Tropic of Cancer (13 page)

He looks out the window again. It’s drizzling. It’s been drizzling this way for the last five days.

“Are we going to the Dôme, Joe?” I call him Joe be cause he calls me Joe. When Carl is with us he is Joe too. Everybody is Joe because it’s easier that way. It’s also a pleasant reminder not to take yourself too seriously. Anyway, Joe doesn’t want to go the Dôme—he owes too much money there. He wants to go to the Coupole. Wants to take a little walk first around the block.

“But it’s raining, Joe.”

“I know, but what the hell! I’ve got to have my consititutional. I’ve got to wash the dirt out of my belly.” When he says this I have the impression that the whole world is wrapped up there inside his belly, and that it’s rotting there.

As he’s putting on his things he falls back again into a semi-comatose state. He stands there with one arm in his coat sleeve and his hat on assways and he begins to dream aloud—about the Riviera, about the sun, about lazing one’s life away. “All I ask of life,” he says, “is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.” As he mumbles this meditatively he looks at me with the softest, the most insidious smile. “Do you like that smile?” he says. And then disgustedly—”Jesus, if I could only find some rich cunt to smile at that way!”

“Only a rich cunt can save me now,” he says with an air of utmost weariness. “One gets tired of chasing after new cunts all the time. It gets mechanical. The trouble is, you see, I can’t fall in love. I’m too much of an egoist. Women only help me to dream, that’s all. It’s a vice, like drink or opium. I’ve got to have a new one every day; if I don’t I get morbid. I think too much. Sometimes I’m amazed at myself, how quick I pull it off—and how little it really means. I do it automatically like. Sometimes I’m not thinking about a woman at all, but suddenly I notice a woman looking at me and then, bango! it starts all over again. Before I know what I’m doing I’ve got her up to the room. I don’t even remember what I say to them. I bring them up to the room, give them a pat on the ass, and before I know what it’s all about it’s over. It’s like a dream… Do you know what I mean?”

He hasn’t much use for the French girls. Can’t stand them. “Either they want money or they want you to marry them. At bottom they’re all whores. I’d rather wrestle with a virgin,” he says. “They give you a little illusion. They put up a fight at least.” Just the same, as we glance over the
terrasse
there is hardly a whore in sight whom he hasn’t fucked at some time or other. Standing at the bar he points them out to me, one by one, goes over them anatomically, describes their good points and their bad. “They’re all frigid,” he says. And then begins to mold his hands, thinking of the nice, juicy virgins who are just dying for it.

In the midst of his reveries he suddenly arrests himself, and grabbing my arm excitedly, he points to a whale of a woman who is just lowering herself into a seat. “There’s my Danish cunt,” he grunts. “See that ass?
Danish.
How that woman loves it! She just begs me for it. Come over here… look at her now, from the side. Look at that ass, will you? It’s enormous. I tell you, when she climbs over me I can hardly get my arms around it. It blots out the whole world. She makes me feel like a little bug crawling inside her. I don’t know why I fall for her—I suppose it’s that ass. It’s so incongruous like. And the creases in it! You can’t forget an ass like that. It’s a fact… a solid fact. The others, they may bore you, or they may give you a moment’s illusion, but this one—with her ass!—zowie, you can’t obliterate her… it’s like going to bed with a monument on top of you.”

The Danish cunt seems to have electrified him. He’s lost all his sluggishness now. His eyes are popping out of his head. And of course one thing reminds him of another. He wants to get out of the fucking hotel because the noise bothers him. He wants to write a book too so as to have something to occupy his mind. But then the goddamned job stands in the way. “It takes it out of you, that fucking job! I don’t want to write about Montparnasse… I want to write my.life, my thoughts. I want to get the dirt out of my belly… Listen, get that one over there! I had her a long time ago. She used to be down near Les Halles. A funny bitch. She lay on the edge of the bed and pulled her dress up. Ever try it that way? Not bad. She didn’t hurry me either. She just lay back and played with her hat while I slugged away at her. And when I come she says sort of bored like—’Are you through?’ Like it didn’t make any difference at all. Of course, it doesn’t make any difference, I know that goddamn well… but the cold-blooded way she had… I sort of liked it… it was fascinating, you know? When she goes to wipe herself she begins to sing. Going out of the hotel she was still singing. Didn’t even say
Au revoir!
Walks off swinging her hat and humming to herself like. That’s a whore for you! A good lay though. I think I liked her better than my virgin. There’s something depraved about screwing a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about it. It heats your blood…” And then, after a moment’s meditation—”Can you imagine what she’d be like if she had any feelings?”

“Listen,” he says, “I want you to come to the Club with me tomorrow afternoon… there’s a dance on.”

“I can’t tomorrow, Joe. I promised to help Carl out…”

“Listen, forget that prick! I want you to do me a favor. It’s like this”—he commences to mold his hands again. “I’ve got a cunt lined up… she promised to stay with me on my night off. But I’m not positive about her yet. She’s got a mother, you see… some shit of a painter, she chews my ear off every time I see her. I think the truth is, the mother’s jealous. I don’t think she’d mind so much if I gave her a lay first. You know how it is… Anyway, I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind taking the mother… she’s not so bad… if I hadn’t seen the daughter I might have considered her myself. The daughter’s nice and young, fresh like, you know what I mean? There’s a clean smell to her…”

“Listen, Joe, you’d better find somebody else…”

“Aw, don’t take it like that! I know how you feel about it. It’s only a little favor I’m asking you to do for me. I don’t know how to get rid of the old hen. I thought first I’d get drunk and ditch her—but I don’t think the young one’d like that. They’re sentimental like. They come from Minnesota or somewhere. Anyway, come around tomorrow and wake me up, will you? Otherwise I’ll oversleep. And besides, I want you to help me find a room. You know I’m helpless. Find me a room in a quiet street, somewhere near here. I’ve got to stay around here… I’ve got credit here. Listen, promise me you’ll do that for me. I’ll buy you a meal now and then. Come around anyway, because I go nuts talking to these foolish cunts. I want to talk to you about Havelock Ellis. Jesus, I’ve had the book out for three weeks now and I haven’t looked at it. You sort of rot here. Would you believe it, I’ve never been to the Louvre—nor the Comédie-Française. Is it worth going to those joints? Still, it sort of takes your mind off things, I suppose. What do you do with yourself all day? Don’t you get bored? What do you do for a lay? Listen… come here! Don’t run away yet… I’m lonely. Do you know something—if this keeps up another year I’ll go nuts. I’ve got to get out of this fucking country. There’s nothing for me here. I know it’s lousy now, in America, but just the same… You go queer over here… all these cheap shits sitting on their ass all day bragging about their work and none of them is worth a stinking damn. They’re all failures—that’s why they come over here. Listen, Joe, don’t you ever get homesick? You’re a funny guy… you seem to like it over here. What do you see in it?… I wish you’d tell me. I wish to Christ I could stop thinking about myself. I’m all twisted up inside… it’s like a knot in there… Listen, I know I’m boring the shit out of you, but I’ve got to talk to someone. I can’t talk to those guys upstairs… you know what those bastards are like… they all take a byline. And Carl, the little prick, he’s so goddamned selfish. I’m an egotist, but I’m not selfish. There’s a difference. I’m a neurotic, I guess. I can’t stop thinking about myself. It isn’t that I think myself so important… I simply can’t think about anything else, that’s all. If I could fall in love with a woman that might help some. But I can’t find a woman who interests me. I’m in a mess, you can see that can’t you? What do you advise me to do? What would you do in my place? Listen, I don’t want to hold you back any longer, but wake me up tomorrow—at one-thirty—will you? I’ll give you something extra if you’ll shine my shoes. And listen, if you’ve got an extra shirt, a clean one, bring it along, will you? Shit, I’m grinding my balls off on that job, and it doesn’t even give me a clean shirt. They’ve got us over here like a bunch of niggers. Ah, well, shit! I’m going to take a walk… wash the dirt out of my belly. Don’t forget,
tomorrow!
”

For six months or more it’s been going on, this correspondence with the rich cunt, Irene. Recently I’ve been reporting to Carl every day in order to bring the affair to a head, because as far as Irene is concerned this thing could go on indefinitely. In the last few days there’s been a perfect avalanche of letters exchanged; the last letter we dispatched was almost forty pages long, and written in three languages. It was a potpourri, the last letter-tag ends of old novels, slices from the Sunday supplement, reconstructed versions of old letters to Llona and Tania, garbled transliterations of Rabelais and Petronius—in short, we exhausted ourselves. Finally Irene decides to come out of her shell. Finally a letter arrives giving a rendezvous at her hotel. Carl is pissing in his pants. It’s one thing to write letters to a woman you don’t know; it’s another thing entirely to call on her and make love to her. At the last moment he’s quaking so that I almost fear I’ll have to substitute for him. When we get out of the taxi in front of her hotel he’s trembling so much that I have to walk him around the block first. He’s already had two Pernods, but they haven’t made the slightest impression on him. The sight of the hotel itself is enough to crush him: it’s a pretentious place with one of those huge empty lobbies in which Englishwomen sit for hours with a blank look. In order to make sure that he wouldn’t run away I stood by while the porter telephoned to announce him. Irene was there, and she was waiting for him. As he got into the lift he threw me a last despairing glance, one of those mute appeals which a dog makes when you put a noose around its neck. Going through the revolving door I thought of Van Norden…

I go back to the hotel and wait for a telephone call. He’s only got an hour’s time and he’s promised to let me know the results before going to work. I look over the carbons of the letters we sent her. I try to imagine the situation as it actually is, but it’s beyond me. Her letters are much better than ours—they’re sincere, that’s plain. By now they’ve sized each other up. I wonder if he’s still pissing in his pants.

The telephone rings. His voice sounds queer, squeaky, as though he were frightened and jubilant at the same time. He asks me to substitute for him at the office. “Tell the bastard anything! Tell him I’m dying…”

“Listen, Carl… can you tell me…?”

“Hello! Are you Henry Miller?” It’s a woman’s voice. It’s Irene. She’s saying hello to me. Her voice sounds beautiful over the phone… beautiful. For a moment I’m in a perfect panic. I don’t know what to say to her. I’d like to say: “Listen, Irene, I think you are beautiful… I think you’re
wonderful
.” I’d like to say one true thing to her, no matter how silly it would sound, because now that I hear her voice everything is changed. But before I can gather my wits Carl is on the phone again and he’s saying in that queer squeaky voice: “She likes you, Joe. I told her all about you…”

At the office I have to hold copy for Van Norden. When it comes time for the break he pulls me aside. He looks glum and ravaged.

“So he’s dying, is he, the little prick? Listen, what’s the lowdown on this?”

“I think he went to see his rich cunt,” I answer calmly.

“
What!
You mean he called on her?” He seems beside himself. “Listen, where does she live? What’s her name?” I pretend ignorance. “Listen,” he says, “you’re a decent guy. Why the hell don’t you let me in on this racket?”

In order to appease him I promise finally that I’ll tell him everything as soon as I get the details from Carl. I can hardly wait myself until I see Carl.

Around noon next day I knock at his door. He’s up already and lathering his beard. Can’t tell a thing from the expression on his face. Can’t even tell whether he’s going to tell me the truth. The sun is streaming in through the open window, the birds are chirping, and yet somehow, why it is I don’t know, the room seems more barren and poverty-stricken than ever. The floor is slathered with lather, and on the rack there are the two dirty towels which are never changed. And somehow Carl isn’t changed either, and that puzzles me more than anything. This morning the whole world ought to be changed, for bad or good, but changed, radically changed. And yet Carl is standing there lathering his face and not a single detail is altered.

“Sit down… sit down there on the bed,” he says. “You’re going to hear everything… but wait first… wait a little.” He commences to lather his face again, and then to hone his razor. He even remarks about the water… no hot water again.

“Listen, Carl, I’m on tenterhooks. You can torture me afterward, if you like, but tell me now, tell me one thing… was it good or bad?”

He turns away from the mirror with brush in hand and gives me a strange smile. “Wait! I’m going to tell you everything…”

“That means it was a failure.”

“No,” he says, drawing out his words. “It wasn’t a failure, and it wasn’t a success either… By the way, did you fix it up for me at the office? What did you tell them?”

I see it’s no use trying to pull it out of him. When he gets good and ready he’ll tell me. Not before. I lie back on the bed, silent as a clam. He goes on shaving.

Suddenly, apropos of nothing at all, he begins to talk—disconnectedly at first, and then more and more clearly, emphatically, resolutely. It’s a struggle to get it out, but he seems determined to relate everything; he acts as if he were getting something off his conscience. He even reminds me of the look he gave me as he was going up the elevator shaft. He dwells on that lingeringly, as though to imply that everything were contained in that last moment, as though, if he had the power to alter things, he would never have put foot outside the elevator.