Now we touch him! A man, rushing forward—on all fours, I almost said—to greet life. A man with a song on his lips. Thank you, Dr. Vizetelly! Thank you for being alive!
In parting he said to me—how can I ever forget his words?—Son, you have all the makings of a writer, I’m sure of it. Go along now and do what you can. Call on me if you need me. He placed one hand on my shoulder affectionately and with the other gave me a warm hand-clasp. It was the benediction. Amen!
No longer falls the soft white snow. It is raining, raining deep inside me. Down my face the tears stream—tears of joy and gratitude. I have beheld at last the face of my true father. I know now what it means—the Paraclete. Good-bye, Father Vizetelly, for I shall never see you again. May thy name be hallowed forever more!
The rain ceases. Just a thin drizzle now—down there under the heart—as if a cess-pool were being strained through fine gauze. The whole thoracic region is saturated with the finest particles of this substance called H2O which, when it falls on the tongue, tastes salty. Microscopic tears, more precious than fat pearls. Sifting slowly into the great cavity ruled over by the tear ducts. Dry eyes, dry palms. The face absolutely relaxed, open as the great plains, and ripening with joy.
(Is it snowing again, Mr. Conroy?) It’s wonderful to speak one’s own idiom, to have it rebound in your face, become again the universal language. Of the 450,000 words locked up in the unabridged dictionary, Dr. Vizetelly had assured me I must know at least 50,000. Even the shit-pumper has a vocabulary of at least 5,000 words. To prove it, all one had to do was to go home, sit down, and look around. Door, knob, chair, handle, wood, iron, curtain, window, sill, button, legs, bowl … In any room there were hundreds of things with names, not to mention the adjectives, the adverbs, the prepositions, the verbs and participles that accompanied them. And Shakespeare had a vocabulary hardly bigger than a moron’s of today!
So what does it add up to? What will we do with more words?
(And haven’t you your own language to keep in touch with?)
Aye, the own language! Langue d’oc. Or—huic, huic, huic. In Hebrew one says How are you? in at least ten different ways, according to whether one is addressing a man, a woman, men, women, or men and women, and so on. To a cow or a goat nobody in his right senses says How are you?
Wending homeward, toward the street of early sorrows. Brooklyn, city of the dead. Return of the native…
(And haven’t you your own land to visit?) Aye, dismal Brooklyn I have, and the neighboring terrain—the swamps, the dumps, the stinking canals, the ever vacant lots, the cemeteries … Native heath.
And I am neither fish nor fowl … The drizzle ceases. The innards are lined with wet lard. The cold drifts down from the north. Ah, but it’s snowing again!
And now it comes to me, fresh from the grave, that passage which Ulric could recite like a born Dubliner … It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
In this snowy realm, with language chanting its own sweet litany, I sped homeward, ever homeward. Between the covers of the giant lexicon, amid ablatives and gerundives, I curled up and fell fast asleep. Between Adam and Eve I lay, surrounded by a thousand reindeer. My warm breath, cooled by living waters, enveloped me in a refulgent mist. In la belle langue d’oc, I was out to the world. The caul was about my neck, strangling me, but ever so gently. And the name of the caul was Nemesh…
It took me a solid month or more to write the article for my namesake, Gerald Miller. When I finished I found that I had written fifteen thousand words instead of five. I squeezed out half and brought it to the editorial offices. A week later I had my check. The article, by the way, was never published. Too good, was the verdict. Nor did the editorial job ever materialize. I never found out why. Probably because I was too good.
However, with the two hundred and fifty we were able to resume life together once more. We picked ourselves a furnished room on Hancock Street, Brooklyn, city of the dead, the near dead, and the deader than the dead. A quiet, respectable street: row after row of the same nondescript frame houses, all adorned with high stoops, awnings, grass plots and iron railings. The rent was modest; we were permitted to cook over gas-burners tucked away in an alcove next to an old-fashioned sink. Mrs. Henniker, the landlady, occupied the ground floor; the rest of the house was let out to roomers.
Mrs. Henniker was a widow whose husband had grown rich in the saloon business. She had a mixture of Dutch, Swiss, German, Norwegian and Danish blood. Full of vitality, idle curiosity, suspicion, greed and malice. Could pass for a whore-house keeper. Always telling risque stories and giggling over them like a school-girl. Very strict with her roomers. No monkey-business! No noise! No beer parties! No visitors! Pay on the dot or you go!
It took this old geezer some time to get used to the idea that I was a writer. What stupefied her was the way the keys clicked. She had never believed anyone could write at such speed. But above all she was worried, worried for fear that, being a writer, I would forget to pay the rent after a few weeks. To allay her fears we decided to give her a few weeks’ rent in advance. Incredible how a little move like that can solidify one’s position!
At frequent intervals she would knock at the door, offer some flimsy excuse for interrupting me, then stand at the threshold for an hour or more pumping me. Obviously it excited her to think that anyone could pass the whole day at the machine, writing, writing, writing. What could I be writing? Stories? What kind of stories? Would I permit her to read one some day? Would I this and would I that? It was inconceivable the questions the woman could ask.
After a time she began dropping in on me in order, as she said, to give me ideas for my stories: fragments out of her life in Hamburg, Dresden, Bremen, Darmstadt. Innocent little doings which to her were daring, shocking, so much so that sometimes her voice dropped to a whisper. If I were to make use of these incidents I was to be sure to change the locale. And of course give her a different name. I led her on for a while, glad to receive her little offerings—cheese cake, sausage meat, a left-over stew, a bag of nuts. I wheedled her into making us cinnamon cake, streusel kuchen, apple cake—all in approved German style. She was ready to do most anything if only she might have the pleasure of reading about herself some day in a magazine.
One day she asked me point blank if my stories really sold.
Apparently she had been reading all the current magazines she could lay hands on and had not found my name in one of them. I patiently explained to her that sometimes one had to wait several months before a story was accepted, and after that another few months before one got paid. I at once added that we were now living on the proceeds of several stories which I had sold the year before—at a handsome figure. Whereupon, as though my words had no effect whatever upon her, she said flatly: If you get hungry you can always eat with me. I get lonely sometimes. Then, heaving a deep sigh: It’s no fun to be a writer, is it?
It sure wasn’t. Whether she suspected it or not, we were always hungry as wolves. No matter how much money came in, it always melted like snow. We were always trotting about, looking up old friends with whom we could eat, borrow carfare, or persuade to take us to a show. At night we rigged up a wash line which we stretched across the bed.
Mrs. Henniker, always over-fed, could sense that we were in a perpetual state of hunger. Every so often she repeated her invitation to dine with her—if you’re ever hungry. She never said: Won’t you have
