseless, brokenhearted
boy.

That same evening I dispatched him, with a note, to Emil White at Anderson
Creek. He had told me that he would head for Los Angeles, where he had an aunt, now that he
knew there was no cult of sex and anarchy. I thought he would spend the night at Emil’s and
move on. But, after a good dinner and a good night’s rest, he discovered that Emil owned a
typewriter. In the morning, after a good breakfast, he sat down to the machine and, though he
had never written a line before, he suddenly took it into his head to write a book. After a
few days Emil gently informed him that he couldn’t put him up indefinitely. This didn’t floor
Ralph. Not at all. He informed Emil that it was just the sort of place
he
had always wanted to live in and that, if Emil would help him, he would find a job and earn
his keep.

To make it brief, Ralph stayed on at Big Sur about six months, doing odd jobs,
floating from one ménage to another, always getting into trouble. In general, behaving like a
spoiled child. In the interim I received a letter one day from Ralph’s father, somewhere in
the Midwest, telling me how grateful he was to all of us for looking after Ralph. He related
the trials and ordeals they had been through at home trying to get Ralph to lead a normal,
sensible life. It was the usual story of the problem child, one I was only too familiar with
from the old days when I hired and fired for the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company.

One of the strange things about Ralph’s behavior was that he was always
turning up minus some necessary part of his apparel. He had shown up on a summer’s day in a
heavy overcoat and gloves. Now that it was cold he would show up naked to the waist. What
about his shirt and jacket? He had burned them! He didn’t like them any more, or else he had
taken a dislike to the person who had given them to him. (We had all supplemented his wardrobe
at one time or another.)

On a cold, nasty day in winter, as I was driving along a side street in
Monterey, whom should I spy but Ralph, half-naked, shivering, and looking altogether
woebegone. Lilik Schatz was with me. We got out and dragged Ralph to a cafeteria. He hadn’t
eaten for two days—ever since they had let him out of the clink, it seems. What disturbed him
more than the cold was the fear that his father might come to fetch him.

“Why can’t you let me stay with you?” he repeated over and over. “I wouldn’t
give you any trouble. You understand me, the others don’t. I want to be a writer—like
you.”

We had been over this ground a number of times before. I could only repeat
what I had told him, that it was hopeless.

“But I’m different now,” he said. “I know better.” He kept boring in,
determined, like a child, to have his way. Lilik tried to
reason with him
but got nowhere. “You don’t understand me,” he would say.

Finally I became exasperated. “Ralph,” I said, “you’re just a plain nuisance.
Nobody can put up with you. You’re a pest. I’m not taking you home with me and I’m not going
to look after you. I’m going to let you starve and freeze—it’s the only way you’ll come to
your senses.”