e 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
ass-ways 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
<i>terrasse</i> 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 mould 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? <i>Danish.</i> 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 god-damn 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
<i>Au revoir!</i> 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 heals 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 mould 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 her 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 Comedie Francaise. 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 by-line. And Carl,
the little prick, he's so god-damned 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, <i>tomorrow!</i>"

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 <i>pot-pourri,</i> the last letter
-- tag ends of old novels, slices from the Sunday supplement, reconstructed
versions of old letters to Liona 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
rendez-vous 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're beautiful ... I think you're
<i>wonderful."</i> 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 low-down on
this?"

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

<i>"What!</i> 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 tenter-hooks. You can torture me afterwards, 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 to the power to alter things, he would
never have put foot outside the elevator.

She was in her dressing sack when he called. There was a bucket of champagne
on the dresser. The room was rather dark and her voice was lovely. He gives
me all the details about the room, the champagne, how the <i>garcon</i>
opened it, the noise it made, the way her dressing sack rustled when she came
forward to greet him -- he tells me everything but what I want to hear.

It was about eight when he called on her. At eight-thirty he was nervous,
thinking about the job. "It was about nine when I called you, wasn't it?" he
says.

"Yes, about that."

"I was nervous, see ..."

"I know that. Go on ..." I don't know whether to believe him or not,
especially after those letters we concocted. I don't even know whether I've
heard him accurately, because what he's telling me sounds utterly fantastic.
And yet it sounds true too, knowing the sort of guy he is. And then I
remember his voice over the telephone, that strange mixture of fright and
jubilation. But why isn't he more jubilant now? He keeps smiling all the
time, smiling like a rosy little bed-bug that has had its fill.

"It was nine o'clock," he says once again, "when I called you up, wasn't it?"
I nod my head wearily. Yes, it was nine o'clock. He is certain now that it
was nine o'clock because he remembers having taken out his watch. Anyway,
when he looked at his watch again it was ten o'clock. At ten o'clock she was
lying on the divan with her boobies in her hands. That's the way he gives it
to me -- in driblets. At eleven o'clock it was all settled; they were going
to run away, to Borneo. Fuck the husband! She never loved him anyway. She
would never have written the first letter if the husband wasn't old and
passionless. "And then she says to me: 'But listen, dear, how do you know you
won't grow tired of me?' "

At this point I burst out laughing. This sounds preposterous to me, I can't
help it. "And you said?"

"What did you expect me to say? I said: how could anyone ever grow tired of
you?"

And then he describes to me what happened after that, how he bent down and
kissed her breasts, and how, after he had kissed them fervidly, he stuffed
them back into her corsage, or whatever it is they call these things. And
after that another <i>coupe</i> of champagne.

Around midnight the <i>garcon</i> arrives with beer and sandwiches -- caviar
sandwiches. And all the while, so he says, he has been dying to take a leak.
He had one hard-on, but it faded out. All the while his bladder is fit to
burst, but he imagines, the cute little prick that he is, that the situation
calls for delicacy.

At one-thirty she's for hiring a carriage and driving through the Bois. He
has only one thought in his head -- how to take a leak? "I love you ... I
adore you," he says. "I'll go anywhere you say -- Istamboul, Singapore,
Honolulu. Only I must go now ... It's getting late."

He tells me all this in his dirty little room, with the sun pouring in and
the birds chirping away like mad. I don't yet know whether she was beautiful
or not. He doesn't know himself, the imbecile. He rather thinks she wasn't.
The room was dark and then there was the champagne and his nerves all
frazzled.

"But you ought to know something about her -- if this isn't all a god-damned
lie!"

"Wait a minute," he says. "Wait ... let me think! No, she wasn't beautiful.
I'm sure of that now. She had a streak of gray hair over her forehead ... I
remember that. But that wouldn't be so bad -- I had almost forgotten it you
see. No, it was her arms -- they were thin ... they were thin and brittle." He
begins to pace back and forth. -- Suddenly, he stops dead. "If she were only
ten years younger!" he exclaims. "If she were ten years younger I might
overlook the streak of gray hair ... and even the brittle arms. But she's
too old. You see, with a cunt like that every year counts now. She won't be
just one year older next year -- she'll be ten years older. Another year hence
and she'll be twenty years older. And I'll be getting younger looking all
the time -- at least for another five years ..."

"But how did it end?" I interrupt.

"That's just it ... it didn't end. I promised to see her Tuesday around five
o'clock. That's bad, you know! There were lines in her face which will look
much worse in daylight. I suppose she wants me to fuck her Tuesday. Fucking
in the day-time -- you don't do it with a cunt like
that. Especially in a hotel like that. I'd rather do it on my night off ...
but Tuesday's not my night off. And that's not all. I promised her a letter
in the meantime. How am I going to write her a letter now? I haven't
anything to say ... Shit! If only she were ten years younger. Do you think I
should go with her ... to Borneo or wherever it is she wants to take me?
What would I do with a rich cunt like that on my hands? I don't know how to
shoot. I am afraid of guns and all that sort of thing. Besides, she'll be
wanting me to fuck her night and day ... nothing but hunting and fucking
all the time ... I can't do it!"

"Maybe it won't be so bad as you think. She'll buy you ties and all sorts of
things ..."

"Maybe you'll come along with us, eh? I told her all about you ..."

"Did you tell her I was poor? Did you tell her I needed things?"

"I told her everything. Shit, everything would be fine, if she were just a
few years younger. She said she was turning forty. That means fifty or
sixty. It's like fucking your own mother ... you can't do it ... it's
impossible."

"But she must have had some attractiveness ... you were kissing her breasts,
you said."

"Kissing her breasts -- what's that? Besides it was dark, I'm telling you."

Putting on his pants a button falls off. "Look at that, will you. It's
falling apart, the god-damned suit. I've worn it for seven years now ... I
never paid for it either. It was a good suit once, but it stinks now. And
that cunt would buy me suits too, all I wanted most likely. But that's what
I don't like, having a woman shell out for me. I never did that in my life.
That's <i>your</i> idea. I'd rather live alone. Shit, this is a good room,
isn't it? What's wrong with it? It's a damned sight better than her room,
isn't it? I don't like her fine hotel. I'm against hotels like that. I told
her so. She said she didn't care where she lived ... said she'd come and
live with me if I wanted her to. Can you picture her moving in here with her
big trunks and her hat-boxes and all that crap she drags around with her?
She has too many things -- too many dresses and bottles and all that. It's
like a clinic, her room. If she gets a little scratch on her finger it's
serious.

And then she has to be massaged and her hair has to be waved and she mustn't
eat this and she mustn't eat that. Listen, Joe, she'd be all right if she
were just a little younger. You can forgive a young cunt anything. A young
cunt doesn't have to have any brains. They're better without brains. But an
old cunt, even if she's brilliant, even if she's the most charming woman in
the world, nothing makes any difference. A young cunt is an investment; an
old cunt is a dead loss. All they can do for you is buy you things. But that
doesn't put meat on their arms or juice between the legs. She isn't bad,
Irene. In fact, I think you'd like her. With you it's different. You don't
have to fuck her. You can afford to like her. Maybe you wouldn't like all
those dresses and the bottles and what not, but you could be tolerant. She
wouldn't bore you, that I can tell you. She's even interesting, I might say.
But she's withered. Her breasts are all right yet -- but her arms! I told her
I'd bring you around some day. I talked a lot about you ... I didn't know
what to say to her. Maybe you'd like her, especially when she's dressed. I
don't know ..."

"Listen, she's rich, you say? I'll like her! I don't care how old she is, so
long as she's not a hag ..."

"She's not a hag! What are you talking about? She's charming, I tell you.
She talks well. She looks well too ... only her arms ..."

"All right, if that's how it is, <i>I'll</i> fuck her -- if you don't want
to. Tell her that. Be subtle about it, though. With a woman like that you've
got to do things slowly. You bring me around and let things work out for
themselves. Praise the shit out of me. Act jealous like ... Shit, maybe we'll
fuck her together ... and we'll go places and we'll eat together ... and
we'll drive and hunt and wear nice things. If she wants to go to Borneo let
her take us along. I don't know how to shoot either, but that doesn't matter.
She doesn't care about that either. She just wants to be fucked that's all.
You're talking about her arms all the time. You don't have to look at her
arms all the time, do you? Look at this bedspread! Look at the mirror! Do you
call this living? Do you want to go on being delicate and live like a louse
all your life? You can't even pay your hotel bill ... and you've got a job
too. This is no way to live. I don't care if she's seventy years old -- it's
better than this ..."

"Listen, Joe, you fuck her for me ... then everything'll be fine. Maybe
I'll fuck her once in a while too ... on my night off. It's four days now
since I've had a good shit. There's something sticking to me, like grapes ..."

"You've got the piles, that's what."

"My hair's falling out too ... and I ought to see the dentist. I feel as
though I were falling apart. I told her what a good guy you are ... You'll
do things for me, eh? You're not too delicate, eh? If we go to Borneo I
won't have haemorrhoids any more. Maybe I'll develop something else ...
something worse ... fever perhaps ... or cholera. Shit, it is better to die
of a good disease like that than to piss your life away on a newspaper with
grapes up your ass and buttons falling off your pants. I'd like to be rich,
even if it were only for a week, and then go to a hospital with a good
disease, a fatal one, and have flowers in the room and nurses dancing
around and telegrams coming. They take good care of you if you're rich. They
wash you with cotton batting and they comb your hair for you. Shit, I know
all that. Maybe I'd be lucky and not die at all. Maybe I'd be a cripple all
my life .. . maybe I'd be paralyzed and have to sit in a wheel-chair. But
then I'd be taken care of just the same ... even if I had no more money. If
you're an invalid -- a <i>real</i> one -- they don't let you starve. And you get
a clean bed to lie in ... and they change the towels every day. This way
nobody gives a fuck about you, especially if you have a job. They think a
man should be happy if he's got a job. What would you rather do -- be a
cripple all your life, or have a job ... or marry a rich cunt? You'd rather
marry a rich cunt, I can see that. You only think about food. But supposing
you married her and then you couldn't get a hard-on any more -- that happens
sometimes -- what would you do then? You'd be at her mercy. You'd have to eat
out of her hand, like a little poodle dog. You'd like that, would you? Or
maybe you don't think of those things? <i>I think of everything.</i> I
think of the suits I'd pick out and the places I'd like to go to, but I also
think of the other thing. That's the important thing. What good are the
fancy ties and the fine suits if you can't get a hard-on any more? You
couldn't even betray her -- because she'd be on your heels all the time. No,
the best thing would be to marry her and then get a disease right away. Only
not syphilis. Cholera, let's say, or yellow fever. So that if a miracle did
happen and your life was spared you'd be a cripple for the rest of your
days. Then you wouldn't have to worry about fucking her any more, and you
wouldn't have to worry about the rent either. She'd probably buy you a fine
wheel-chair with rubber tires and all sorts of levers and what not. You
might even be able to use your hands -- I mean enough to be able to write. Or
you could have a secretary, for that matter. That's it -- that's the best
solution for a writer. What does a guy want with his arms and legs? He
doesn't need arms and legs to write with. He needs security ... peace ...
protection. All those heroes who parade in wheel-chairs -- it's too bad
they're not writers. If you could only be sure, when you go off to war,
that you'd have only your legs blown off ... if you could be sure of that
I'd say let's have a war tomorrow. I wouldn't give a fuck about the
medals -- they could keep the medals. All I'd want is a good wheel-chair and
three meals a day. Then I'd give them something to read, those pricks!"

The following day, at one-thirty, I call on Van Norden. It's his day off, or
rather his night off. He has left word with Carl that I am to help him move
today.

I find him in a state of unusual depression. He hasn't slept a wink all
night, he tells me. There's something on his mind, something that's eating
him up. It isn't long before I discover what it is; he's been waiting
impatiently for me to arrive in order to spill it.

"That guy," he begins, meaning Carl, "that guy's an artist. He described
every detail minutely. He told it to me with such accuracy that I know it's
all a god-damned lie ... but I can't dismiss it from my mind. You know how
my minds works!"

He interrupts himself to inquire if Carl has told me the whole story. There
isn't the least suspicion in his mind that Carl may have told me one thing
and him another. He seems to think that the story was invented expressly to
torture him. He doesn't seem to mind so much that it's a
fabrication. It's the "images," as he says, which Carl left in his mind,
that get him. The images are real, even if the whole story is false. And
besides, the fact that there actually is a rich cunt on the scene and that
Carl actually paid her a visit, that's undeniable. What actually happened is
secondary; he takes it for granted that Carl put the boots to her. But what
drives him desperate is the thought that what Carl has described to him
might have been <i>possible.</i>

"It's just like that guy," he says, "to tell me he put it to her six or
seven times. I know that's a lot of shit and I don't mind that so much, but
when he tells me that she hired a carriage and drove him out to the Bois and
that they used the husband's fur-coat for a blanket, that's too much. I
suppose he told you about the chauffeur waiting respectfully ... and listen,
did he tell you how the engine purred all the time? Jesus, he built that up
wonderfully. It's just like him to think of a detail like that ... it's one
of those little details which makes a thing psychologically real ... you
can't get it out of your head afterwards. And he tells it to me so smoothly,
so naturally ... I wonder, did he think it up in advance or did it just pop
out of his head like that, spontaneously? He's such a cute little liar you
can't walk away from him ... it's like he's writing you a letter, one of
those flower-pots that he makes overnight. I don't understand how a guy can
write such letters ... I don't get the mentality behind it ... it's a form a
masturbation ... what do you think?"

But before I have an opportunity to venture an opinion, or even to laugh in
his face, Van Norden goes on with his monologue.

"Listen, I suppose he told you everything ... did he tell you how he stood
on the balcony in the moonlight and kissed her? That sounds banal when you
repeat it, but the way that guy describes it ... I can just see the little
prick standing there with the woman in his arms and already he's writing
another letter to her, another flower-pot about the roof-tops and all that
crap he steals from his French authors. That guy never says a thing that's
original, I found that out. You have to get a clue like ... find out whom
he's been reading lately ... and it's hard to do that because he's so damned
secretive. Listen, if I didn't know that you went there with him, I wouldn't
believe that the woman existed. A guy like that could write letters to
himself. And yet he's lucky ... he's so damned tiny, so frail, so romantic-looking,
that women fall for him now and then ... they sort of adopt him ... they feel
sorry for him, I guess. And some cunts like to receive flower-pots ... it
makes them feel important ... But this woman's an intelligent woman, so he
says. You ought to know, you've seen her letters. What do you suppose a woman
like that saw in him? I can understand her falling for the letters ... but
how do you suppose she felt when she <i>saw</i> him?

"But listen, all that's beside the point. What I'm getting at is the way he
tells it to me. You know how he embroiders things ... well, after that scene
on the balcony -- he gives me that like an hors d'oeuvre, you know -- after
that, so he says, they went inside and he unbuttoned her pajamas. What are
you smiling for? Was he shitting me about that?"

"No, no! You're giving it to me exactly as he told me. Go ahead ..."

"After that" -- here Van Norden has to smile himself -- "after that, mind you,
he tells me how she sat in the chair with her legs up ... not a stitch on
... and he's sitting on the floor looking up at her, telling her how
beautiful she looks ... did he tell you that she looked like a Matisse ...
Wait a minute ... I'd like to remember exactly what he said. He had some
cute little phrase there about an odalisque ... what the hell's an
odalisque anyway? He said it in French, that's why it's hard to remember the
fucking thing ... but it sounded good. It sounded just like the sort of
thing he might say. And she probably thought it was original with him ... I
suppose she thinks he's a poet or something. But listen, all this is nothing
... I make allowance for his imagination. It's what happened after that
that drives me crazy. All night long I've been tossing about, playing with
these images he left in my mind. I can't get it out of my head. It sounds so
real to me that if it didn't happen I could strangle the bastard. A guy has
no right to invent things like that. Or else he's diseased ...

"What I'm getting at is that moment when, he says, he got down on his knees
and with those two skinny fingers of his he spread her cunt open. You
remember that? He says she was sitting there with her legs dangling over the
arms of the chair and suddenly, he says, he got an inspiration. This was
after he had given her a couple of lays already ... after he had made that
little spiel about Matisse. He gets down on his knees -- <i>get this! -- </i>and
with his two fingers ... just the tips of them, mind you ... he opens the
little petals ... <i>squish-squish ...</i> just like that. A sticky little
sound ... almost inaudible. <i>Squish-squish! </i>Jesus, I've been hearing
it all night long! And then he says -- as if that weren't enough for me -- then
he tells me he buried his head in her muff. And when he did that, so help me
Christ, if she didn't swing her legs around his neck and lock him there.
<i>That finished me!</i> Imagine it! Imagine a fine, sensitive woman like
that swinging her legs around <i>his neck\</i> There's something poisonous
about it. It's so fantastic that it sounds convincing. If he had only told
me about the champagne and the ride in the Bois and even that scene on the
balcony I could have dismissed it. But this thing is so incredible that it
doesn't sound like a lie, any more. I can't believe that he ever read
anything like that anywhere, and I can't see what could have put the idea
into his head unless there was some truth in it. With a little prick like
that, you know, anything can happen. He may not have fucked her at all, but
she may have let him diddle her ... you never know with these rich cunts
what they might expect you to do ..."

When he finally pulls himself out of bed and starts to shave the afternoon
is already well advanced. I've finally succeeded in switching his mind to
other things, to the moving principally. The maid comes in to see if he's
ready -- he's supposed to have vacated the room by noon. He's just in the act
of slipping into his trousers. I'm a little surprised that he doesn't
excuse himself, or turn away. Seeing him standing there nonchalantly
buttoning his fly as he gives her orders I begin to titter. "Don't mind
her," he says, throwing her a look of supreme contempt, "she's just a big
sow. Give her a pinch in the ass, if you like. She won't say anything." And
then addressing her, in English, he says: "Come here, you bitch, put your
hand on this!" At this I can't restrain myself any longer. I burst out
laughing, a fit of hysterical laughter which infects the maid also, though
she doesn't know what it's all about.


The maid commences to take down the pictures and photographs, mostly of
himself, which line the walls. <i>"You," </i>he says, jerking his thumb,
"come here! Here's something to remember me by" -- ripping a photograph off
the wall -- "when I go you can wipe your ass with it. See," he says, turning
to me, "she's a dumb bitch. She wouldn't look any more intelligent if I said
it in French." The maid stands there with her mouth open; she is evidently
convinced that he is cracked. "Hey!" he yells at her as if she were hard of
healing. "Hey, <i>you!</i> Yes, <i>you!</i> Like this ... !" and he takes
the photograph, his own photograph, and wipes his ass with it. <i>"Comme
ca!</i> Savvy? You've got to draw pictures for her," he says, thrusting his
lower lip forward in absolute disgust.

He watches her helplessly as she throws his things into the big valises.
"Here, put these in too," he says, handing her a tooth-brush and the
douche-bag. Half of his belongings are lying on the floor. The valises are
crammed full and there is nowhere to put the paintings and the books and the
bottles that are half empty. "Sit down a minute," he says. "We've got plenty
of time. We've got to think this thing out. If you hadn't come around I'd
never have gotten out of here. You see how helpless I am. Don't let me
forget to take the bulbs out ... they belong to me. That waste-basket
belongs to me too. They expect you to live like pigs, these bastards." The
maid has gone downstairs to get some twine ... "Wait till you see ...
she'll charge me for the twine even if it's only three sous. They wouldn't
sew a button on your pants here without charging for it. The lousy, dirty
scroungers!" He takes a bottle of Calvados from the mantelpiece and nods to
me to grab the other. "No use carrying these to the new place. Let's finish
them off now. But don't give <i>her</i> a drink! That bastard, I wouldn't
leave her a piece of toilet-paper. I'd like to ruin the joint before I go.
Listen ... piss on the floor, if you like. I wish I could take a crap in the
bureau drawer." He feels so utterly disgusted with himself and everything
else that he doesn't know what to do by way of venting his feelings. He
walks over to the bed with the bottle in his hand and pulling back the
covers he sprinkles Calvados over the mattress. Not content with that he
digs his heel into the mattress. Unfortunately there's no mud
on his heels. Finally he takes the sheet and cleans his shoes with it.
"That'll give them something to do," he mutters vengefully. Then, taking a
good swig, he throws his head back and gargles his throat, and after he's
gargled it good and proper he spits it out on the mirror. "There, you cheap
bastards! Wipe that off when I go!" He walks back and forth mumbling to
himself. Seeing his torn socks lying on the floor he picks them up and tears
them to bits. The paintings enrage him too. He picks one up -- a portrait of
himself done by some Lesbian he knew and he puts his foot through it. "That
bitch! You know what she had the nerve to ask me? She asked me to turn over
my cunts to her after I was through with them. She never gave me a sou for
writing her up. She thought I honestly admired her work. I wouldn't have
gotten that painting out of her if I hadn't promised to fix her up with that
cunt from Minnesota. She was nuts about her ... used to follow us around
like a dog in heat ... we couldn't get rid of the bitch! She bothered the
life out of me. I got so that I was almost afraid to bring a cunt up here
for fear that she'd bust in on me. I used to creep up here like a burglar
and lock the door behind me as soon as I got inside ... She and that Georgia
cunt -- they drive me nuts. The one is always in heat and the other is always
hungry. I hate fucking a woman who's hungry. It's like you push a feed
inside her and then you push it out again ... Jesus, that reminds me of
something ... where did I put that blue ointment? That's important. Did you
ever have those things? It's worse than having a dose. And I don't know
where I got them from either. I've had so many women up here in the last
week or so I've lost track of them. Funny too, because they all smelled so
fresh. But you know how it is ..."

The maid has piled his things up on the sidewalk. The <i>patron</i> looks on
with a surly air. When everything has been loaded into the taxi there is only
room for one of us inside. As soon as we commence to roll Van Norden gets out
a newspaper and starts bundling up his pots and pans; in the new place all
cooking is strictly forbidden. By the time we reach our destination all his
luggage has come undone; it wouldn't be quite so embarrassing if the madame
had not stuck her head out of the doorway just as we rolled up. "My God!" she
exclaims, "what in the devil is all this? What does it mean?" Van Norden is
so intimidated that he can think of nothing more to say than <i>"C'est moi
... c'est moi, madame!"</i> And turning to me he mumbles savagely: "That
cluck! Did you notice her face? She's going to make it hard for me."

The hotel lies back of a dingy passage and forms a rectangle very much on
the order of a modern penitentiary. The bureau is large and gloomy, despite
the brilliant reflections from the tile walls. There are bird cages hanging
in the windows and little enamel signs everywhere begging the guests in an
obsolete language not to do this and not to forget that. It is almost
immaculately clean but absolutely poverty-stricken, threadbare, woe-begone.
The upholstered chairs are held together with wired thongs;
they remind one unpleasantly of the electric chair. The room he is going to
occupy is on the fifth floor. As we climb the stairs Van Norden informs me
that Maupassant once lived here. And in the same breath he remarks that
there is a peculiar odor in the hall. On the fifth floor a few window-panes
are missing; we stand a moment gazing at the tenants across the court. It
is getting toward dinner-time and people are straggling back to their rooms
with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly.
Most of the windows are wide open: the dingy rooms have the appearance of so
many yawning mouths. The occupants of the rooms are yawning too, or else
scratching themselves. They move about listlessly and apparently without
much purpose; they might just as well be lunatics.

As we turn down the corridor towards room 57, a door suddenly opens in front
of us and an old hag with matted hair and the eyes of a maniac peers out.
She startles us so that we stand transfixed. For a full minute the three of
us stand there powerless to move or even to make an intelligent gesture.
Back of the old hag I can see a kitchen table and on it lies a baby all
undressed, a puny little brat no bigger than a plucked chicken. Finally the
old one picks up a slop-pail by her side and makes a move forward. We stand
aside to let her pass and as the door closes behind her the baby lets out a
piercing scream. It is room number 56, and between 56 and 57 is the toilet
where the old hag is emptying her slops.

Ever since we have mounted the stairs Van Norden has kept silence. But his
looks are eloquent. When he opens the door of 57 I have for a fleeting moment
the sensation of going mad. A huge mirror covered with green gauze and tipped
at an angle of 45 degrees hangs directly opposite the entrance over a
baby-carriage which is filled with books. Van Norden doesn't even crack a
smile; instead he walks nonchalantly over to the baby-carriage and picking up
a book begins to skim it through, much as a man would enter the public
library and go unthinkingly to the rack nearest to hand. And perhaps this
would not seem so ludicrous to me if I had not espied at the same time a pair
of handle-bars resting in the corner. They look so absolutely peaceful and
contented, as if they had been dozing there for years, that suddenly it seems
to me as if we had been standing in this room, in exactly this position, for
an incalculably long time, that it was a pose we had struck in a dream from
which we never emerged, a dream which the least gesture, the wink of an eye
even, will shatter. But more remarkable still is the remembrance that
suddenly floats up of an actual dream which occurred only the other night, a
dream in which I saw Van Norden in just such a corner as is occupied now by
the handle-bars, only instead of the handle-bars there was a woman crouching
with her legs drawn up. I see him standing over the woman with that alert,
eager look in his eye, which comes when he wants something badly. The street
in which this is going on is blurred -- only the angle made by two walls is
clear, and the cowering figure of the woman. I can see him going at her in
that quick, animal way of his, reckless of what's going on about him,
determined only to have his way. And a look in his eye as though to say --
"you can kill me afterwards, but just let me get it in ... I've got to get it
in!" And there he is, bent over her, their heads knocking against the wall,
he has such a tremendous erection that it's simply impossible to get it in
her. Suddenly, with that disgusted air which he knows so well how to summon,
he picks himself up and adjusts his clothes. He is about to walk away when
suddenly he notices that his penis is lying on the sidewalk. It is about the
size of a sawed-off broom-stick. He picks it up nonchalantly and slings it
under his arm. As he walks off I notice two huge bulbs, like tulip bulbs,
dangling from the end of the broom-stick, and I can hear him muttering to
himself "flower-pots ... flower-pots."

The <i>garcon</i> arrives panting and sweating. Van Norden looks at him
uncomprehendingly. The madame now marches in and walking straight up to Van
Norden she takes the book out of his hand, thrusts it in the baby-carriage,
and without saying a word, wheels the baby-carriage into the hallway.

"This is a bug-house," says Van Norden, smiling distressedly. It is such a
faint, indescribable smile that for a moment the dream feeling comes back
and it seems to me that we are standing at the end of a long corridor at the
end of which is a corrugated mirror. And down this corridor, swinging his
distress like a dingy lantern. Van Norden staggers, staggers in and out as
here and there a door opens and a hand yanks him in or a hoof pushes him
out. And the further off he wanders the more lugubrious is his distress; he
wears it like a lantern which the cyclists hold between their teeth on a
night when the pavement is wet and slippery. In and out of the dingy rooms
he wanders, and when he sits down the chair collapses, when he opens his
valise there is only a tooth-brush inside. In every room there is a mirror
before which he stands attentively and chews his rage, and from the
constant chewing, from the grumbling and mumbling and the muttering and
cursing his jaws have gotten unhinged and they sag badly and, when he rubs
his beard, pieces of his jaw crumble away and he's so disgusted with himself
that he stamps on his own jaw, grinds it to bits with his big heels.

Meanwhile the luggage is being hauled in. And things begin to look crazier
even than before -- particularly when he attaches his exerciser to the
bedstead and begins his Sandow exercises. "I like this place," he says,
smiling at the <i>garcon.</i> He takes his coat and vest off. The
<i>garcon</i> is watching him with a puzzled air; he has a valise in one hand
and the douche-bag in the other. I'm standing apart in the ante-chamber
holding the mirror with the green gauze. Not a single object seems to possess
a practical use. The ante-chamber itself seems useless, a sort of vestibule
to a barn. It is exactly the same sort of sensation which I get when I enter
the Comedie Francaise or the Palais Royal Theatre; it is a world of
bric-a-brac, of trapdoors, of arms and busts and waxed floors, of candelabras
and men in armor, of statues without eyes and love letters lying in glass
cases. Something is going on, but it makes no sense; it's like finishing the
half-empty bottle of Calvados because there's no room in the valise.

Climbing up the stairs, as I said a moment ago, he had mentioned the fact
that Maupassant used to live here. The coincidence seems to have made an
impression upon him. He would like to believe that it was in this very room
that Maupassant gave birth to some of those gruesome tales on which his
reputation rests. "They lived like pigs, those poor bastards," he says. We
are sitting at the round table in a pair of comfortable old arm-chairs that
have been trussed up with thongs and braces; the bed is right beside as, so
close indeed that we can put our feet on it. The <i>armoire</i> stands in a
corner behind us, also conveniently within reach. Van Norden has emptied his
dirty wash on the table; we sit here with our feet buried in his dirty socks
and shirts, and smoke contentedly. The sordidness of the place seems to have
worked a spell on him: he is content here. When I get up to switch on the
light he suggests that we play a game of cards before going out to
<i>eat.</i> And so we sit there by the window, with the dirty wash strewn
over the floor and the Sandow exerciser hanging from the chandelier, and we
play a few rounds of two-handed pinochle. Van Norden has put away his pipe
and packed a wad of snuff on the under side of his lower lip. Now and then
he spits out of the window, big healthy gobs of brown juice which resound
with a smack on the pavement below. He seems content now.

"In America," he says, "you wouldn't dream of living in a joint like this.
Even when I was on the bum I slept in better rooms than this. But here it
seems natural -- it's like the books you read. If I ever go back there I'll
forget all about this life, just like you forget a bad dream. I'll probably
take up the old life again just where I left off... if I ever get back.
Sometimes I lie in bed dreaming about the past and it's so vivid to me that I
have to shake myself in order to realize where I am. Especially when I have a
woman beside me; a woman can set me off better than anything. That's all I
want of them -- to forget myself. Sometimes I get so lost in my reveries that
I can't remember the name of the cunt or where I picked her up. That's funny,
eh? It's good to have a fresh warm body beside you when you wake up in the
morning. It gives you a clean feeling. You get spiritual like ... until they
start pulling that mushy crap about love et cetera. Why do all these cunts
talk about love so much, can you tell me that? A good lay isn't enough for
them apparently ... they want your soul too ..."

Now this word soul, which pops up frequently in Van Norden's soliloquies,
used to have a droll effect upon me at first. Whenever I heard the word soul
from his lips I would get hysterical; somehow it seemed like a false coin,
more particularly because it was usually accompanied by a gob of brown
juice which left a trickle down the corner of his mouth. And as I never
hesitated to laugh in his face it happened invariably that when this little
word bobbed up Van Norden would pause just long enough for me to burst into
a cackle and then, as if nothing had happened, he would resume his
monologue, repeating the word more and more frequently and each time with a
more caressing emphasis. It was the soul of him that women were trying to
possess -- that he made clear to me. He had explained it over and over again,
but he comes back to it afresh each time like a paranoiac to his obsession.
In a sense Van Norden is mad, of that I'm convinced. His one fear is to be
left alone, and this fear is so deep and so persistent that even when he is
on top of a woman, even when he has welded himself to her, he cannot escape
the prison which he has created for himself. "I try all sorts of things," he
explains to me. "I even count sometimes, or I begin to think of a problem in
philosophy, but it doesn't work. It's like I'm two people, and one of them
is watching me all the time. I get so god-damned mad at myself that I could
kill myself ... and in a way, that's what I do every time I have an orgasm.
For one second like I obliterate myself. There's not even one me then ...
there's nothing ... not even the cunt. It's like receiving communion.
Honest, I mean that. For a few seconds afterwards I have a fine spiritual
glow ... and maybe it would continue that way indefinitely -- how can you
tell? -- if it weren't for the fact that there's a woman beside you and then
the douche-bag and the water running ... all those little details that make
you desperately self-conscious, desperately lonely. And for that one moment
of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap ... it drives me nuts
sometimes ... I want to kick them out immediately ... I do now and then. But
that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them
the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women ...
they're all masochists at heart."

"But what is it you want of a woman, then?" I demand.

   He begins to mould his hands; his lower lip droops. He looks completely
frustrated. When eventually he succeeds in stammering out a few broken
phrases it's with the conviction that behind his words lies an overwhelming
futility. "I want to be able to surrender myself to a woman," he blurts out.
"I want her to take me out of myself. But to do that, she's got to be better
than I am; she's got to have a mind, not just a cunt. She's got to make me
believe that I need her, that I can't live without her. Find me a cunt like
that, will you? If you could do that I'd give you my job. I wouldn't care
then what happened to me: I wouldn't need a job or friends or books or
anything. If she could only make me believe that there was something more
important on earth than myself. Jesus, I hate myself! But I hate these
bastardly cunts even more -- because they're none of them any good.

  "You think I like myself," he continues. "That shows how little you know
about me. I know I'm a great guy ... I wouldn't have these problems if there
weren't something to me. But what eats me up is that I can't express myself.
People think I'm a cunt-chaser. That's how shallow they are, these high-brows
who sit on the <i>terrasse</i> all day chewing the psychologic cud ... That's
not so bad, eh -- psychologic cud? Write it down for me. I'll use it in my
column next week ... By the way, did you ever read Stekel? Is he any good? It
looks like nothing but case histories to me. I wish to Christ I could get up
enough nerve to visit an analyst... a good one, I mean. I don't want to see
these little shysters with goatees and frock coats, like your friend Boris.
How do you manage to tolerate those guys? Don't they bore you stiff? You talk
to anybody, I notice. You don't give a god-damn. Maybe you're right. I wish I
weren't so damned critical. But these dirty little Jews who hang around the
Dome, Jesus, they give me the creeps. They sound just like textbooks. If I
could talk to you every day maybe I could get things off my chest. You're a
good listener. I know you don't give a damn about me, but you're patient. And
you don't have any theories to exploit. I suppose you put it all down
afterwards in that notebook of yours. Listen, I don't mind what you say about
me, but don't make me out to be a cunt-chaser -- it's too simple. Some day
I'll write a book about myself, about my thoughts. I don't mean just a piece
of introspective analysis ... I mean that I'll lay myself down on the
operating table and I'll expose my whole guts ... every god-damned thing. Has
anybody ever done that before? -- What the hell are you smiling at? Does it
sound naif?"

I'm smiling because whenever we touch on the subject of this book which he is
going to write some day things assume an incongruous aspect. He has only to
say "my book" and immediately the world shrinks to the private dimensions of
Van Norden and Co. The book must be absolutely original, absolutely perfect.
That is why, among other things, it is impossible for him to get started on
it. As soon as he gets an idea he begins to question it. He remembers that
Dostoievski used it, or Hamsun, or somebody else. "I'm not saying that I want
to be better than them, but I want to be different," he explains. And so,
instead of tackling his book, he reads one author after another in order to
make absolutely certain that he is not going to tread on their private
property. And the more he reads the more disdainful he becomes. None of them
are satisfying; none of them arrive at that degree of perfection which he has
imposed on himself. And forgetting completely that he has not written as much
as a chapter he talks about them condescendingly, quite as though there
existed a shelf of books bearing his name, books which everyone is familiar
with and the titles of which it is therefore superfluous to mention. Though
he has never overtly lied about this fact, nevertheless it is obvious that
the people whom he buttonholes in order to air his private philosophy, his
criticism, and his grievances, take it for granted that behind his loose
remarks there stands a solid body of work. Especially the young and foolish
virgins whom he lures to his room on the pretext of reading to them his
poems, or on the still better pretext of asking their advice. Without the
least feeling of guilt or self-consciousness he will hand them a piece of
soiled paper on which he has scribbled a few lines -- the basis of a new
poem, as he puts it -- and with absolute seriousness demand of them an honest
expression of opinion. As they usually have nothing to give by way of
comment, wholly bewildered as they are by the utter senselessness of the
lines. Van Norden seizes the occasion to expound to them his view of art, a
view, needless to say, which is spontaneously created to suit the event. So
expert has he become in this role that the transition from Ezra Pound's
cantos to the bed is made as simply and naturally as a modulation from one
key to another; in fact, if it were not made there would be a discord, which
is what happens now and then when he makes a mistake as regards those
nit-wits whom he refers to as "push-overs." Naturally, constituted as he is,
it is with reluctance that he refers to these fatal errors of judgment. But
when he does bring himself to confess to an error of this kind it is with
absolute frankness; in fact, he seems to derive a perverse pleasure in
dwelling upon his inaptitude. There is one woman, for example, whom he has
been trying to make for almost ten years now -- first in America, and finally
here in Paris. It is the only person of the opposite sex with whom he has a
cordial, friendly relationship. They seem not only to like each other, but to
understand each other. At first it seemed to me that if he could really make
this creature his problem might be solved. All the elements for a successful
union were there -- except the fundamental one. Bessie was almost as unusual
in her way as himself. She had as little concern about giving herself to a
man as she has about the dessert which follows the meal. Usually she singled
out the object of her choice and made the proposition herself. She was not
bad-looking, nor could one say that she was good-looking either. She had a
fine body, that was the chief thing -- and she liked it, as they say.

They were so chummy, these two, that sometimes, in order to gratify her
curiosity (and also in the vain hope of inspiring her by his prowess). Van
Norden would arrange to hide her in his closet during one of his seances.
After it was over Bessie would emerge from her hiding-place and they would
discuss the matter casually, that is to say, with an almost total
indifference to everything except "technique." Technique was one of her
favorite terms, at least in those discussions which I was privileged to
enjoy. "What's wrong with my technique?" he would say. And Bessie would
answer: "You're too crude. If you ever expect to make me you've got to
become more subtle."

There was such a perfect understanding between them, as I say, that often
when I called for Van Norden at one-thirty, I would find Bessie sitting on
the bed, the covers thrown back and Van Norden inviting her to stroke his
penis ... "just a few silken strokes," he would say, "so as I'll have the
courage to get up." Or else he would urge her to blow on it, or failing
that, he would grab hold of himself and shake it like a dinner-bell, the two
of them laughing fit to die. "I'll never make this bitch," he would say.
"She has no respect for me. That's what I get for taking her into my
confidence." And then abruptly he might add: "What do you make of that
blonde I showed you yesterday?" Talking to Bessie, of course. And Bessie
would jeer at him, telling him he had no taste. "Aw, don't give me that
line," he would say. And then playfully, perhaps for the thousandth time,
because by now it had become a standing joke between them -- "Listen, Bessie,
what about a quick lay? Just one little lay ... no." And when this had
passed off in the usual manner he would add, in the same tone: "Well, what
about <i>him</i>? Why don't you give <i>him</i> a lay?"

The whole point about Bessie was that she couldn't, or just wouldn't, regard
herself as a lay. She talked about passion, as if it were a brand new word.
She was passionate about things, even a little thing like a lay. She had to
put her soul into it.

"I get passionate too sometimes," Van Norden would say.

"Oh, <i>you,"</i> says Bessie. You're just a worn-out satyr. You don't know
the meaning of passion. When you get an erection you think you're
passionate."

"All right, maybe it's not passion ... but you can't get passionate
without having an erection, that's true isn't it?"

All this about Bessie, and the other women whom he drags to this room day in
and out, occupies my thoughts as we walk to the restaurant. I have adjusted
myself so well to his monologues that without interrupting my own reveries I
make whatever comment is required automatically, the moment I hear his
voice die out. It is a duet, and like most duets moreover in that one
listens attentively only for the signal which announces the advent of one's
own voice. As it is his night off, and as I have promised to keep him
company, I have already dulled myself to his queries. I know that before the
evening is over I shall be thoroughly exhausted; if I am lucky, that is, if
I can worm a few francs out of him on some pretext or other, I will duck him
the moment he goes to the toilet. But he knows my propensity for slipping
away, and, instead of being insulted, he simply provides against the
possibility by guarding his sous. If I ask him for money to buy cigarettes
he insists on going with me to purchase them. He will not be left alone, not
for a second. Even when he has succeeded in grabbing off a woman, even then
he is terrified to be left alone with her. If it were possible he would have
me sit in the room while he puts on the performance. It would be like asking
me to wait while he took a shave.

On his night off Van Norden generally manages to have at least fifty francs
in his pocket, a circumstance which does not prevent him from making a touch
whenever he encounters a prospect. "Hello," he says, "give me twenty francs
... I need it." He has a way of looking panic-stricken at the same time. And
if he meets with a rebuff he becomes insulting. "Well, you can buy a drink
at least." And when he gets his drink he says more graciously -- "Listen, give
me five francs then ... give me <i>two</i> francs ..." We go from bar to bar
looking for a little excitement and always accumulating a few more francs.
At the Coupole we stumble into a drunk from the newspaper. One of the
upstairs guys. There's just been an accident at the office, he informs us.
One of the proofreaders fell down the elevator shaft. Not expected to live.

At first Van Norden is shocked, deeply shocked. But when he learns that it
was Peckover, the Englishman, he looks relieved. "The poor bastard," he
says, "he's better off dead than alive. He just got his false teeth the
other day too ..."

The allusion to the false teeth moves the man upstairs to tears. He relates
in a slobbery way a little incident connected with the accident. He is
upset about it, more upset about this little incident than about the
catastrophe itself. It seems that Peckover, when he hit the bottom of the
shaft, regained consciousness before anyone could reach him. Despite the
fact that his legs were broken and his ribs busted, he had managed to rise
to all fours and grope about for his false teeth. In the ambulance he was
crying out in his delirium for the teeth he had lost. The incident was
pathetic and ludicrous at the same time. The guy from upstairs hardly knew
whether to laugh or to weep as he related it. It was a delicate moment
because with a drunk like that one false move and he'd crash a bottle over
your skull. He had never been particularly friendly with Peckover -- as a
matter of fact, he had scarcely ever set foot in the proof-reading
department: there was an invisible wall between the guys upstairs and the
guys down below. But now, since he had felt the touch of death, he wanted to
display his comradeship. He wanted to weep, if possible, to show that he was
a regular guy. And Joe and I, who knew Peckover well and who knew also that
he wasn't worth a good god-damn, even a few tears, we felt annoyed with this
drunken sentimentality. We wanted to tell him so too, but with a guy like
that you can't afford to be honest; you have to buy a wreath and go to the
funeral and pretend that you're miserable. And you have to congratulate him
too for the delicate obituary he's written. He'll be carrying his delicate
little obituary around with him for months, praising the shit out of himself
for the way he handled the situation. We felt all that, Joe and I, without
saying a word to each other. We just stood there and listened with a
murderous, silent contempt. And as soon as we could break away we did so; we
left him there at the bar blubbering to himself over his Pernod.

Once out of his sight we began to laugh hysterically. The false teeth! No
matter what we said about the poor devil, and we said some good things about
him too, we always came back to the false teeth. There are people in this
world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them
ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem.
It's no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity -- you have to be a
liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going. And since
we didn't have to put on a false front we could laugh about the incident to
our heart's content. We laughed all night about it, and in between times, we
vented our scorn and disgust for the guys upstairs, the fat-heads who were
trying to persuade themselves, no doubt, that Peckover was a fine fellow and
that his death was a catastrophe. All sorts of funny recollections came to
our minds -- the semicolons that he overlooked and for which they bawled the
piss out of him. They made his life miserable with their rucking little
semi-colons and the fractions which he always got wrong. They were even
going to fire him once because he came to work with a boozy breath. They
despised him because he always looked so miserable and because he had
eczema and dandruff. He was just a nobody, as far as they were concerned,
but, now that he was dead, they would all chip in lustily and buy him a huge
wreath and they'd put his name in big type in the obituary column. Anything
to throw a little reflection on themselves; they'd make him out to be a
<i>big</i> shit if they could. But unfortunately, with Peckover, there was
little they could invent about him. He was a zero, and even the fact that he
was dead wouldn't add a cipher to his name.

"There's only one good aspect to it," says Joe. "You may get his job. And if
you have any luck, maybe you'll fall down the elevator shaft and break your
neck too. We'll buy you a nice wreath, I promise you that."

Towards dawn we're sitting on the <i>terrasse of</i> the D6me. We've
forgotten about poor Peckover long ago.
We've had a little excitement at the Bal Negre and Joe's mind has slipped
back to the eternal preoccupation: cunt. It's at this hour, when his night
off is almost concluded, that his restlessness mounts to a fever pitch. He
thinks of the women he passed up earlier in the evening and of the steady
ones whom he might have had for the asking, if it weren't that he was fed up
with them. He is reminded inevitably of his Georgia cunt -- she's been
hounding him lately, begging him to take her in, at least until she can find
herself a job. "I don't mind giving her a feed once in a while," he says,
"but I couldn't take her on as a steady thing . .. she'd ruin it for my
other cunts." What gripes him most about her is that she doesn't put on any
flesh. "It's like taking a skeleton to bed with you," he says. "The other
night I took her on -- out of pity -- and what do you think the crazy bitch
had done to herself? She had shaved it clean ... not a speck of hair on it!
Did you ever have a woman who shaved her twat? It's repulsive, ain't it? And
it's funny, too. Sort of mad like. It doesn't look like a twat any more: it's
like a dead clam or something." He describes to me how, his curiosity
aroused, he got out of bed and searched for his flashlight. "I made her hold
it open and I trained the flashlight on it. You should have seen me ... it
was comical. I got so worked up about it that I forgot all about her. I never
in my life looked at a cunt so seriously. You'd imagine I'd never seen one
before. And the more I looked at it the less interesting it became. It only
goes to show that there's nothing to it after all, especially when it's
shaved. It's the hair that makes it mysterious. That's why a statue leaves
you cold. Only once I saw real cunt on a statue -- that was by Rodin. You
ought to see it some time ... she has her legs spread wide apart ... I don't
think there was any head on it. Just a cunt you might say. Jesus, it looked
ghastly. The thing is this -- they all look alike. When you look at them with
their clothes on you imagine all sorts of things; you give them an
individuality like, which they haven't got, of course. There's just a crack
there between the legs and you get all steamed up about it -- you don't even
look at it half the time. You know it's there and all you think about is
getting your ramrod inside; it's as though your penis did the thinking for
you. It's an illusion! You get all burned up about nothing ... about a crack
with hair on it, or without hair. It's so absolutely meaningless that it
fascinated me to look at it. I must have studied it for ten minutes or more.
When you look at it that way, sort of detached like, you get funny notions in
your head. All that mystery about sex and then you discover that it's
nothing, just a blank. Wouldn't it be funny if you found a harmonica inside
... or a calendar? But there's nothing there ... nothing at all. It's
disgusting. It almost drove me mad ... Listen, do you know what I did
afterwards? I gave her a quick lay and then I turned my back on her. Yeah, I
picked up a book and I read. You can get something out of a book, even a bad
book ... but a cunt, it's just a sheer loss of time ..."

It just so happened that as he was concluding his speech a whore gave us the
eye. Without the slightest transition he says to me abruptly: "Would you
like to give her a tumble? It won't cost much ... she'll take the two of us
on." And without waiting for a reply he staggers to his feet and goes over
to her. In a few minutes he comes back. "It's all fixed," he says. "Finish
your beer. She's hungry. There's nothing doing any more at this hour ...
she'll take the both of us for fifteen francs. We'll go to my room ... it'll
be cheaper."

On the way to the hotel the girl is shivering so that we have to stop and
buy her a coffee. She's a rather gentle sort of creature and not at all bad
to look at. She evidently knows Van Norden, knows there's nothing to
expect from him but the fifteen francs. "You haven't got any dough," he
says, mumbling to me under his breath. As I haven't a centime in my pocket I
don't quite see the point of this, until he bursts out "For Christ's sake,
remember that we're broke. Don't get tenderhearted when we get upstairs.
She's going to ask you for a little extra -- I know this cunt! I could get her
for ten francs, if I wanted to. There's no use spoiling them ..."

<i>"Il est mechant, celui-la,"</i> she says to me, gathering the drift of his
remarks in her dull way.

<i>"Non, il n'est pas mechant, il est tres gentil."</i>

She shakes her head laughingly. <i>"Je le connais bien, ce</i>
<i>type."</i> And then she commences a hard luck story, about the hospital
and the back rent and the baby in the country. But she doesn't overdo it.
She knows that our ears are stopped; but the misery is there inside her,
like a stone, and there's no room for any other thoughts. She isn't trying
to make an appeal to our sympathies -- she's just shifting this big weight
inside her from one place to another. I rather like her. I hope to Christ
she hasn't got a disease ...

In the room she goes about her preparations mechanically. "There isn't a
crust of bread about by any chance?" she inquires, as she squats over the
<i>bidet.</i> Van Norden laughs at this. "Here, take a drink," he says,
shoving a bottle at her. She doesn't want anything to drink; her stomach's
already on the bum, she complains.

"That's just a line with her," says Van Norden. "Don't let her work on your
sympathies. Just the same. I wish she'd talk about something else. How the
hell can you get up any passion when you've got a starving cunt on your
hands?"

Precisely! We haven't any passion either of us. And as for her, one might as
well expect her to produce a diamond necklace as to show a spark of
passion. But there's the fifteen francs and something has to be done about
it. It's like a state of war; the moment the condition is precipitated
nobody thinks about anything but peace, about getting it over with. And yet
nobody has the courage to lay down his arms, to say, "I'm fed up with it ...
I'm through." No, there's fifteen francs somewhere, which nobody gives a
damn about any more and which nobody is going to get in the end anyhow, but
the fifteen francs is like the primal cause of things and rather than listen
to one's own voice, rather than walk out of the primal cause, one surrenders
to the situation, one goes on butchering and butchering and the more
cowardly one feels the more heroically does he behave, until a day when the
bottom drops out and suddenly all the guns are silenced and the
stretcher-bearers pick up the maimed and bleeding heroes and pin medals on
their chest. Then one has the rest of his life to think about the fifteen
francs. One hasn't any eyes or arms or legs, but he has the consolation of
dreaming for the rest of his days about the fifteen francs which everybody
has forgotten.

It's exactly like a state of war -- I can't get it out of my head. The way
she works over me, to blow a spark of passion into me, makes me think what a
damned poor soldier I'd be if I was ever silly enough to be trapped like this
and dragged to the front. I know for my part that I'd surrender everything,
honor included, in order to get out of the mess. I haven't any stomach for
it, and that's all there is to it. But she's got her mind set on the fifteen
francs and if I don't want to fight about it she's going to make me fight.
But you can't put fight into a man's guts if he hasn't any fight in him.
There are some of us so cowardly that you can't even make heroes of us, not
even if you frighten us to death. We know too much, maybe. There are some of
us who don't live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.
My mind is on the peace treaty all the time. I can't forget that it was the
fifteen francs which started all the trouble. Fifteen francs! What does
fifteen francs mean to me, particularly since it's not my fifteen francs?

Van Norden seems to have a more normal attitude about it. He doesn't care a
rap about the fifteen francs either now; it's the situation itself which
intrigues him. It seems to call for a show of mettle -- his manhood is
involved. The fifteen francs are lost, whether we succeed or not. There's
something more involved -- not just manhood perhaps, but will. It's like a
man in the trenches again: he doesn't know any more why he should go on
living, because if he escapes now he'll only be caught later, but he goes on
just the same, and even though he has the soul of a cockroach and has
admitted as much to himself, give him a gun or a knife or even just his bare
nails, and he'll go on slaughtering and slaughtering, he'd slaughter a
million men rather than stop and ask himself why.

As I watch Van Norden tackle her, it seems to me that I'm looking at a
machine whose cogs have slipped. Left to themselves, they could go on this
way forever, grinding and slipping, without ever anything happening. Until a
hand shuts the motor off. The sight of them coupled like a pair of goats
without the least spark of passion, grinding and grinding away for no reason
except the fifteen francs, washes away every bit of feeling I have, except
the inhuman one of satisfying my curiosity. The girl is lying on the edge of
the bed and Van Norden is bent over her like a satyr with his two feet
solidly planted on the floor. I am sitting on a chair behind him, watching
their movements with a cool, scientific detachment; it doesn't matter to me
if it should last forever. It's like watching one of those crazy machines
which throw the newspaper out, millions and billions and trillions of them
with their meaningless head-lines. The machine seems more sensible, crazy as
it is, and more fascinating to watch, than the human beings and the events
which produced it. My interest in Van Norden and the girl is nil; if I could
sit like this and watch every single performance going on at this minute all
over the world my interest would be even less than nil. I wouldn't be able to
differentiate between this phenomenon and the rain falling or a volcano
erupting. As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human
significance in the performance. The machine is better to watch. And these
two are like a machine which has slipped its cogs. It needs the touch of a
human hand to set it right. It needs a mechanic.

I get down on my knees behind Van Norden and I examine the machine more
attentively. The girl throws, her head on one side and gives me a despairing
look. "It's no use," she says. "It's impossible." Upon which Van Norden sets
to work with renewed energy, just like an old billy goat. He's such an
obstinate cuss that he'll break his horns rather than give up. And he's
getting sore now because I'm tickling him in the rump.

"For God's sake, Joe, give it up! You'll kill the poor girl."

"Leave me alone," he grunts. "I almost got it in that time."

The posture and the determined way in which he blurts this out suddenly
brings to my mind, for the second time, the remembrance of my dream. Only
now it seems as though that broomstick, which he had so nonchalantly slung
under his arm, as he walked away, is lost forever. It is like the sequel to
the dream -- the same Van Norden, but minus the primal cause. He's like a hero
come back from the war, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his
dreams. Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door he
enters the room is empty; whatever he puts in his mouth leaves a bad taste.
Everything is just the same as
it was before; the elements are unchanged, the dream is no different than
the reality. Only, between the time he went to sleep and the time he woke
up, his body was stolen. He's like a machine throwing out newspapers,
millions and billions of them every day, and the front page is loaded with
catastrophes, with riots, murders, explosions, collisions, but he doesn't
feel anything. If somebody doesn't turn the switch off he'll never know
what it means to die; you can't die if your own proper body has been stolen.
You can get over a cunt and work away like a billy-goat until eternity; you
can go to the trenches and be blown to bits; nothing will create that spark
of passion if there isn't the intervention of a human hand. Somebody has to
put his hand into the machine and let it be wrenched off if the cogs are to
mesh again. Somebody has to do this without hope of reward, without concern
over the fifteen francs; somebody whose chest is so thin that a medal would
make him hunchbacked. And somebody has to throw a feed into a starving cunt
without fear of pushing it out again. Otherwise this show'll go on forever.
There's no way out of the mess ...

After sucking the boss's ass for a whole week -- it's the thing to do here --
I managed to land Peckover's job. He died all right, the poor devil, a few
hours after he hit the bottom of the shaft. And just as I predicted, they
gave him a fine funeral, with solemn mass, huge wreaths, and everything.
<i>Tout compris.</i> And after the ceremonies they regaled themselves, the
upstairs guys, at a <i>bistrot.</i> It was too bad Peckover couldn't have had
just a little snack -- he would have appreciated it so much to sit with the
men upstairs and hear his own name mentioned so frequently.

I must say, right at the start, that I haven't a thing to complain about.
It's like being in a lunatic asylum, with permission to masturbate for the
rest of your life. The world is brought right under my nose and all that is
requested of me is to punctuate the calamities. There is nothing in which
these slick guys upstairs do not put their fingers: no joy, no misery passes
unnoticed. They live among the hard facts of life, reality, as it is called.
It is the reality of a swamp and they are like frogs who have nothing better
to do than to croak. The more they croak the more real life becomes. Lawyer,
priest, doctor, politician, newspaper man -- these are the quacks who have
their fingers on the pulse of the world. A constant atmosphere of calamity.
It's marvellous. It's as if the barometer never changed, as if the flag were
always at half-mast. One can see now how the idea of heaven takes hold of
men's consciousness, how it gains ground even when all the props have been
knocked from under it. There must be another world beside this swamp in which
everything is dumped pell-mell. It's hard to imagine what it can be like,
this heaven that men dream about. A frog's heaven, no doubt. Miasma, scum,
pond lilies, stagnant water. Sit on a lily-pad unmolested and croak all day.
Something like that, I imagine.

They have a wonderful therapeutic effect upon me, these catastrophes which I
proof-read. Imagine a state of perfect immunity, a charmed existence, a life
of absolute security in the midst of poison bacilli. Nothing touches me,
neither earthquakes nor explosions nor riots nor famine nor collisions nor
wars nor revolutions. I am inoculated against every disease, every calamity,
every sorrow and misery. It's the culmination of a life of fortitude. Seated
at my little niche all the poisons which the world gives off each day pass
through my hands. Not even a finger-nail gets stained. I am absolutely
immune. I am even better off than a laboratory attendant, because there are
no bad odors here, just the smell of lead burning. The world can blow
up -- I'll be here just the same to put in a comma or a semi-colon. I may even
touch a little overtime, for with an event like that there's bound to be a
final extra. When the world blows up and the final edition has gone to press
the proof-readers will quietly gather up all commas, semi-colons, hyphens,
asterisks, brackets, parentheses, periods, exclamation marks, etc., and put
them in a little box over the editorial chair. <i>Comme, ca tout est regle
...</i>

None of my companions seem to understand why I appear so contented. They
grumble all the time, they have ambitions, they want to show their pride and
spleen. A good proof-reader has no ambitions, no pride, no spleen. A good
proof-reader is a little like God Almighty, he's in the world but not of it.
He's for Sundays only. Sunday is his night off. On Sundays he steps down from
his pedestal and shows his ass to the faithful. Once a week he listens in on
all the private grief and misery of the world; it's enough to last him for
the rest of the week. The rest of the week he remains in the frozen winter
marshes, an absolute, an impeccable absolute, with only a vaccination mark to
distinguish him from the immense void.

The greatest calamity for a proof-reader is the threat of losing his job.
When we get together in the break the question that sends a shiver down our
spines is: what'll you do if you lose your job? For the man in the paddock,
whose duty it is to sweep up the manure, the supreme terror is the
possibility of a world without horses. To tell him that it is disgusting to
spend one's life shoveling up hot turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can
get to love shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is
involved.

This life which, if I were still a man with pride, honor, ambition and so
forth, would seem like the bottom rung of degradation, I welcome now, as an
invalid welcomes death. It's a negative reality, just like death -- a sort of
heaven without the pain and terror of dying. In this chthonian world the
only thing of importance is orthography and punctuation. It doesn't matter
what the nature of the calamity is, only whether it is spelled right.
Everything is on one level, whether it be the latest fashion for evening
gowns, a new battleship, a plague, a high explosive, an astronomic
discovery, a bank run, a railroad wreck, a bull market, a hundred to one
shot, an execution, a stick-up, an assassination, or what. Nothing escapes
the proofreader's eye, but nothing penetrates his bullet-proof vest. To the
Hindoo Agha Mir, Madame Scheer (formerly Miss Esteve) writes saying she is
quite satisfied with his work. "I was married June 6th and I thank you. We
are very happy and I hope that thanks to your power it will be so forever. I
am sending you by telegraph money order the sum of ... to reward you ..."
The Hindoo Agha Mir foretells your future and reads all your thoughts in a
precise and inexplicable way. He will advise you, will help you rid
yourself of all your worries and troubles of all kinds, etc. <i>Call or
write 20 Avenue Mac-Mahon, Paris.</i>

He reads all your thoughts in a marvellous way! I take it, that means
without exception, from the most trivial thoughts to the most shameless. He
must have a lot of time on his hands, this Agha Mir. Or does he only
concentrate on the thoughts of those who send money by telegraph money
order? In the same edition I notice a headline announcing that "the universe
is expanding so fast it may burst" and underneath it is the photograph of a
splitting headache. And then there is a spiel about the pearl, signed Tecla.
The oyster produces both, he informs all and sundry. Both the "wild" or
Oriental pearl, and the "cultured" pearl. On the same day, at the Cathedral
of Trier, the Germans are exhibiting the Coat of Christ; it's the first time
it's been taken out of the moth-balls in forty-two years. Nothing said about
the pants and vest. In Salzburg, also the same day, two mice were born in a
man's stomach, believe it or not. A famous movie actress is shown with her
legs crossed: she is taking a rest in Hyde Park, and underneath a well-known
painter remarks "I'll admit that Mrs. Coolidge has such charm and
personality that she would have been one of the 12 famous Americans, even
had her husband not been President." From an interview with Mr. Humhal, of
Vienna, I glean the following ... "Before I stop," said Mr. Humhal, "I'd
like to say that faultless cut and fit does not suffice; the proof of good
tailoring is seen in the wearing. A suit must bend to the body, yet keep its
line when the wearer is walking or sitting." And whenever there is an
explosion in a coal mine -- a <i>British</i> coal mine -- notice please that the
King and Queen always send their condolences promptly, <i>by telegraph.</i>
And they always attend the important races, though the other day, according
to the copy, it was at the Derby, I believe, "heavy rains began to fall,
much to the surprise of the King and Queen." More heartrending, however, is
an item like this: "It is claimed in Italy that the persecutions are not
against the Church, but nevertheless they are conducted against the most
exquisite parts of the Church. It is claimed that they are not against the
Pope, but they are against the very heart and eyes of the Pope."

    I had to travel precisely all around the world to find just such a
comfortable, agreeable niche as this. It seems incredible almost. How could I
have foreseen, in America, with all those firecrackers they put up your ass
to give you pep and courage, that the ideal position for a man of my
temperament was to look for orthographic mistakes? Over there you think of
nothing but becoming President of the United States some day. Potentially
every man is presidential timber. Here it's different. Here every man is
potentially a zero. If you become something or somebody it is an accident, a
miracle. The chances are a thousand to one that you will never leave your
native village. The chances are a thousand to one that you'll have your legs
shot off or your eyes blown out. Unless the miracle happens and you find
yourself a general or a rear-admiral.

But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is
so little hope, that life is sweet over here. Day by day. No yesterdays and
no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at halfmast.
You wear a piece of black crape on your arm, you have a little ribbon in
your button-hole, and, if you are lucky enough to afford it, you buy
yourself a pair of artificial light-weight limbs, aluminium preferably.
Which does not prevent you from enjoying an <i>aperitif</i> or looking at
the animals in the zoo or flirting with the vultures who sail up and down
the boulevards always on the alert for fresh carrion. Time passes. If you're
a stranger and your papers are in order you can expose yourself to infection
without fear of being contaminated. It is better, if possible, to have a
proof-reader's job. <i>Comme ca, tout s'arrange. </i>That means, that if you
happen to be strolling home at three in the morning and you are intercepted
by the bicycle cops, you can snap your fingers at them. In the morning,
when the market is in swing, you can buy Belgian eggs, at fifty centimes a
piece. A proof-reader doesn't get up usually until noon, or a little after.
It's well to choose a hotel near a cinema, because if you have a tendency to
oversleep the bells will wake you up in time for the matinee. Or if you can't
find a hotel near a cinema, choose one near a cemetery, it comes to the same
thing. Above all, never despair. <i>Il ne faut jamais desesperer.</i>

Which is what I try to din into Carl and Van Norden every night. A world
without hope, but no despair. It's as though I had been converted to a new
religion, as though I were making an annual novena every night to Our Lady of
Solace. I can't imagine what there would be to gain if I were made editor of
the paper, or even President of the United States. I'm up a blind alley, and
it's cosy and comfortable. With a piece of copy in my hand I listen to the
music around me, the hum and drone of voices, the tinkle of the linotype
machines, as if there were a thousand silver bracelets passing through a
wringer;  now and then a rat  scurries past our  feet or a cockroach descends
the wall in front of us, moving nimbly and gingerly on his delicate legs. The
events of the day are slid under your nose,  quietly, unostentatiously,  with,
now and then, a by-line to mark the presence of a human hand, an ego, a touch
of vanity. The procession passes serenely, like a cortege entering the
cemetery gates. The paper under the copy desk is so thick that it almost
feels like a carpet with a soft nap. Under Van Norden's desk it is stained
with brown juice. Around eleven o'clock the peanut vendor arrives, a half-wit
of an Armenian who is also content with his lot in life.

Now and then I get a cablegram from Mona saying that she's arriving on me
next boat. "Letter following," it always says. It's been going on like this
for nine months, but I never see her name in the list of boat arrivals, nor
does the <i>garcon</i> ever bring me a letter on a silver platter. I haven't
any more expectations in that direction either. If she ever does arrive she
can look for me downstairs, just behind the lavatory. She'll probably tell
me right away that it's unsanitary. That's the first thing that strikes an
American woman about Europe -- that it's unsanitary. Impossible for them to
conceive of a Paradise without modern plumbing. If they find a bed-bug they
want to write a letter immediately to the Chamber of Commerce. How am I ever
going to explain to her that I'm contented here? She'll say I've become a
degenerate. I know her line from beginning to end. She'll want to look for a
studio with a garden attached -- and a bath-tub to be sure. She wants to be
poor in a romantic way. I know her. But I'm prepared for her this time.

There are days, nevertheless, when the sun is out and I get off the beaten
path and think about her hungrily. Now and then, despite my grim
satisfaction, I get to thinking about another way of life, get to wondering
if it would make a difference having a young, restless creature by my side.
The trouble is I can hardly remember what she looks like, nor even how it
feels to have my arms around her. Everything that belongs to the past seems
to have fallen into the sea; I have memories, but the images have lost their
vividness, they seem dead and desultory, like time-bitten mummies stuck in a
quagmire. If I try to recall my life in New York I get a few splintered
fragments, nightmarish and covered with verdigris. It seems as if my own
proper existence had come to an end somewhere, just where exactly I can't
make out. I'm not an American any more, nor a New Yorker, and even less a
European, or a Parisian. I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any
hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor
against. I'm neutral.

When we walk home of a night, the three of us, it often happens after the
first spasms of disgust that we get to talking about the condition of things
with the enthusiasm which only those who bear no active part in life can
muster. What seems strange to me sometimes, when I crawl into bed, is that
all this enthusiasm is engendered just <i>to </i>kill time, just to
annihilate the three-quarters of an hour which it requires to walk from the
office to Montparnasse. We might have the most brilliant, the most feasible
ideas for the amelioration of this or that, but there is no vehicle to hitch
them to. And what is more strange is that the absence of any relationship
between ideas and living causes us no anguish, no discomfort. We have become
so adjusted that, if tomorrow we were ordered to walk on our hands, we
would do so without the slightest protest. Provided, of course, that the
paper came out as usual. And that we touched our pay regularly. Otherwise
nothing matters. Nothing. We have become Orientalized. We have become
coolies, white collar coolies, silenced by a handful of rice each day. A
special feature in American skulls, I was reading the other day, is the
presence of the epactal bone, or <i>os Incae,</i> in the occiput. The
presence of this bone, so the savant went on to say, is due to a
persistence of the transverse occiputal suture which is usually closed in
foetal life. Hence it is a sign of arrested development and indicative of an
inferior race. "The average cubical capacity of
the American skull," so he went on to say, "falls below that of the white,
and rises above that of the black race. Taking both sexes, the Parisians of
to-day have a cranial capacity of 1.448 cubic centimeters; the Negroes 1.344
centimeters: the American Indians 1.376." From all of which I deduce nothing
because I am an American and not an Indian. But it's cute to explain things
that way, by a bone, an <i>os Incae,</i> for example. It doesn't disturb his
theory at all to admit that single examples of Indian skulls have yielded
the extraordinary capacity of 1.920 cubic centimeters, a cranial capacity
not exceeded in any other race. What I note with satisfaction is that the
Parisians, of both sexes, seem to have a normal cranial capacity. The
transverse occiputal suture is evidently not so persistent with them. They
know how to enjoy an <i>aperitif</i> and they don't worry if the houses are
unpainted. There's nothing extraordinary about their skulls, so far as
cranial indices go. There must be some other explanation for the art of
living which they have brought to such a degree of perfection.

At Monsieur Paul's, the <i>bistrot</i> across the way, there is a back room
reserved for the newspapermen where we can eat on credit. It is a pleasant
little room with saw-dust on the floor and flies in season and out. When I
say that it is reserved for the newspapermen I don't mean to imply that we
eat in privacy; on the contrary, it means that we have the privilege of
associating with the whores and pimps who form the more substantial element
of Monsieur Paul's clientele. The arrangement suits the guys upstairs to a
T, because they're always on the look-out for tail, and even those who have
a steady little French girl are not averse to making a switch now and then.
The principal thing is not to get a dose; at times it would seem  as if an
epidemic had swept the office, or perhaps it might be explained by the fact
that they all sleep with the same woman. Anyhow, it's gratifying to observe
how miserable they can look when they are obliged to sit beside a pimp who,
despite the little hardships of his profession, lives a life of luxury by
comparison.

I'm thinking particularly now of one tall, blonde fellow who delivers the
Havas messages by bicycle. He is always a little late for his meal, always
perspiring profusely and his face covered with grime. He has a fine, awkward
way of strolling in, saluting everybody with two fingers and making a bee
line for the sink which is just between the toilet and the kitchen. As he
wipes his face he gives the edibles a quick inspection; if he sees a nice
steak lying on the slab he picks it up and sniffs it, or he will dip the
ladle into the big pot and try a mouthful of soup. He's like a fine
bloodhound, his nose to the ground all the time. The preliminaries over,
having made pipi and blown his nose vigorously, he walks nonchalantly over to
his wench and gives her a big, smacking kiss together with an affectionate
pat on the rump. Her, the wench, I've never seen look anything but immaculate
-- even at three a.m., after an evening's work. She looks exactly as if she
had just stepped out of a Turkish Bath. It's a pleasure to look at such
healthy brutes, to see such repose, such affection, such appetite as they
display. It's the evening meal I'm speaking of now, the little snack that she
takes before entering upon her duties. In a little while she will be obliged
to take leave of her big blonde brute, to flop somewhere on the boulevard and
sip her <i>digestif.</i> If the job is irksome or wearing or exhaustive, she
certainly doesn't show it. When the big fellow arrives, hungry as a wolf, she
puts her arms around him and kisses him hungrily -- his eyes, nose, cheeks,
hair, the back of his neck ... she'd kiss his ass if it could be done
publicly. She's grateful to him, that's evident. She's no wage-slave. All
through the meal she laughs convulsively. You wouldn't think she had a care
in the world. And now and then, by way of affection, she gives him a
resounding slap in the face, such a whack as would knock a proofreader
spinning.

They don't seem to be aware of anything but themselves and the food that
they pack away in shovelsful. Such perfect contentment, such harmony, such
mutual understanding, it drives Van Norden crazy to watch them. Especially
when she slips her hand in the big fellow's fly and caresses it, to which he
generally responds by grabbing her teat and squeezing it playfully.

There is another couple who arrive usually about the same time and they
behave just like two married people.
They have their spats, they wash their linen in public and after they've
made things disagreeable for themselves and everybody else, after threats
and curses and reproaches and recriminations, they make up for it by billing
and cooing, just like a pair of turtle doves. Lucienne, as he calls her, is
a heavy, platinum blonde with a cruel, saturnine air. She has a full
under-lip which she chews venomously when her temper runs away with her.
And a cold, beady eye, a sort of faded china blue, which makes him sweat
when she fixes him with it. But she's a good sort, Lucienne, despite the
condor-like profile which she presents to us when the squabbling begins.
Her bag is always full of dough, and if she deals it out cautiously, it is
only because she doesn't want to encourage him in his bad habits. He has a
weak character; that is, if one takes Lucienne's tirades seriously. He will
spend fifty francs of an evening while waiting for her to get through. When
the waitress comes to take his order he has no appetite. "Ah, you're not
hungry again!" growls Lucienne. "Humpf! You were waiting for me, I suppose,
on the Faubourg Montmartre. You had a good time, I hope, while I slaved for
you. <i>Speak, imbecile, where were you?"</i>

When she flares up like that, when she gets enraged, he looks up at her
timidly and then, as if he had decided that silence was the best course, he
lets his head drop and he fiddles with his napkin. But this little gesture,
which she knows so well and which of course is secretly pleasing to her
because she is convinced now that he is guilty, only increases Lucienne's
anger. <i>"Speak, imbecile!"</i> she shrieks. And with a squeaky, timid
little voice he explains to her woefully that while waiting for her he got
so hungry that he was obliged to stop off for a sandwich and glass of beer.
It was just enough to ruin his appetite -- he says it dolefully, though it's
apparent that food just now is the least of his worries. "But" -- and he tries
to make his voice sound more convincing -- "I was waiting for you all the
time," he blurts out.

"Liar!" she screams. "Liar! Ah, fortunately, I too am a liar ... a <i>good
liar.</i> You make me ill with your petty little lies. Why don't you tell me
a big lie?"

He hangs his head again and absent-mindedly he gathers a few crumbs and
puts them to his mouth. Whereupon she slaps his hand. "Don't do that! You
make me tired. You're such an imbecile. Liar! Just you wait! I have more to
say. I am a liar too, but I am not an imbecile."

In a little while, however, they are sitting close together, their han