As I was slooping up the soft-boiled eggs a peculiar smile hovered about my lips.
What is it? she said. What now, my crazy one?
Horses. That’s what I’m thinking. I wish we were going to Russia first. You remember Gogol and the troika? You don’t suppose he could have written that passage if Russia was motorized, do you? He was talking horses. Stallions, that’s what they were. A horse travels like wind. A horse flies. A spirited horse, anyway. How would Homer have rushed the gods back and forth without those fiery steeds he made use of? Can you imagine him manoeuvering those quarrelsome divinities in a Rolls Royce? To whip up ecstasy … and that brings me back to Scriabin … you didn’t find it, eh? … you’ve got to make use of cosmic ingredients. Besides arms, legs, hooves, claws, fangs, marrow and grit you’ve got to throw in the equinoctial precessions, the ebb and flow of tide, the conjunctions of sun, moon and planets, and the ravings of the insane. Besides rainbows, comets and the Northern lights you’ve got to have eclipses, sun spots, plagues, miracles … all sorts of things, including fools, magicians, witches, leprechauns, Jack the Rippers, lecherous priests, jaded monarchs, saintly saints … but not motor cars, not refrigerators, not washing machines, not tanks, not telegraph poles.
Such a beautiful Spring morning. Did I mention Shelley? Too good for his likes. Or for Keats or Wordsworth. A Jacob Boehme morning, nothing less. No flies yet, no mosquitos. Not even a cockroach in sight. Splendid. Just splendid. (If only she would find that Scriabin record!)
Must have been a morning like this that Joan of Arc passed through Chinon on her way to the king. Rabelais, unfortunately, was not yet born, else he might have glimpsed her from his cradle near the window. Ah, that heavenly view which his window commanded!
Yes, even if MacGregor were to suddenly appear I could not fall from grace. I would sit him down and tell him of Masaccio or of the Vita Nuova. I might even read from Shakespeare, on a frangipanic morning like this. From the Sonnets, not the plays.
A vacation, she called it. The word bothered me. She might as well have said coitus interruptus.
(Must remember to get the addresses of her relatives in Vienna and Roumania.)
There was nothing to keep me chained indoors any longer. The novel was finished, the money was in the bank, the trunk was packed, the passports were in order, the Angel of Mercy was guarding the tomb. And the wild stallions of Gogol were still racing like the wind.
Lead on, O kindly light!
Why don’t you take in a show? she said, as I was making for the door.
Maybe I will, I replied. Don’t hatch any eggs till I get back.
On the impulse I decided to say hello to Reb. It might be the last time I’d ever set foot in that ghastly place of his. (It was too.) Passing the news stand at the corner I bought a paper and left a fifty cent piece in the tin cup. That was to make up for the nickels and dimes I had swiped from the blind newsie at Borough Hall. It felt good, even though I had deposited it in the wrong man’s cup. I gave myself a sock in the kishkas for good measure.
Reb was in the back of the store sweeping up. Well, well, look who’s here! he shouted.
What a morning, eh? Doesn’t it make you feel like breaking out?
What are you up to? he said, putting the broom aside. Haven’t the faintest idea, Reb. Just wanted to say hello to you.
You wouldn’t want to go for a spin, would you? I would, if you had a tandem. Or a pair of fast horses. No, not to-day. It’s a day for walking, not riding. I pulled my elbows in, arched my neck, and trotted to the door and back. See, they’ll carry me far, these legs. No need to do ninety or a hundred.
You seem to be in a good mood, he said. Soon you’ll be walking the streets of Paris.
Paris, Vienna, Prague, Budapest … maybe Warsaw, Moscow, Odessa. Who knows? Miller, I envy you. Brief pause.
I say, why don’t you visit Maxim Gorky while you’re over there?
Is Gorky still alive?
Sure he is. And I’ll tell you another man you ought to look up, though he may be dead by now. Who’s that?
Henri Barbusse.
I’d sure like to, Reb, but you know me … I’m timid. Besides, what excuse would I have for busting in on them? Excuse? he shouted. Why, they’d be delighted to know you.
Reb, you have an exalted opinion of me. Nonsense I They’d greet you with open arms.
Okay, I’ll keep it in the back of my noodle. I’m toddling along now. Paying my last respects to the dead.
So long!
A few doors distant a radio was blaring away. It was a commercial advertising Last Supper tablecloths, only two dollars a pair.
My way lay along Myrtle Avenue. Dreary, weary, flea-bitten Myrtle Avenue striped down the middle with a rusty Elevated line. Through the ties and the iron girders the sun was pouring shafts of golden light. No longer a prisoner, the street assumed another aspect. I was a tourist now, with time on my hands and a curious eye for everything. Gone the atrabilious fiend listing to starboard with the weight of his ennui. In front of the bakery where O’Mara and I once lapped up egg drop soup I paused a moment to inspect the show window. Same old crumb cakes and apple cakes in the window, protected by the same old wrapping paper. It was a German bakery, of course. (Tante Melia always spoke affectionately of the Kondittorei she visited in Bremen and Hamburg. Affectionately, I say, because she made little distinction between pastry and other kind-hearted beings.) No, it wasn’t such a god-awful street after all. Not if you were a visitor from that far off planet Pluto.
Moving along I thought of the Buddenbrooks family and then of Tonio Kruger. Dear old Thomas Mann. Such a marvellous craftsman. (I should have bought a piece of Streuselkuchen!) Yes, in the photos I’d seen of him he looked a bit like a storekeeper. I could visualize him writing his Novellen in the back of a delicatessen store, with a yard of linked sausages wrapped around his neck. What he would have made of Myrtle Avenue! Call on Gorky while you’re at it. Wasn’t that fantastic? Easier far to obtain an audience with the King of Bulgaria. If there were any calls to be made I had the man already picked: Elie Faure. How would he take it, I wonder, if I asked to kiss his hand?
A street car rattled by. I caught a glimpse of the motor-man’s flowing moustache as it rushed by. Presto! The name leaped to mind like a flash. Knut Hamsun. Think of it, the novelist who finally earns the Nobel Prize operating a street car in this God-forsaken land! Where was it again—Chicago? Yeah, Chicago. And then he returns to Norway and writes Hunger. Or was it Hunger first and then the motorman’s job? Anyway, he never produced a dud.
I noticed a bench at the curb. (Most unusual thing.) Like the angel Gabriel, I lowered my ass. Ouf! What was the sense in walking one’s legs off? I leaned back and opened my mouth wide to drink in the solar rays. How are you? I said, meaning America, the whole bloody works. Strange country, isn’t it? Notice the birds! They look seedy, droopy, eh what what?
I closed my eyes, not to snooze but to summon the image of the ancestral home carved out of the Middle Ages. How charming, how delightful it looked, this forgotten village! A labyrinth of walled streets with canals running serpent wise; statues (of musician only), malls, fountains, squares and triangles; every lane led to the hub where the quaint house of worship with its delicate spires stood. Everything moving at a snail’s pace. Swans floating on the still surface of the lake; pigeons cooing in the belfry of the church; awnings, striped like pantaloons, shading the tesselated terraces. So utterly peaceful, so idyllic, so dream like!
I rubbed my eyes. Now where on earth had I dug that up? Was it Buxtehude perhaps? (The way my grandfather pronounced the word I always took it for a place, not a man.)
Don’t let him read too much, it’s bad for his eyes.
Seated at the edge of his work bench, where he sat with legs doubled up, making coats for Isaac Walker’s menagerie of fine gentlemen, I read aloud to him from Hans Christian Andersen.
Put the book away now, he says gently. Go out and play.
I go down to the backyard and, having nothing more interesting to do, I peek between the slats of the wooden fence which separated our property from the smoke house. Rows and rows of stiff, blackened fish greet my eyes. The pungent, acrid odor is almost overpowering. They’re hanging by the gills, these rigid, frightened fish; their popping eyes gleam in the dark like wet jewels.
Returning to my grandfather’s bench, I ask him why dead things are always so stiff. And he answers: Because there’s no joy in them any more.
Why did you leave Germany? I ask.
Because I didn’t want to be a soldier.
I would like to be a soldier, I said.
Wait, he said, wait till the bullets fly.
He hums a little tune while he
