And you? he exclaimed, holding a hand aloft as if to say Hear, hear! Yeah, you, what have you accomplished that’s so remarkable? Going on forty and nothing published yet. What’s so great about that?
Nothing, I replied. It’s deplorable, that’s what.
And that entitles you to lecture me. Ho ho!
I had to hedge a bit. I wasn’t lecturing you, I was explaining that we had nothing in common any more.
!From the looks of it we’re both failures. That’s what we have in common, if you’ll face it squarely.
I never said I was a failure. Except to myself, perhaps. How can one be a failure if he’s still struggling, still fighting? Maybe I won’t make the grade. Maybe I’ll end up being a trombone player. But whatever I do, whatever I take up, it’ll be because I believe in it. I won’t float with the tide. I’d rather go down fighting … a failure, as you say. I loathe doing like every one else, falling in line, saying yes when you mean no.
He started to say something but I waved him down.
I don’t mean senseless struggle, senseless resistance. One should make an effort to reach clear, still waters. One has to struggle to stop struggling. One has to find himself, that’s what I mean.
Hen, he said, you talk well and you mean well, but you’re all mixed up. You read too much, that’s your trouble.
And you never stop to think, I rejoined. Nor will you accept your share of suffering. You think there’s an answer to everything. It never occurs to you that maybe there isn’t, that maybe the only answer is you yourself, how you regard your problems. You don’t want to wrestle with problems, you want them eliminated for you. The easy way out, that’s you. Take this girl of yours … this life and death problem … doesn’t it mean something to you that she sees nothing in you? You ignore that, don’t you? I want her! I’ve got to have her! That’s all you’ve got to answer. Sure you’d change your ways, you’d make something of yourself … if some one were kind enough to stand over you with a sledgehammer. You like to say—’Hen, I’m an ornery sort of bastard,’ but you won’t raise a finger to make yourself a wee bit different. You want to be taken as you are, and if one doesn’t like you the way you are, fuck him! Isn’t that it?
He cocked his head to one side, like a judge weighing the testimony presented, then said: Maybe. Maybe you’re right.
For a few moments we walked on in silence. Like a bird with a burr in his craw, he was digesting the evidence. Then, his lips spreading into an impish grin, he said: Sometimes you remind me of that bastard, Challacombe. God, how that guy could rile me I Always talking down from his pedestal. And you fell for all that crap of his. You believed in him … in that Theosophical shit…
I certainly did! I answered with heat. If he had never mentioned anything more than the name Swanii Vivekananda I would have felt indebted to him the rest of my life. Crap, you say. To me it was the breath of life, I know he wasn’t your idea of a friend. A little too lofty, too detached, for your taste. He was a teacher, and you couldn’t see him as a teacher. Where did he get his credentials and all that? He had no schooling, no training, no nothing. But he knew what he was talking about. At least, I thought so. He made you wallow in your own vomit, and you didn’t like that. You wanted to lean on his shoulder and puke all over him—then he would have been a friend. And so you searched for flaws in his character, you found his weaknesses, you reduced him to your own level. You do that with every one who’s difficult to understand. When you can jeer at the other fellow as you do at yourself you’re happy … then everything comes out even … Look, try to understand this. Everything’s wrong with the world. Everywhere there’s ignorance, superstition, bigotry, injustice, intolerance. It’s been so since the world began most likely. It will be so to-morrow and the day after. So what? Is that a reason to feel defeated, to go sour on the world? Do you know what Swami Vivekananda said once? He said: There is only one sill. That is weakness … Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your weakness to the evil that is going to come … Be strong!
I paused, waiting for him to make mince meat of this. Instead he said: Go on, Hen, give us some more! It sounds good.
It is good, I replied. It will always be good. And people will go on doing the very opposite. The very ones who applauded his words betrayed him the instant he stopped speaking. That goes for Vivekananda, Socrates, Jesus, Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Krishnamurti … name them yourself! But what am I telling you all this for anyway? You won’t change. You refuse to grow. You want to get by with the least effort, the least trouble, the least pain. Every one does. It’s wonderful to hear tell about the masters, but as for becoming a master, shit! Listen, I was reading a book the other day … to be honest, I’ve been reading it for a year or more. Don’t ask me the title, because I’m not giving it to you. But here’s what I read, and no master could have put it better. The sole meaning, purpose, intention, and secret of Christ, my dears, is not to understand Life, or mould it, or change it, or even to love it, but to drink of its undying essence.
Say it again, will you, Hen?
I did.
To drink of its undying essence, he mumbled. Damned good. And you won’t tell me who wrote it?
No.
Okay, Hen. Go on! What else have you got up your sleeve this morning?
This … How are you making out with your Guelda?
Forget it! This is much better.
You’re not giving her up, I hope?
She’s giving me up. For good, this time.
And you’re reconciled to it?
Don’t you ever listen to me? Of course not! That’s why I was laying in wait for you. But, as you say, each one has to follow his own path. Don’t you think I know that? Maybe we haven’t anything in common any more. Maybe we never did, have you ever thought that? Maybe it was something more than that which held us together. I can’t help liking you, Hen, even when you rake me over the coals. You’re a heartless son of a bitch sometimes. If any one’s ornery it’s you, not me. But you’ve got something, if you can only bring it out. Something for the world, I mean, not for me. You shouldn’t be writing a novel, Hen. Any one can do that. You’ve got more important things to do. I’m serious. I’d rather see you lecture on Vivekananda—or Mahatma Gandhi.
Or Pico della Mirandola.
Never heard of him.
So she won’t have anything more to do with you?
That’s what she said. A woman can always change her mind, of course.
She will, don’t worry.
The last time I saw her she was still talking of taking a vacation—in Par is.
Why don’t you follow her?
Better than that, Hen. I’ve got it all figured out. Soon as I learn what boat she’s taking I’ll go to the steamship office and, even if I have to bribe the clerk, I’ll get a stateroom next to hers. When she comes out that first morning I’ll be there to greet her. ‘Hi there, sweetheart! Beautiful day today, what?’
She’ll love that.
She won’t jump overboard, that’s for sure.
But she might tell the captain that you’re annoying her.
Fuck the captain! I can handle him … Three days at sea and, whether she likes it or not, I’ll break her down.
I wish you luck! I grasped his hand and shook it. Here’s where I take leave of you.
Have a coffee with me! Come on!
Nope. Back to work. As Krishna said to Arjuna: ‘If I stopped work for a moment, the whole universe would…
Would what?
Fall apart, I think he said.
Okay, Hen. He wheeled around and, without another word, went off in the opposite direction.
I had only gone a few steps when I heard him shouting.
Hey Hen!
What?
I’ll see you in Paris, if not before. So long!
See you in Hell, I thought to myself. But as I resumed my walk I felt a twinge of remorse. You shouldn’t treat any one like that, not even your best friend, I said to myself.
All the way home I kept carrying on a monologue. It went something like this…
So what if he is a pain in the ass? Sure, every one has to solve his own problems, but—is that a reason to turn a man down? You’re not a Vivekananda. Besides, would Vivekananda have acted that way? You don’t snub a man who’s in distress. Nor do you have to let him puke over you either. Supposing he is acting like a child, what of it? Is your behavior always that of an adult? And wasn’t that a lot of shit, about not having anything in common any more? He should have walked away from you then
