Cain’s Book (12 page)

I lit a cigarette, lay back against the bulkhead, and watched him fix.

“This is good stuff,” he said, smiling down at the place where the needle was embedded in his arm.

“Just a minute,” I said. I climbed off the bed, walked round him and across the kitchen to the bucket he used for a WC. I vomited. It wasn’t painful. It’s not like
getting sick on alcohol. The little food I had eaten during the day was soon regurgitated. Geo was standing beside me with a saucepan full of water.

“Here.”

I drank and regurgitated, drank and regurgitated, the spasms lessening as whatever nervousness caused the nausea was neutralized first by the thought of my transcendent immunity, and then by the
extreme but indefinable ecstasy at my senses. There was a wet, prickly sweat at my belly and thighs and temples. Geo thrust some Kleenex into my hand. I thought of him as a saint and said:
“Geo, what do you think of Fay for an underground Florence Nightingale?”

“By the Marquis de Sade,” he said. “She’d suck the fix out of your ass.”

The first time I saw Geo he was standing on top of the load on his scow as the four tugs of the Cornell Sea Transport Corporation turned the tow on the river. There were forty
scows in the tow, four abreast, ten scows long. The movement had already taken over half an hour because of the state of the tide and the small winking light at the end of the dark pier towards
which we swung slowly was still over fifty yards away. Beyond the pier and the riverside streets the city rose up, the tall buildings, the Empire State, Rockefeller Plaza and the Chrysler building
still brightly lit with neon and floodlights. Advertising signs flashed at both sides of the broad river: Lipton’s Tea, Cinzano Vermouth, Motoroil. The tugs hooted instructions at one another
from time to time, moving busily about, pushing and pulling at the tow. At that time of the year there were a lot of mosquitoes about. As the scows slewed round they droned at the shuttered windows
of the cabins and hung in clouds around all navigation lights.

Tugs of other companies were already standing by to pick up some of the scows and deliver them further afield. None of the scowmen knew as yet who would go out that night, and what conversation
there had been during the past half-hour, shouted by shadowy figures across the water from one scow to another, had been about who would go straight out and who would remain at Pier 72 until next
day. No one knew for certain. My own scow was almost in the middle of the island of scows. I would have nothing to do except let go my hawsers at the appropriate time. I was thinking of one thing
only, the list. If I was not on the list I would be able to go into the city.

“I hope I’m not on that fucking list!”

These were the first words I heard Geo Falk say. He uttered them as he climbed down off his load onto the short foredeck and stood, ready to let go a hawser, about half a dozen yards away from
me.

He told me afterwards that he was sick. It was on him like something voluptuous, and at the back of his mind a hedge of fear. It would be an oversimplification to say that Geo was a masochist
(any more than the rest of us), but he did have a way of dramatizing his suffering, investing it with cosmic proportions, and the blood that trickled down his arms was like the blood of the ten
thousand followers of Spartacus crucified along the Appian Way. If he was pulled out at once he wouldn’t get a fix. I could imagine him becoming conscious of the cold set grin of satisfaction
at his jaws, a slave’s defiance, and asking himself what the hell that was for and who he was trying to con. I can see him standing on top of the load, his legs apart and his hands on his
hips, his blond hair exposed to the wind.

“Where you gaun?” another voice said in the dark.

It was the voice of a squarehead Swede. He was carrying a flashlight at arm’s length. It was on and its bright yellow beam lit up the heavy gunwales of the scows as they swung closer
together.

I watched Geo light a cigarette. “Port Jefferson,” he said.

“You go out wid de tide most probable,” the Swede said. “Day kom take you, I tink.” He pointed to one of the tugs that was standing by.

I could imagine Geo muttering: “Fuck you!”

“Oh for me I doan giva damn,” the Swede said. “I stay on de boat I save mawny. You go ashore you spend too moch an you drink an den you git broke...”

Feeding Falk his damn squarehead philosophy.

I couldn’t see either of their faces in the dark. I knew the Swede, but Falk I saw now for the first time.

“I gotta get off tonight,” Falk was saying. He was speaking to himself.

“Ya, I tink you go straight out,” the Swede said.

The bastard knows he’s bugging him, I thought.

“You don’t know a fucking thing,” I said to the Swede. Falk glanced at me for the first time.

“You’re Falk?” I said. “My name’s Necchi. Fay told me to look out for you.”

“Necchi? Yeah! Oh man, am I glad to see you! You hear the way that squarehead bastard’s been bugging me? Turning the knife in the wound. You’d think he wanted me to go out
tonight!” His laugh was high-pitched.

“I heard.”

“Say, what’s your scow? The
Mulroy
?”

“Yeah.”

“Come over as soon as we tie up. Christ, I hope I don’t go out tonight! You know how far Port Jefferson is? I’ll croak if I don’t get into town first!”

I had to go back to my bow. I nodded and left.

Neither of us were on the list. We went up to Harlem together and copped some heroin. We turned on in a pad up there, Jim’s mother’s pad. There was Jim, slim and dark, who
hadn’t been clean for three years, Dulcie, his girl, some trumpet-player I didn’t know who was sitting on the floor with his back against a wall, and Chuck Orlich. Chuck was sprawled in
a big chair, his arms dangling, his tawny beard straggling on his chest, his shoulder-length hair as voluminous as the wig of Judge Jeffries, and his face was the kind of violet-grey colour faces
have when the organism is at the edge of death.

“Will you look at him?” Geo said. “Is he all right?”

“Man, you can’t tell him anything,” Jim said. “He takes nothing for a week an’ then he comes here an takes an overdose.”

The shaggy head was thrown backwards, the mouth open exposing stumps of teeth, a noise – click, click, click – issued spasmodically from the throat.

“Naw, he’ll come round,” Dulcie said. “He’s always like that.”

At that time Chuck was working in a wholesale butcher’s. He cleaned up all the bones and the blood after the butchering. What a scene, the hairy Goth rummaging amongst the bones... and the
man was as gentle in his demeanour as St Francis. Click, click, click – click, click, click...

He had come round before we left.

Next morning around nine we were pulled out together and during the next three days Geo and I were able to spend a lot of time in each other’s company.

Geo was fed up with the scows. I was the only other man he could groove with. Some of them were OK but they were mostly alcoholics or men saving up to retire. He didn’t want to die on the
scows. He didn’t want to die anywhere for that matter. But there was no other gig which paid so well for so little work. And no supervision. That was important. He often thought of Mexico
where he had spent three years. The years in Guadalajara were Geo Falk’s golden years. He had had money then, from the GI Bill.
¹²
And at that time
shit was cheap and plentiful in Mexico. (NB: It isn’t today.) Three years in the sun with plenty of horse, not too much, but enough, and he had painted. He hadn’t really painted now for
two years. Back in New York it was different. Without money and unable to sell any of his paintings he had been forced to push the drug to keep up his own habit. The girl he was living with finked
on him and one day they came pushing him back into his room, treating him like cattle.

“OK, Falk, we’ve come for you. Where is it? Where’s your stash, knucklehead?” They didn’t find the heroin but they found two spikes and with his marks and the
girl’s evidence that was enough. They built it up big for the tabloids so that John Citizen had the impression that Lucky Luciano’s
¹³
first
lieutenant had been trapped by intrepid agents and that half the opium smuggled by Mongolian-faced agents of Chou En-Lai
¹⁴
from Communist China to sap
the strength of the American people had been seized in the raid; and in return for two Leica cameras they played it down before the judge who, it must be assumed, didn’t read the
tabloids.

Geo spent three months in the Tombs
¹⁵
and when I met him he was still on probation. He walked everywhere now with a sense of his own criminality.
Sometimes the Man would stop him on the street and play with him.

“Howya doin’, Geo? Still livin’ it up?” Flat eyes sizing him up, lingering on his pockets, watching the set of his hands; and his own inane smiling at the man who had
arrested him.

“How about a drink, sergeant?”

And walking into the bar in front of him, his pride like an insect struggling under a lethal weight, he heard his own voice currying favour: “Feel much fitter now since I kicked. Back on
the old booze!”

“That so, Falk? I’m glad to hear that.” And ten minutes later: “Mind letting me see your arm, Falk?”

The time they put him in the Tombs he was in the cell with a young Italian. Geo was in the bottom bunk. He was lying with his eyes closed trying to steel himself against nausea. The sobs of the
Italian came to him and Falk found himself hating him. Why didn’t the bastard shut up? They wouldn’t give him anything, not even a wet cotton. For a murderer yes, but not for a junkie,
a junkie couldn’t even get an aspirin. Then he felt the wetness on the back of his hand. What the hell? Jesus Christ! It was blood. Another blob fell on the floor and splashed his hand. The
Italian was committing suicide. Call the Man. The Man took a long time to come and when he came he said: “Why you dirty little junkie bastard! What do you think this is, a pigsty?” They
dragged him out, bleeding at both wrists. The door was closed and Geo was left alone with his mounting nausea.

If anything had broken him it was kicking his habit in the Tombs. When he thought of it he thought of destiny and he felt himself without will.

Geo is balding and he combs his blond hair forwards, slightly oiled. His face has the battered look of an ex-boxer’s. At thirty-three he is deteriorating; he is preoccupied with
disappearing muscle. He watches, horrified, fascinated, the insectal movement of his private decay. And he massages the flesh which fascinates him with witch hazel. Thinking brings a pained
expression to his face and he is afraid.

We talked about how the world was just a conglomeration of rooms, other people’s rooms, to wander about in. For ever and ever. For where our kind made a room the fuzz came, like something
out of the movies, with drawn revolvers. It was like being at the mercy of a gang of belligerent children. We composed songs:

There was soon something between us. There were moments beyond all disbelief of good generosity. And I like the flaring of his paint, an abstract of Van Gogh’s, but
simpler. A yell in paint.

I returned to Geo’s bed and lay down on it. The cabin of his scow is painted white and it always reminds me of a hospital room. Apart from his works... the big box of
surgical cotton, the miscellaneous eye-droppers and needles... he has a vast supply of medicines, unguents, and disinfectants.

“I don’t know why you don’t do something about your damn cabin,” I said.

“What’s wrong with it?” He sounded surprised. “I just painted it.” He grinned. “It’s not finished. That white’s the undercoat. But if I finished
it I’d have nothing to do.”

“I knew a guy once, Geo, who wanted to paint big. He used to sit in front of a pretty big canvas, nine by twelve, and it was already covered with size and white. He had a little room in a
cheap hotel on the Rue de Seine, near the river, and this thing on the easel used to be stuck out there in the middle of the floor like a screen and you were always walking round it and turning it
and ducking under it. It was an object, anonymous, you know what I mean? And it was always intruding itself. And yet you were willing to play along with him and to accept his object and talk about
it like I’m willing now to talk about the inside of your chicken coop.”

“Don’t stop,” Geo said, grinning.

“That big white canvas must have been there for nearly four weeks. I was staying with him at the time. I was camped on him, and when we ate or when we were spending time in the room for
one reason or another we used to sit there and discuss what he should do next. He’d thought of putting a kind of orange splotch over half of it and we agreed we knew what he meant, not quite
half, and not to make two oblongs like Mondrian might have, but just a splotch, like to surprise it. But although he’d thought of that he’d rejected the idea because he thought it might
be too violent. He said he wanted the background to be tranquil whatever else he painted on the canvas. Well, he didn’t do anything to it until one day we went to a Miró
¹⁶
exhibition at the Galerie Maeght. There were a couple of really big canvases there, shape and colour objects against a great airy blue background. And the very
next day when I came back from seeing a girl I was planning to make he grabbed me and screamed that it had come to him suddenly, just out of nowhere, and he dragged me round the easel to get a good
look at it. He’d painted it blue, the whole thing, airy blue, just like Miró’s. He was a small guy with black hair and he wore thick-lensed glasses. “It just came to
me!” he kept on saying. “It just came to me!”

Geo, grinning, turned on the radio. To the tune of ‘Reuben, Reuben, I Been Thinking’
¹⁷
a little girl’s voice sang: