I play games with her fabulous eyes and she longs to be in a monastery.
“LEAVE TRISTESSA ALONE” I say, anyway, like I'd say “Leave the kitty alone, don't hurt it”âand I open her the door, so we can go out, at midnight, from my roomâIn my hand I stumble-awkwardly hold big railroad brakeman lantern to her feet as we descend the perilous needless to say steps, she'd almost tripped coming up, she moaned and she groaned coming up, she smiled and minced with her hand on her skirt going down, with that majestical lovely slowness of woman, like a Chinese Victoria.
“We are nothing.”
“Tomorrow we may be die.”
“We are nothing.”
“You and Me.”
I politely lead all the way down by light and lead her out to street where I hail her a white taxi for her home.
Since beginningless time and into the never-ending future, men have loved women without telling them, and the Lord has loved them without telling, and the void is not the void because there's nothing to be empty of.
Art there, Lord Star?âDiminished is the drizzle that broke my calm.
PART TWO
A Year Later . . .
DIMINISH'D NEVER IS the drizzle that broke no calmâI didnt tell her I loved her but when I left Mexico I began to think on her and then I began to tell her I loved her in letters, and almost did, and she wrote too, pretty Spanish letters, saying I was sweet, and please hurry backâI hurried back too late, I should have come back in the Spring, almost did, had no money, just touched the border of Mexico and felt that vomity feeling of Mexicoâwent on to California and lived in a shack with young monk Buddhist type visitors every day and went north to Desolation Peak and spent a summer surfing in the Wilderness, eating and sleeping aloneâsaid, “Soon I go back, to the warm arms of Tristessa”âbut waited too long.
O Lord, why have you done this to your angel-selves, this blight life, this ugh raggedy crap scene full of puke and thieves and dying?âcouldnt you have placed us in a dismal heaven where all was glad anyhow?âArt thou Masochist, Lord, art thou Indian Giver, art thou Hater?
Finally I was back in Bull's room after a four thousand mile voyage from the mountain peak near Canada, a terrible enough trip in itself, not worth moot hereinâand he went out and got her.
Already he'd warned me: “I dont know what's the matter with her, she's changed in the past two weeks, the
past week
evenâ”
“Is that because she knew I was coming?” I thought darklyâ
“She throws fits and hits me over the head with coffee cups and loses my money and falls in the streetâ”
“What's the
matter
with her?”
“GoofballsâI told her not to take too manyâYou know it takes an old junkey with many years of experience to know how to handle sleeping pills,âshe wont listen, she dont know how to use em, three, four, sometimes five, once twelve, it's not the same TristessaâWhat I wanta do is
marry
her and get my citizenship, see, you think that's a good idea?âAfter all, she's my life, I'm her lifeâ”
I could see Old Bull had fallen in loveâwith a woman not named Morphina.
“I never touch herâit's just a marriage of convenienceâyou know what I meanâI cant be getting stuff on the black market myself, I dont know how, I need her and she needs my money.”
Bull got $150 a month from a trust fund established by his father before he diedâhis father had loved him, and I could know why, for Bull is a sweet and tender person, though just a little of the con man, for years in New York he supported his junk habit by stealing about $30 every day, twenty yearsâHe'd been in jail a few times when they'd found him with wrong merchandiseâIn jail he was always the librarian, he is a great scholar, in many ways, with a marvelous interest in history and anthropology and of all things French Symbolist poetry, Mallarmé above allâI'm not talking of the other Bull who is the great writer who wrote “Junkey”âThis is another Bull, older, almost 60, I wrote poems in his room all last summer when Tristessa was
mine, mine
, and I wouldnt take herâI had some silly ascetic or celibacious notion that I must not touch a womanâMy touch might have saved herâ
Now too lateâ
He brings her home and right away I see something is wrongâShe comes tottering in on his arm and gives a weak (thank God for that) smile and holds out her arm rigidly, I dont know what to do but hold her arm up, “What's the matter with Tristessa is she sick?”
“All last month she was paralyzed down one whole leg and her arms were covered with cysts, O she was an awful sick girl last month”
“What's the matter with her now?”
“Shhâlet her sit downâ”
Tristessa is holding me and slowly levels her sweet brown cheek against mine, with a rare smile, and I'm playing the befuddled American almost consciouslyâ
Look, I'll save her yetâ
TROUBLE IS, WHAT would I do with her once I'd won her?âit's like winning an angel in hell and you are then entitled to go down with her to where it's worse or maybe there'll be light, some, down there, maybe it's me's crazyâ
“She's going crazy,” says Bull, “those goofballs'll do it to everybody, to you, anybody I dont care who.”
In fact Bull himself took too many two nights later and proved itâ
The problem of junkies, narcotic addicts bless their soul, bless their quiet thoughtful souls, is to get itâOn all sides they're balked, they are continually unhappyâ“If the government gave me enough morphine every day I would be completely happy and I would be completely willing to work as a male nurse in a hospitalâI even sent the government my ideas on the subject, in a letter in 1938 from Lexington, how to solve the narcotic problem, by putting junkies to work, with their daily doses, cleaning the subways, anythingâas long as they get their medicine they're all right, just like any other sick peopleâIt's like alcoholics, they need medicineâ”
I cant remember everything that happened except for last night so fateful, so horrible, so sad and madâBetter to do it that way, why build up?
IT ALL STARTED out with Bull being out of morphine, sick, a little too many goofballs he'd taken (secanols) to make up for the morphine lack and so he is acting like a baby, sloppy, like senile, not quite as bad as the night he slept in my bed on the roof because Tristessa had gone mad and was breaking everything in his room and hitting him and falling on the floor right on her head, goofballs she bought in a drugstore, Bull would give her no moreâThe anxious landladies are hovering at the door thinking we're beating her up but she's beating us upâ
The things she said to me, what she really thought of me, now came out, a year later, a year too late, and all I should have done was
tell her
I loved herâShe accused me of being a filthy teahead, she ordered me out of Bull's room, she tried to hit me with a bottle, she tried to take my tobacco pouch and keep it, I had to struggle with herâBull and I hid the bread knife under the rugâShe just sits there on the floor like an idiot baby, doodling with objectsâShe accuses me of trying to smoke marijuana out of my tobacco pouch but it is only Bull Durham tobacco for my roll-me-owns because commercial cigarettes have a chemical in them to keep them firm that damaged my susceptible phlebitic veins and arteriesâ
So Bull is afraid she'll kill him in the night, we cant get her out, previously (a week ago) he'd called cops and ambulances and even they wouldnt get her out, MexicoâSo he comes sleep in my new room bed, with clean sheets, forgets that he's already taken two goofballs and takes two more and thereupon goes blind, cant find his cigarettes, gropes and knocks down everything, pees in the bed, spills coffee I bring him, I have to sleep on the floor of stone among bedbugs and cockroaches, I revile him all night poutingly: “Look what you're doing to my nice clean bed”
“I cant help itâI gotta find another capâIs this a cap?” He holds up a matchstick and thinks it's a capsule of morphine. “Bring me your spoon”âHe's going to boil it down and shoot itâLordâIn the morning at gray time he finally leaves and goes down to his room, stumbling with all his things including a Newsweek he could have never readâI dump his cans of pee in the toilet, it's all pure blue like the blue Sir of Joshua Reynolds, I think: “MY GOD, he's gotta be dying!” but turns out they were cans of washing blueingâMeanwhile Tristessa has slept and feels better and somehow they stumble around and get their shots and next day she returns tapping in Bull's window, pale and beautiful, no more an Aztec witch, and apologizes sweetlyâ
“She'll be back on goofballs in a week,” says Bullâ“But I'm not giving her any more”âHe swallows one himselfâ
“Why do
you
take em!” I yell.
“Because I know how, I've been a junkey for forty years”
Comes then the fateful nightâ
I've already finally in a cab and once on the street told Tristessa I love herâ“Yo te amo”âNo replyâShe lies to Bull and tells him I propositioned her saying “You've slept with a lot of men, why not sleep with me”âNo such thing I ever said, just “Yo te amo”âBecause I do love herâBut what to do with herâShe never used to lie before the goofballsâIn fact she used to pray and go to churchâ
I've given up on Tristessa and this afternoon, Bull sick, we get a cab and go down into the slums to find El Indio (the Black Bastard he's called in the trade), who always has somethingâIt's always been my secret hunch that El Indio loves Tristessa tooâHe has beautiful grown daughters, he lies in a bed behind flimsy curtains with the door wide open to the world, high on M, his elder wife sits anxiously in a chair, ikons burn, arguments take place, groans, all under the endless Mexican skiesâWe come to his pad and his old wife tells us she is his wife (we didnt know) and he's not in so we sit on the stone steps of the crazy courtyard full of screaming children and drunks and women with wash and banana peels you'd think, and wait thereâBull is so sick he has to go homeâTall, humped, wizard cadaver-like he goes, leaving me sitting drunk on the stone drawing pictures of the children in my little notebookâ
Then out comes a host of some kind, a portly friendly man, with a waterglass of pulque, two glasses, he insists I chugalug mine with his, I do, bang, down, the cactus juice dripping from our lips, he beats me to the drawâWomen laughâThere's a big kitchenâHe brings me moreâI drink and draw the childrenâI offer money for the pulque but they wont take itâIt starts to grow dark in the courtyardâ
I've already swallowed a fifth of wine on the way down, it's one of my drinking days, I've been bored and sad and lostâtoo, for three days I've been painting and drawing with pencil, chalk and watercolors (my first formal try) and I'm exhaustedâI've sketched a little bearded Mexican artist in his roof hut and he tore the picture out of the big notebook to keep itâWe drank tequila in the morning and drew each otherâOf me he drew a kind of tourist sketch showing how young and handsome and American I am, I dont understand (he wants me to buy it?)âOf him I draw a terrible apocalyptic black bearded face, also his body tinily twisted on the edge of the couch, O heaven and posterity will judge all this art, whatever it isâSo I'm drawing one particular little boy who wont stand still then I start drawing the Virgin Madonnaâ
More fellows appear and they invite me into a big room where a big white table is covered with pulque cups and on the floor open urns of itâAmazing the faces in thereâI think “I'll have a good time and meanwhile I'm right on El Indio's doorstep and I'll catch him for Bull when he comes homeâand Tristessa'll come tooâ”
Borracho, we drain big cups of cactus juice and there's an old singer with guitar with his young disciple boy with thick sensitive lips and a big fat hostess woman like out of Rabelais and Rembrandt Middle Ages who singsâThe leader of this huge gang of fifteen appears to be Pancho Villa at the table end, red clay face, perfectly round and jocund, but Mexican owlish, with crazy eyes (I think) and a wild red checked shirt and like always ecstatically happyâBut beside him other more sinister lieutenants of some sort, to them I look downtable right dead in the eye and toast and even ask “Que es la vida? What is life?”â(to prove I'm philosophical and smart)âMeanwhile a man in a blue suit and blue hat appears the most friendly, he beckons me to the toilet for a swaying talk over urineâHe locks the doorâHis eyes are sunken deep in pudgy battered W.C. Fields socketsâ“sockets” too clean a wordâbut a wicked pair of funny eyes, also a hypnotist, I keep staring at him, I keep
liking
himâI like him so much that when he takes my wallet out and counts my money I laugh, I fiddle a little bit trying to get it back, he holds off countingâOthers are trying to get in the toiletâ“This is Mexico!” says he. “We stay here if we like”âWhen he hands me back my wallet I see my money's still in it but I swear on the Bible on God on Buddha on all that was supposed to be holy, in real life there was no more money in that wallet (wallet, shwallet, just a leather foldcase for travelers checks)âHe leaves me
some
money because later I give twenty pesos to a big fat guy and tell him to go out and get some marijuana for the whole groupâHe too keeps taking me to the toilet for earnest confabs, somehow my dark glasses disappearâ
Finally Blue Hat in front of everybody simply snatches my notebook out of my (Bull's) coat, like a joke, pencil and all, and slips it in his own coat and stares at me, wicked and funnyâI really cant help laughing but then I do say “Come on, come on, give me back my poems” and I reach into his coat and he twists away, and I reach again and he wontâI turn to the most distinguished-looking man there, in fact the only one, who is sitting next to me, “Will you undertake the responsibility of getting my poems back.”
He says he will, without understanding what I'm saying, but I drunkedly assume he willâMeanwhile in a blind dazzle of ecstasy I throw fifty pesos on the floor to prove somethingâLater I throw two pesos on the floor saying “It's for the music”âThey end up feeding that to the two musicians but I'm too proud after reconsideration to start looking around for my 50 pesos too but you will see that this is just a case of wanting to be robbed, a strange kind of exultation and drunken power, “I dont care about money, I am the King of the world, I will lead your little revolutions myself”âThis I begin to work on by making friends with Pancho Villa, and brother there's a lot of knocking of cups and arm-around-chugalugs down, and songâAnd by this time I'm too stupid to check my wallet but every cent is goneâI take great pride meanwhile in showing how I appreciate the music, I even drum on the tableâFinally I go out with Fat Boy to talk in the toilet and as we're coming out here comes a strange woman up the steps, unearthly and pale, slow, majestic, neither young nor old, I cant help staring at her and even when I realize it's Tristessa I keep staring and wondering at this strange woman and it seems that she has come to save me but she's only coming for a shot from El Indio (who, by the way, had by now, on his own accord, gone to Bull's two miles away)âI leave the gay gang of thieves and follow my love.