What else did he say?
She hesitated a moment before coming out with it.
He said that if I completed the book he would give me the money to stay in Europe for a year or two.
Wonderful, I said. But what about your invalid mother? Me, in other words.
She had thought of that too. I’ll probably have to kill her off. She added that whatever he forked up would surely be enough to see the both of us through. Pop was generous.
You see, she said, I wasn’t wrong about Pop. Val, I don’t want to push you, but…
You wish I would hurry and finish the book, eh?
Yes. How long do you think it will take?
I said I hadn’t the slightest idea.
Three months?
I don’t know.
Is it all clear, what you have to do?
No, it isn’t.
Doesn’t that bother you?
Of course. But what can I do? I’m forging ahead as best I know how.
You won’t go off the trolley?
If I do I’ll get back on again. I hope so, any way.
You do want to go to Europe, don’t you?
I gave her a long look before answering.
Do I want to go to Europe? Woman, I want to go everywhere … Asia, Africa, Australia, Peru, Mexico, Siam, Arabia, Java, Borneo … Tibet too, and China. Once we take off I want to stay away for good. I want to forget that I was ever born here. I want to keep moving, wandering, roaming the world. I want to go to the end of every road…
And when will you write?
As I go along.
Val, you’re a dreamer.
Sure I am. But I’m an active dreamer. There’s a difference.
Then I added: We’re all dreamers, only some of us wake up in time to put down a few words. Certainly I want to write. But I don’t think it’s the end all and be all. How shall I put it? Writing is like the caca that you make in your sleep. Delicious caca, to be sure, but first comes life, then the caca. Life is change, movement, quest … a going forward to meet the unknown, the unexpected. Only a very few men can say of themselves—’I have lived!’ That’s why we have books—so that men may live vicariously. But when the author also lives vicariously—
She broke in. When I listen to you sometimes, Val, I feel that you want to live a thousand lives in one. You’re eternally dissatisfied—with life as it is, with yourself, with just about everything. You’re a Mongol. You belong on the steppes of Central Asia.
You know, I said, getting worked up now, one of the reasons why I feel so disjointed is that there’s a little of everything in me. I can put myself in any period and feel at home in it. When I read about the Renaissance I feel like a man of the Renaissance; when I read about one of the Chinese dynasties I feel exactly like a Chinese of that epoch. Whatever the race, the period, the people, Egyptian, Aztec, Hindu or Chaldean, I’m thoroughly in it, and it’s always a rich, tapestried world whose wonders are inexhaustible. That’s what I crave—a humanly created world, a world responsive to man’s thoughts, man’s dreams, man’s desires. What gets me about (his life of ours, this American life, is that we kill everything we touch. Talk of the Mongols and the Huns—they were cavaliers compared to us. This is a hideous, empty, desolate land. I see my compatriots through the eyes of my ancestors. I see clean through them—and they’re hollow, worm-eaten…
I took the bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin and refilled the glasses. There was enough for one good swallow.
To Napoleon! I said. A man who lived life to the fullest.
Val, you frighten me sometimes, the way you speak about America. Do you really hate it that much?
Maybe it’s love, I said. Inverted love. I don’t know.
I hope you’re not going to work any of that off in the novel.
Don’t worry. The novel will be about as unreal as the land it comes from. I won’t have to say—’All the characters in this book are fictitious’ or whatever it is they put in the front of books. Nobody will recognize anybody, the author least of all. A good thing it will be in your name. What a joke if it turned out to be a best seller! If reporters came knocking at the door to interview you.’
The thought of this terrified her. She didn’t think it funny at all.
Oh, I said, you called me a dreamer a moment ago. Let me read you a passage—it’s short—from The Hill of Dreams. You should read the book some time; it’s a dream of a book.
I went to the bookshelf and opened to the passage I had in mind.
He’s just been telling about Milton’s Lycidas, why it was probably the most perfect piece of pure literature in existence. Then says Machen: ‘Literature is the sensuous art of causing exquisite impressions by means of words.’ But here’s the passage … it follows right after that: ‘And yet there was something more; besides the logical thought, which was often a hindrance, a troublesome though inseparable accident, besides the sensation, always a pleasure and a delight, besides these there were the indefinable, inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the mind. As the chemist in his experiments is sometimes astonished to find unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as the world of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the immaterial universe, so he who reads wonderful prose or verse is conscious of suggestions that cannot be put into words, which do not rise from the logical sense, which are rather parallel to than connected with the sensuous delight. The world so disclosed is rather the world of dreams, rather the world in which children sometimes live, instantly appearing, and instantly vanishing away, a world beyond all expression or analysis, neither of the intellect nor of the senses … ‘
It is beautiful, she said, as I put the book down. But don’t yon try to write like that. Let Arthur Machen write that way, if he wishes. You write your own way.
I sat down at the table again. A bottle of Chartreuse was standing beside my coffee. As I poured a thimbleful of the fiery green liqueur into my glass, I said: There’s only one thing missing now: a harem.
Pop supplied the Chartreuse, she said. He was so delighted with those pages.
Let’s hope he’ll like the next fifty pages as much.
You’re not writing the book for him, Val. You’re writing it for us.
That’s true, I said. I forget that sometimes.
It occurred to me then that I hadn’t told her anything yet about the outline of the real book. There’s something I have to tell you, I began. Or should I? Maybe I ought to keep it to myself a while longer.
She begged me not to tease.
All right, I’ll tell you. It’s about the book I intend to write one day. I’ve got the notes for it all written out. I wrote you a long letter about it, when you were in Vienna or God knows where. I couldn’t send the letter because you gave me no address. Yes, this will really be a book … a huge one. About you and me.
Didn’t you keep the letter?
No. I tore it up. Your fault! But I’ve got the notes. Only I won’t show them to you yet.
Why?
Because I don’t want any comments. Besides, if we talk about it I may never write the book. Also, there are some things I wouldn’t want you to know about until I had written them out.
You can trust me, she said. She began to plead with me.
No use, I said, you’ll have to wait.
But supposing the notes got lost?
I could write them all over again. That doesn’t worry me in the least.
She was getting miffed now. After all, if the book was about her as well as myself … And so on. But I remained adamant.
Knowing very well that she would turn the place upside down in order to lay hands on the notes, I gave her to understand that I had left them at my parents’ home. I put them where they’ll never find them, I said. I could tell from the look she gave me that she wasn’t taken in by this. Whatever her move was, she pretended to be resigned, to think no more of it.
To sweeten the atmosphere I told her that if the book ever got written, if it ever saw the light of day, she would find herself immortalized. And since that sounded a bit grandiloquent I added—You may not always recognize yourself but I promise you this, when I get through with your portrait you’ll never be forgotten.
She seemed moved by this. You sound awfully sure of yourself, she said.
I have reason to. This book I’ve lived. I can begin anywhere and find my way around. It’s like a lawn with a thousand sprinklers: all I need do is turn on the faucet. I tapped my head. It’s all there, in invisible … I mean indelible … ink.
Are you going to tell the truth—about us?
I certainly am. About every one, not just us.
And you think there’ll be a publisher for such a book?
I haven’t thought about that, I replied. First I’ve got to write it.
You’ll finish the novel first, I
