Plexus (6 page)

If I were reading a book and happened to strike a wonderful passage I would close the book then and there and go for a walk. I hated the thought of coming to the end of a good book. I would tease it along, delay the inevitable as long as possible. But always, when I hit a great passage, I would stop reading immediately. Out I would go, rain, hail, snow or ice, and chew the cud. One can become so full with the spirit of another being as to be literally afraid of bursting. Everyone, I presume, has had the experience. This “other being,” let me observe, is always a sort of
alter ego
. It isn't a mere matter of recognizing a kindred soul, it is a matter of recognizing oneself. To come suddenly face to face with yourself! What a moment! Closing
the book you continue the act of creation. And this procedure, this ritual, I should say, is always the same: a communication on all fronts at once. No more barriers. More alone than ever, you are nevertheless glued to the world as never before.
Incorporated in it
. Suddenly it becomes clear to you, that when God made the world He did not abandon it to sit in contemplation—somewhere in limbo. God made the world and He entered into it: that is the meaning of creation.

It was only a few months of bliss we enjoyed in the Japanese love nest. Once a week I paid my visit to Maude and the child, brought the alimony, went for a stroll in the park. Mona had her job in the theater and from her earnings took care of her mother and two healthy brothers. About once every ten days I ate at the French-Italian grocery, usually without Mona because she had to be at the theater early. Occasionally I visited Ulric to play a quiet game of chess with him. The session usually ended in a discussion of painters and how they painted. Sometimes I simply went for a stroll in the evening, generally to the foreign quarters. Often I stayed home and read or played the gramophone. Mona usually arrived home about midnight; we would have a little snack, talk for a few hours, and then to bed. It was getting more and more difficult to get up in the morning. To say good-by to Mona was always a tussle. Finally it came about that I remained away from the office three days handrunning. It was just a sufficient break to make it impossible for me to return. Three glorious days and nights, doing exactly what
I pleased, eating well, sleeping long, enjoying every minute of the day, feeling immeasurably rich inside, losing all ambition to battle with the world, itching to begin my own private life, confident of the future, done with the past, how could I go back into harness? Besides, I felt that I had been doing Clancy, my boss, a great injustice. If I had any loyalty or integrity I ought to tell him that I was fed up. I knew that he was constantly defending me, constantly making excuses for me to
his
boss, the right holy Mr. Twilliger. Sooner or later, Spivak, always on my trail, would get the goods on me. Of late he had been spending a great deal of time in Brooklyn, right in my own precincts. No, the jig was up. It was time to make a clean breast of it.

On the fourth day I got up early as if in preparation for work. I waited almost until ready to leave before broaching my thought to Mona. She was so delighted at the idea that she begged me to resign at once and be back for lunch. It seemed to me likewise that the quicker it was over the better. Spivak would undoubtedly find another employment manager in jig time.

When I got to the office there was an unusual swarm of applicants waiting for me. Hymie was at his post, his ear glued to the telephone, frantically operating the switchboard as usual. There were so many new vacancies that if he had had an army of waybills to manipulate he would still have been helpless. I went to my desk, emptied it of my private effects, gathered them up in a brief case, and beckoned Hymie to approach.

“Hymie, I'm quitting,” I said. “I'll leave it to you to notify Clancy or Spivak.”

Hymie looked at me as if I had taken leave of my wits. There was an awkward pause and then in a matter of fact tone he asked me what I was going to do about my pay. “Let them keep it,” I said.

“What?”
he yelled. This time, I could see, he knew definitely I was nuts.

“I haven't got the heart to ask for my pay since I'm leaving without notice, don't you see? I'm sorry to leave
you
in the lurch, Hymie. But you won't be here long either, I take it.” A few more words and I was off. I stood outside the big show window a few moments to observe the applicants stewing and milling about. It was over with. Like a surgical operation. It didn't seem possible to me that I had spent almost five years in the service of this heartless corporation. I understood how a soldier must feel on being mustered out of the army.

Free! Free! Free!

Instead of ducking immediately into the subway I strolled up Broadway, just to see how it felt to be on one's own and at large at that hour of the morning. My poor fellow-workers, there they were scurrying to their jobs, all with that grim, harried look I knew so well. Some were already grinding the pavement, hopeful even at that early hour of receiving an order, selling an insurance policy, or placing an ad. How stupid, meaningless, idiotic it appeared now, the rat race. It always had seemed crazy to me but now it appeared diabolical as well.

If only I were to run into Spivak! If only he were to ask me what I was doing strolling about so leisurely!

I walked about aimlessly for the sheer thrill of tasting my new-found freedom; it gave me a perverse pleasure to watch the slaves fulfilling their appointed rounds. A whole lifetime lay ahead of me. In a few months I would be thirty-three years of age—and “my own master absolute.” Then and there I made a vow never to work for anyone again. Never again would I take orders. The work of the world was for the other blokes—I would have no part in it. I had talent and I would cultivate it. I would become a writer or I would starve to death.

On the way home I stopped off at a music shop and bought an album of records—a Beethoven quartet, if I remember rightly. On the Brooklyn side I bought a bunch of flowers and wangled a bottle of Chianti out of the
private stock of an Italian friend. The new life would begin with a good lunch—and music. It would take a lot of good living to wipe out all remembrance of the days, months, years I had wasted in the cosmococcic treadmill. To do absolutely nothing for a stretch, to idle the days away, what a heavenly pastime that would be!

It was the glorious month of September; the leaves were turning and there was the smell of smoke in the air. It was hot and cool at the same time. One could still go to the beach for a swim. There were so many things I wanted to do all at once that I was almost jumping out of my skin. First of all I would get a piano and start playing again. Perhaps I would even take up painting. Letting my mind roam at will, suddenly it came to rest on a beloved image. The bike! How wonderful it would be if I could get my old racing wheel back again! It was only about two years ago that I had sold it to my cousin who lived nearby. Perhaps he would sell it back to me. It was a special model which I had picked up from a German cyclist at the end of a six-day race. Made in Chemnitz, Bohemia. Ah, but it was a long time since I had taken a spin to Coney Island. Autumn days! Just made for cycling. I prayed that my fool cousin hadn't changed the saddle; it was a Brooks saddle and well broken in. (And those straps that fitted round the toe-clips, I hoped he hadn't discarded
them.)
Recalling the feel of my foot slipping into the toe-clip, I re-experienced the most delicious sensations. Riding now along the gravel path under the archway of trees that runs from Prospect Park to Coney Island, my rhythm one with the machine, my brain thoroughly emptied, only the sensation of rushing through space, fast or slow, according to the dictates of the chronometer inside me. The landscape to either side falling away like the leaves of a calendar. No thoughts, no sensations even. Just everlasting movement forward into space, one with the machine.… Yes, I would go cycling again—every morning—just to get my blood up. A spin
to Coney Island and back, a shower and rub-down, a delicious breakfast, and then to work. At my writing desk, of course. Not work, but play. A whole lifetime ahead of me and nothing to do but write. How wonderful! It seemed to me that all I had to do was to sit down, turn on the tap, and out it would flow. If I could write twenty- and thirty-page letters without a halt, surely I could write books with the same ease. Everybody recognized the writer in me: all I had to do was to make it a fact.

As I hurried up the stoop I caught a glimpse of Mona moving about in her kimono. The big window with the stone ledge was wide open. I swung myself over the balustrade and entered by the window.

“Well, I did it!” I exclaimed, handing her the flowers, the wine, the music. “Today we begin a new life. I don't know what we're going to live on, but we're going to live. Is the typewriter in good shape? Have you food for lunch? Should I ask Ulric to come over? I'm bursting with effervescence. Today I could go through a trial by ordeal and come out of it in ecstasy. Let me sit down and look at you. Go on, move about as you were a minute ago. I want to see how it feels to sit here and do nothing.”

A pause to give Mona a chance to collect herself. Then spilling over again.

“You weren't sure I would do it, were you? I never would have if it weren't for you. You know, it's easy to go to work every day. What's difficult is to stay free. I thought of everything under the sun that I would like to do, now that I'm foot-loose and free. I want to
do
things. It seems to me I've been standing still for five years.”

Mona began to laugh quietly. “Do things?” she echoed. “Why, you're the most active person in creation. No, dear Val, what you need is to do nothing. I don't want you to even think about writing… not until you've had a long rest. And don't worry about how we're going to get along. Leave that to me. If I can keep that lazy family of mine I
can certainly keep you and me. Anyway, don't let's think of such things now.”

“There's a wonderful bill at the Palace,” she added in a moment. “Roy Barnes is there. He's one of your favorites, isn't he? And there's that comedian who used to be in burlesque—I forget his name. It's just a suggestion.”

I sat there in a daze, my hat on, my feet sprawled out in front of me. Too good to be true. I felt like King Solomon. Better than King Solomon, in fact, because I had cast off all responsibilities. Sure I would go to the theater. What better than a matinee on a lazy day? I'd call Ulric later on and ask him to have dinner with us. A red-letter day like this had to be shared with someone, and what better than to share it with a good friend? (I knew too what Ulric would say. “You don't think that maybe it would have been better…? Oh, what the hell am I saying? You know best.…” Et cetera.) I was prepared for anything from Ulric. His dubiety, his cautiousness, would be refreshing. I was almost certain that before the evening ended he would be saying—“Maybe I'll throw up the sponge myself!” Not meaning it, of course, but toying with it, flirting with it, just to titilate me. As though to say that if he, Ulric, the greatest stick-in-the-mud ever, could entertain such a notion why then it was self-evident that a man like his friend Henry Val Miller must act on it, that not to act would be suicidal.

“Do you think we might be able to afford to buy my bicycle back?” This out of a clear sky.

“Why of course, Val,” she answered, without a moment's hesitation.

“You don't think it funny, do you? I've got a tremendous desire to ride the bike again. I gave it up just before I met you, you know.”

It was the most natural desire in the world, she thought. But it made her laugh, just the same. “You're still a boy, aren't you?” she couldn't resist saying.

“Yep! But it's damned sight better than being a zombie, what?”

After a few moments I spoke up again. “Do you know what? There's another thing I thought of this morning.…”

“What's that?”

“A piano. I'd like to get a piano and start playing again.”

“That would be wonderful,” she said. “I'm sure we can rent one cheaply—and a good one, too. Would you take lessons again?”

“No, not that. I want to amuse myself, that's all.”

“Maybe you could teach
me
to play.”

“Of course! If you really want to learn.”

“It's always good to know, especially in the theater.”

“Nothing easier. Just get me the piano.”

Suddenly, getting up to stretch, I burst out laughing. “And what are
you
going to get out of this new life?”

“You know what I'd like,” said Mona.

“No I don't.
What?”

She came over to me and put her arms around me. “All I would like is for you to become what you want to be—a writer. A great writer.”

“And that's all you would like?”

“Yes, Val, that's all, believe me.”

“And what about the theater? Don't you want to become a great actress some day?”

“No, Val, I know I'll never be that. I haven't enough ambition. I took up the theater because I thought it would please you. I don't really care what I do—so long as it makes you happy.”

“But you won't make a good actress if you think that way,” I said. “Really, you must think about yourself. You must do what you like best, no matter what I do. I thought you were crazy about the theater.”

“I'm only crazy about one thing,
you.”

“Now you're acting,” I said.

“I wish I were, it would be easier.”

I chucked her under the chin. “Well,” I drawled, “you've got me now for good and all. We'll see how you like it a month from now. Maybe you'll be sick of seeing me around before then.”

“Not I,” she said. “I've prayed for this ever since I met you. I'm jealous of you, do you know that? I want to watch your every move.” She came very close and as she spoke she tapped my forehead lightly. “Sometimes I wish I could get inside there and know what you're thinking about. You seem so faraway at times. Especially when you're silent. I'll be jealous of your writing too—because I know you won't be thinking of me then.”