Sexus (34 page)

Sometimes I stole into her room on the quiet, just to snoop around. I was curious about Melanie, about the letters she received, the books she read, and so on. Nothing was hidden away in her room. Neither was anything ever fully consumed. There was always a little water in the saucer under the bed, always some half-nibbled crackers lying on the trunk or a piece of cake which she had bitten into and forgotten to finish. Sometimes an open book lay on the bed, the page held open by a torn slipper. Bulwer-Lytton was one of her authors, apparently, also Rider Haggard. She seemed to be
interested in magic, in the black art more particularly. There was a pamphlet about mesmerism which betrayed evidences of having been well thumbed. The most amazing discovery, tucked away in one of the bureau drawers, was of a rubber instrument which had only one use, unless Melanie in her cracked way had intended it for some wholly innocent usage. Whether Melanie somtimes whiled away a pleasant hour with this object, as did the nuns of old, or whether she had bought it in a junk shop and hidden it away for some unsuspected use some time or other in the course of her never-ending life, was a mystery to me. It was not difficult for me to picture her lying on the filthy quilt clad in her torn chemise, poking this thing in and out of her twat in absent-minded glee. I could even picture the dog licking the juice that slowly trickled between her legs. And the parrot squawking insanely, perhaps repeating some idiotic phrase which Melanie had taught it, such as, “Ever so easy, dearie!” or, “Get a move on now, get a move on!”

A queer one, Melanie, and even though her wits had flown, she understood in a primitive, almost cannibalistic way that sex was everywhere, like food and water and sleep and bunions. It used to exasperate me that Maude kept up such unnecessary pretenses when Melanie was around. If we lay on the couch after dinner, to enjoy a quiet little fuck in the dark, Maude would suddenly jump up and switch on a soft light—so that Melanie wouldn't suspect what we were up to, or that she wouldn't intrude absent-mindedly to hand us a letter which she had forgotten to give us at breakfast. I used to enjoy the thought of Melanie breaking in on us (say just as Maude is climbing over me), breaking in on us to hand me a letter, and me taking the letter with a smile and a thank you, and Melanie standing there a moment to say some little nothing about the hot water being too hot or asking Maude if she wanted eggs for the morning or some headcheese. It would have given me a great kick to pull off a stunt like that on Maude. But Maude could never admit to herself that Melanie knew we had intercourse together. Regarding her either as an idiot or wholly daft, she had made herself believe that people like Melanie never thought of sex. Her stepfather had
had no sex life with this demented creature, that she was certain of. She wouldn't go into it, why she was so certain, but she was positive of it, and the way she dismissed the subject indicated all too clearly that she thought a crime had been done her stepfather. One would almost think, to follow her, that Melanie had deliberately addled her pate in order to deprive the stepfather of his sexual due.

Melanie had a soft spot in her heart for me, always took my part when I quarreled with Maude, and never once that I can remember made any attempt to reproach me for my flagrant misbehavior. It was that way from the very beginning. Maude used to try to keep her out of sight, in the early days. Melanie was something she was deeply ashamed of—a walking reminder, it would seem, of the family taint. Melanie seemed not to notice the difference between good and bad people; she had only one guiding principle, an immediate response to kindness. And so, when she discovered that I was not trying to run away from her as soon as she opened her trap, when she found that I could listen to her prattle and not become distraught, like Maude, when she found that I enjoyed food and beer and wine, especially cheeses and bolognas, she was willing to be my slave. I held the most wonderful moronic conversations with her sometimes when Maude was absent—usually in the kitchen with a bottle of beer between us and perhaps a little liverwurst and a bit of Liederkranz on the side. Giving her free rein as I would on such occasions, I caught remarkable glimpses of her not uninteresting past. “They” seemed to have hailed from some indolent, semiconstipated region where the Würzburger flows. The women were always getting caught and the men were always going to jail for some trivial reason. It was a sort of Sunday school picnic atmosphere with kegs of beer, pumpernickel sandwiches, taffeta petticoats, lace drawers and stray goats fucking contentedly on the greensward. Sometimes I had a mind to ask her if she had ever let herself be fucked by a Shetland pony. If Melanie thought you sincerely wanted to know, she would answer a question like that without the least to do. You could pass from a question like that to a query about the communion service without modulating. There was
no censor standing on her subliminal threshold; messengers came and went without the least formality.

It was wonderful to see how she took up the little Jap who was our star border. Tori Takekuchi was his name, and a delightful, gracious, princely little chap he was. He had taken the situation in at a glance, despite his inadequate grasp of the language. Of course, being a Jap, it was easy for him to smile and beam at Melanie when she posted herself at his doorsill and prattled like a cracked nanny goat. He smiled the same way at us, even when we informed him of a grave catastrophe. I think he would have given the same smile had I told him that I was going to die in a few minutes. Of course Melanie knew that Orientals smile in this inscrutable way, but she thought Mr. T.'s smile—that was how she called him always, “Mr. T.”—was particularly engaging. She thought he was like a doll. So clean and tidy too! Never left a crumb of dirt behind him.

When we got more intimate, and I must say that we all became very intimate before a month or two was out, Mr. T. began bringing girls to his room. He had, to be sure, discreetly taken me aside one day and asked if he might be permitted to bring a young lady home occasionally, offering the flimsy excuse (with a broad grin) that he had business to transact. I used his excuse to obtain Maude's consent. I pretended that the little bugger was so unattractive that it couldn't possibly be anything but business which would bring a pretty American girl to his room. Maude consented reluctantly, torn between the desire to keep up appearances with the neighbors and the fear of losing a generous boarder whose money we needed.

I wasn't home when the first intruder stepped across the threshold, but I heard about it the next day—heard that she was “terribly cute.” It was Melanie who spilled the beans. She was so glad that he had found a little friend—like himself.

“But she's not a friend,” Maude put in ceremoniously.

“Oh well,” drawled Melanie, “maybe it's just business . . . but she was awfully cute. He has to have a girl, just like anyone else.”

A few weeks later Mr. T. had switched to another girl. This one wasn't so “cute.” She was a good head taller than him, built like a panther, and quite obviously not there to talk business.

I congratulated him the next morning at table, asking him point-blank where he had picked up such a blazing beauty.

“Dance hall,” said Mr. T., baring his yellow fangs most amiably, then bursting into a girlish giggle.

“Very intelligent, yes?” I queried, just to keep the ball rolling.

“Oh yes, her very intelligent, her very good girl.”

“Look out she doesn't give you a dose of clap,” says I, calmly swallowing my coffee.

I thought Maude would fall off the chair. How could I talk that way to Mr. T.? It was insulting as well as disgusting, she wanted me to know.

Mr. T. looked puzzled. He hadn't yet learned the word “clap.” He was smiling, of course, and why shouldn't he? He didn't give a fuck what we said so long as we allowed him to do as he pleased.

Out of politeness I volunteered a definition.
Headache,
I explained.

He laughed uproariously at this. Very good joke. Yes, he understood. He understood nothing, the little prick, but it was polite to let him think he understood. Then I smiled too, a banjo smile, which made Mr. T. giggle some more, rinse his fingers in the water tumbler, belch and throw his napkin on the floor.

I must confess that he had good taste, Mr. T. No doubt he was generous with his money. They made my mouth water, some of them. To him I don't think their beauty meant very much; he probably was more interested in their weight, the texture of their skin, and above all, in their cleanliness. He had all kinds—redheads, blondes, brunettes, short, tall, plump, lithe ones—quite as if he had drawn them from a grab bag. He was buying cunt—and that was all there was to it. At the same time he was learning a little more English. (“How you say this . . . ?” “What that called?” “You like bonbons, yes?”) He was good at making gifts—it was an art
with him. I often thought, when I saw him taking a girl to his room, heard him giggle and stammer in that fuckee-wuckee way of the Japs, how much better off the girls were to have got hold of Mr. T. than some young American college boy out on a spree. I felt sure, too, that Mr. T. always got his money's worth. (“You turn over, please.” “You suck now, yes?”) Compared to the artists in his own country, these dumb American bitches must have cut a sorrowful figure in Mr. T.'s eyes. I remembered O'Mara's description of his visits to the bordels in Japan. They were like opium dreams, to hear him tell. The emphasis was placed on the preliminaries, apparently. There was music, incense, baths, massages, caresses, a full orchestration of seduction and enchantment, making the final consummation a thing of unbearable ecstasy. “Just like dolls,” O'Mara would say. “And so gentle, so loving. They bewitch you.” And then he would go into raptures about the tricks they had up their sleeves. They seemed to have a manual of fuck which began where ours left off. And all this in an ambiance of delicacy, as though fucking was the
spiritual
art, the vestibule to heaven.

Mr. T. had to make the most of it in his furnished room, fortunate indeed if he could find a piece of punk to burn. Whether he enjoyed himself or not was hard to tell, because to all questions he invariably answered: “Very good.” Now and then, coming in late, I caught him going to the bathroom after one of his sessions with an American cunt. He always went to the bathroom in straw slippers and kimono, a short kimono which just about covered his prick. Maude thought it was shocking, his running around in that rig, but Melanie thought it suited him to a T. “They all run around like that,” she said, knowing not a damned thing about it, but always ready to take the other person's side.

“Good time, Mr. T.?” I would smile.

“Very good, very good,” and then a giggle. Perhaps he would scratch his balls while baring his teeth in a grin. “Water hot, yes?” In the bathroom he would go through his endless ablutions.

If he surmised that Maude were asleep he would sometimes
beckon with his finger, signifying that he had something to show me. I would follow him to his room.

“I come in, yes?” he would say, frightening the girl out of her wits. “This Mr. Miller, my friend of mine . . . this Miss Slith.” They were always Smith, Brown or Jones, I noticed. He probably never bothered to ask their real names.

Some of the girls were of surprising caliber, I must say. “Cute, isn't he?” they would often say. Whereupon Mr. T. would go over to the girl, as you would approach a figure in a shop window, and lift her dress. “Her very beautiful, yes?” And he'd proceed to inspect her twat as if he had bought stock in it.

“Here, you little devil, you can't do that!” the girl would say.

“You go now, yes?”
That was Mr. T.'s way of dispatching them. It sounded crude as hell, coming from a little yellow belly. But Mr. T. was unaware of being indelicate. He had given her a good fuck, he had licked her ass, he had paid her in honest coin and given her a little gift into the bargain . . .
what more,
for Christ's sake?
“You go now, yes?”
And he would half close his eyes, look utterly wooden and disinterested, leaving not the least doubt in the girl's mind that the speedier she left the healthier it would be for her.

“Next time
you try!
Her very small.” Here he would grin, making a little gesture with his fingers to show me how smooth it went. “Japanese girl sometimes very big. This country big girl small. Very good.” He would lick his chops after a remark like this. Then, as if to make the most of the occasion, he would take a toothpick and, while picking his teeth, he would look for the words he had written down in his little notebook.
“This mean what?
He would show me a word like “precarious” or “unearthly.” “Now I teach you Japanese word—
OHIO!
That mean Good Morning!” A broad grin. Still picking his teeth, or else examining his toes.

“Japanese very simple. All words pronounce same way,” and he would rattle off a string of words, giggling as he did so, probably because what they meant were “shit-heel,” “white bugger,” “foreign fool,” and so on. I didn't give a shit what the words meant, since I had no intention of making
a serious study of Japanese. What I was more interested in was his technique of picking up white women. To hear him, it was all very simple. Of course, many of the girls were recommended from one Jap to another. And many of these same girls must have made a specialty of Japs, knowing that they were clean and generous. Hump for the Japs, that's what they were, and a profitable business it was. There was class to the Japs. They had cars of their own, dressed well, ate in good restaurants, and so on. Now a Chink was different. Chinks were white slavers. But a Jap you could trust. And so on. I could follow their reasoning perfectly. What they appreciated most were the little gifts the Japs made them. Americans never thought of giving gifts, not usually. A guy had to be a sap to piss away his money on a gift for a whore.