Sexus (53 page)

When we visited the doctor again we learned that the signs were all negative. However, he explained, even that didn't constitute a final proof.

“You know,” he said—evidently he had been thinking it over before our arrival—“I've been thinking that you'd be much better off if you were circumcised. When the foreskin is removed that stuff will come off too. You've got an uncommonly long foreskin—hasn't it bothered you?”

I confessed I had never given it a thought before. One is born with a foreskin and one dies with it. Nobody thinks about his appendix until it's time to have it cut out.

“Yes,” he went on, “you'd be lots better off without that foreskin. You'd have to go to the hospital, of course . . . it might take about a week or so.”

“And what would that cost?” I inquired, picking up the scent.

He couldn't say exactly—perhaps a hundred dollars.

I told him I'd think it over. I wasn't too keen about losing my precious foreskin, even if there were hygienic advantages attached to it. A funny thought then entered my head—that thereafter the head of my cock would be insensitive. I didn't like that idea at all.

However, before I left his office he had persuaded me to make a date with his surgeon for a week hence. “If it should clear up in the meantime you won't need to go through with the operation—if you don't like the idea.

“But,”
he added, “if I were you I'd have it done whether I liked it or not. It's much cleaner.”

In the interval the nightly confessions proceeded apace. Mona had not been working at the dance hall for several weeks now and we had the evenings together. She wasn't sure what she would do next—it was always the money question which disturbed her—but she was certain she would never return to the dance hall. She seemed just as relieved as I to know that her blood test had come out all right.

“But you didn't think there was anything wrong with you, did you?”

“One never knows,” she said. “That was such a horrible place . . . the girls were filthy.”

“The
girls?
”

“And the men too . . . Don't let's talk about it.” After a short silence she laughed and said: “How would you like it if I went on the stage?”

“It would be fine,” I said. “Do you think you can act?”

“I know I can. You wait, Val, I'll show you. . .”

That evening we came home late and sneaked quietly into bed. Holding on to my cock she began another string of confessions. She had been wanting to tell me something . . . I wasn't to get angry . . . I wasn't to interrupt her. I had to promise.

I lay there and listened tensely. The money question again. It was always there, like a bad sore. “You didn't want me to go on staying at the dance hall, did you?” Of course I didn't. What next? I wondered.

Well naturally she had to find some way of raising the necessary funds. Go on! I thought to myself. Get it over with! I gave myself an anesthetic and listened to her without opening my trap. It was all quite painless, strange to relate. She was talking about old men, nice old men whom she had become acquainted with at the dance hall. What they wanted was to have the company of a beautiful young girl—someone they could eat with and take to the theater. They didn't really care about dancing—or even going to bed with a girl. They wanted to be
seen
with young women—it made them feel younger, gayer, more hopeful. They were all successful old bastards—with false teeth and varicose veins and all that sort of thing. They didn't know what to do with their money. One of them, the one she was talking about, owned a big steam laundry. He was over eighty, brittle, blue-veined, glassy-eyed. He was almost a child. Surely I couldn't be jealous of
him!
All he asked of her was permission to spend his money on her. She didn't say how much he had already forked out, but she inferred it was a tidy sum. And now there was another one—he lived at the Ritz Carlton. A shoe manufacturer. She sometimes ate in his room, because it gave him pleasure. He was a multimillionaire—and a little gaga, to believe her words. At the most he had only courage enough to kiss her hand. . . . Yes, she had been meaning to tell me about these
things for weeks, but she had been afraid I might take it badly. “You don't, do you?” she said, bending over me. I didn't answer immediately. I was thinking, wondering, puzzling over it all. “Why don't you say something?” she said, nudging me. “You said you wouldn't be angry. You promised.”

“I'm not angry,” I said. And then I grew silent again.

“But you are! You're hurt. . . . Oh Val, you're so foolish. Do you think I would tell you these things if I thought you would be hurt?”

“I don't think anything,” I said. “It's all right, believe me. Do whatever you think best. I'm only sorry that it has to be this way.”

“But it won't always be this way! It's just for a little while. . . . That's why I want to get in the theater. I hate it just as much as you do.”

“O. K.,” I said. “Let's forget about it.”

The morning that I was to report to the hospital I woke up early. As I was taking my shower I looked at my prick and by crikey there wasn't a sign of irritation. I could hardly believe my eyes. I woke Mona and showed it to her. She kissed it. I got in bed again and tore off a quick one—to test it out. Then I went to the telephone and called the doctor. “It's all better,” I said, “I'm not going to have my foreskin cut off.” I hung up quickly in order to forestall any further persuasions on his part.

As I was leaving the phone booth I suddenly took it into my head to phone Maude.

“I can't believe it,” she said.

“Well, it's a fact,” I said, “and if you don't believe it I'll prove it to you when I come over next week.”

She seemed to want to hang on to the phone. Kept talking about a lot of irrelevant things. “I've got to go,” I said, getting annoyed with her.

“Just a moment,” she begged. “I was going to ask you if you couldn't come over sooner, say Sunday, and take us out to the country. We might have a little picnic, the three of us. I'd do up a lunch . . .”

Her voice sounded very tender.

“All right,” I said, “I'll come. I'll come early . . . about eight o'clock.”

“You're sure you're all right?” she said.

“I'm absolutely sure. I'll show it to you—Sunday.”

She gave a short, dirty little laugh. I hung up before she had closed her trap.

While the divorce proceedings were pending events rolled up as at the end of an epoch. It only needed a war to top it off. First of all the Satanic Majesties of the Cosmodemoniacal Telegraph Company had seen fit to shift my headquarters once again, this time to the top of an old loft building in the twine and paper-box district. My desk stood in the center of an enormous deserted floor which was used as a drill room by the messenger brigade after hours. In the adjoining room, equally large and empty, a sort of combination clinic, dispensary and gymnasium was established. All that was needed to complete the picture was the installation of a few pool tables. Some of the half-wits brought their roller skates along to while away the “rest periods.” It was an infernal racket they made all day long, but I was so utterly disinterested now in all the company's plans and projects that, far from disturbing me, it afforded me great amusement. I was thoroughly isolated now from the other offices. The snooping and spying had abated; I was in quarantine, so to speak. The hiring and firing went on in dreamy fashion; my staff had been cut down to two—myself and the ex-pugilist who had formerly been the wardrobe attendant. I made no effort to keep the files in order, nor did I investigate references, nor did I conduct any correspondence. Half the time I didn't bother to answer the telephone; if there were anything very urgent there was always the telegraph.

The atmosphere of the new quarters was distinctly dementia praecox. They had relegated me to hell and I was enjoying it. As soon as I got rid of the day's applicants I would go into the adjoining room and watch the shenanigans. Now and then I would put on a pair of skates myself and do a twirl with the goofy ones. My assistant looked on askance, unable to comprehend what had happened to me. Sometimes, in spite of his austerity, his “code” and other detracting psychological elements, he would break out into a laugh which would prolong itself to the verge of hysteria. Once he asked me if I was having “trouble at home.” He feared that the next step would be drink, I suppose.

As a matter of fact, I did begin to indulge rather freely about this time, what with one thing and another. It was a harmless sort of drinking, which began only at the dinner table. By sheer accident I had discovered a French-Italian restaurant in the back of a grocery store. The atmosphere was most convivial. Everyone was a “character,” even the police sergeants and the detectives who gorged themselves disgracefully at the proprietor's expense.

I had to have some place to while away the evenings, now that Mona had sneaked into the theater by the back door. Whether Monahan had found her the job or whether, as she said, she had just lied her way in, I was never able to discover. At any rate, she had given herself a new name, one that would suit her new career, and with it a complete new history of her life and antecedents. She had become English all of a sudden, and her people had been connected with the theater as far back as she could remember, which was often amazingly far. It was in one of the little theaters which then flourished that she made her entrance into that world of make-believe which so well suited her. Since they paid her scarcely anything they could afford to act gullible.

Arthur Raymond and his wife were at first inclined to disbelieve the news. Another one of Mona's inventions, they thought. Rebecca, always poor at dissembling, practically laughed in Mona's face. But when she came home with the script of a Schnitzler play one evening and seriously began to rehearse her role their incredulity gave way to consternation.
And when Mona, by some inexplicable legerdemain, succeeded in attaching herself to the Theatre Guild, the atmosphere of the household became supersaturated with envy, spite and malevolence. The play was becoming too real—there was a very real danger now that Mona might become the actress she pretended to be.

The rehearsals were endless, it seemed. I never knew what hour Mona would return home. When I did spend an evening with her it was like listening to a drunk. The glamor of the new life had completely intoxicated her. Now and then I would stay in of an evening and try to write, but it was no go. Arthur Raymond was always there, lying in wait like an octopus. “What do you want to write for?” he would say. “God, aren't there enough writers in the world?” And then he would begin to talk about writers, the writers he admired, and I would sit before the machine, as if ready to resume my work the moment he left me. Often I would do nothing more than write a letter—to some famous author, telling him how greatly I admired his work, hinting that, if he had not already heard of me, he would soon. In this way it fell about one day that I received an astonishing letter from that Dostoevski of the North, as he was called: Knut Hamsun. It was written by his secretary, in broken English, and for a man who was shortly to receive the Nobel prize, it was to say the least a puzzling piece of dictation. After explaining that he had been pleased, even touched, by my homage, he went on to say (through his wooden mouthpiece) that his American publisher was not altogether satisfied with the financial returns from the sale of his books. They feared that they might not be able to publish any more of his books—unless the public were to show a more lively interest. His tone was that of a giant in distress. He wondered vaguely what could be done to retrieve the situation, not so much for himself as for his dear publisher, who was truly suffering because of him. And then, as the letter progressed, a happy idea seemed to take hold of him and forthwith he gave expression to it. It was this—once he had received a letter from a Mr. Boyle, who also lived in New York and whom I doubtless knew (!). He thought perhaps Mr. Boyle and myself might get together, rack our
brains over the situation, and quite possibly come to some brilliant solution. Perhaps we could tell other people in America that there existed in the wilds and fens of Norway a writer named Knut Hamsun whose books had been conscientiously translated into English and were now languishing on the shelves of his publisher's stock room. He was sure that if he could only increase the sales of his books by a few hundred copies his publisher would take heart and have faith in him again. He had been to America, he said, and though his English was too poor to permit him to write me in his own hand, he was confident that his secretary could make clear his thoughts and intentions. I was to look up Mr. Boyle, whose address he no longer remembered. Do what you can, he urged. Perhaps there were several other people in New York who had heard of his work and with whom we could operate. He closed on a dolorous but majestic note. . . . I examined the letter carefully to see if perhaps he hadn't shed a few tears over it.

If the envelope hadn't borne the Norwegian postmark, if the letter itself hadn't been signed in his own scrawl, which I later confirmed, I would have thought it a hoax. Tremendous discussions ensued amid boisterous laughter. It was considered that I had been royally paid out for my foolish hero worship. The idol had been smashed and my critical faculties reduced to zero. No one could possibly see how I could ever read Knut Hamsun again. To tell the honest truth, I felt like weeping. Some terrible miscarriage had occurred, just how I couldn't fathom, but despite the evidence to the contrary, I simply could not bring myself to believe that the author of
Hunger, Pan, Victoria, Growth of the Soil,
had dictated that letter. It was entirely conceivable that he had left the matter to his secretary, that he had signed his name in good faith without bothering to be told the contents. A man as famous as he undoubtedly received dozens of letters a day from admirers all over the world. There was nothing in my youthful panegyric to interest a man of his stature. Besides, he probably despised the whole American race, having had a bitter time of it here during the years of his pilgrimage. Most likely he had told his dolt of a secretary on more than one occasion
that his American sales were negligible. Perhaps his publishers had been pestering him—publishers are known to have only one concern in dealing with their authors, namely sales. Perhaps he had remarked disgustedly, in the presence of his secretary, that Americans had money to spend on everything but the things worth while in life. And she, poor imbecile, probably worshipful of the master, had decided to avail herself of the opportunity and offer a few crackbrained suggestions in order to ameliorate the painful situation. She was more than likely no Dagmar, no Edwige. No, not even a simple soul like Martha Gude, who tried so desperately not to be taken in by Herr Nagel's romantic flights and overtures. She was probably one of those educated Norwegian headcheeses who are emancipated in everything but the imagination. She was probably hygienic and scientific-minded, capable of keeping her house in order, doing harm to no one, mindful of her own business, and dreaming one day of becoming the head of a fertilizing establishment or a crèche for bastard children.