Under another system we might have continued to live together, all of us, Mona, Maude, the child, Melanie, the dogs, cats, umbrellas, everything. At least so I thought in moments of desperation. Any situation was better than these heart-rending reunions. We were all being wounded, lacerated, Mona as much as Maude. The more difficult it got to raise the weekly alimony, the more guilty I felt towards Mona who was bearing the brunt of it all. What good was it to lead the life of a writer if it entailed such sacrifices? What good was it to live a life of bliss with Mona if my own flesh and blood had to suffer? At night, awake or in dream, I could feel the child’s little arms about my neck, pulling me towards her, pulling me homeward. Often I wept in my sleep, groaned and whimpered, reliving these scenes of anguish. You were weeping in your sleep last night, Mona would say. And I would say: Was I? I don’t remember. She knew I was lying. It made her miserable to think that her presence alone was not sufficient to make me happy. Often I would protest, though she hadn’t said a word. I am happy, can’t you see? I don’t want a blessed thing. She would be silent. Awkward pauses. You don’t think I’m worried about the child, do you? I would blurt out. And she would answer: You haven’t been there for several weeks now, do you know that? It was true. I had taken to staving off the regular weekly visits, would send the money by mail or by messenger boy. I think you ought to go this week Val. After all, she’s your own child.
I know, I know, I would say. Yes, I’ll go. And then I would give a groan. And still another groan when I’d hear her say: I bought something for the little one for you to take this time. Why did I not buy anything myself? Often I stood looking into shop windows, choosing in my mind all the things I would like to buy, not just for the child, but for Mona, for Melanie, even for Maude. But I didn’t think it was right of me to buy things when I wasn’t earning anything myself. The money Mona earned at the theatre was not enough for our needs, not nearly enough. She was constantly gold-digging, week in and week out. Sometimes she came home with staggering gifts for me, after an unusual touch, I suppose. I begged her not to get me things. I have everything, I said. And it was true. (Except for the bicycle and the piano. Somehow, I had forgotten all about these items.) Things piled up so fast, that even if I had received them, I doubt that I would have used them. It would have been more sensible to give me a mouth organ and a pair of roller skates…
Sometimes strange nostalgic fits assailed me. I might wake up with the hang-over of a dream and decide that it was most imperative to revive certain strong recollections, as of that fat tub I called Uncle Charlie, who used to sit me on his lap and regale me with stories of his exploits during the Spanish-American war. It meant a long ride, by elevated line and trolley, to a little place called Glendale, where Joey and Tony had once lived. (Uncle Charlie was their uncle, not mine.) After all the years which had passed, the sleepy little hamlet still wore a quaint air to me. The houses where my little friends had lived were still standing, hardly altered, fortunately. The tavern with its stables, where friends and relatives used to gather of a Summer’s evening, were also there. I could recall running from table to table as a tiny tot, sipping the dregs from the beer mugs, or collecting pennies and dimes from the tipsy revelers. Even the maudlin German songs, which they sang with iron lungs, ran in my ears: Lauderbach, lauderbach, hab’ ich mein Strumpf verlor’n. I see them suddenly sobered, dead serious now, gathered in hollow square, like the last remnants of a gallant regiment, men, women and children, shoulder to shoulder, all members of the Kunst Verein (a nucleus of the great ancestral Saengerbund), waiting solemnly for the leader to sound the tuning fork. Like faithful warriors standing at the border of a foreign land, their chests heaving, their eyes bright and liquid, they raise their powerful voices in a heavenly choir, intoning some deeply moving Lied which stirs them to the depths of their souls … Moving along. Now the little Catholic church where Mr. Imhof, the father of Tony and Joey (the first artist I was to meet in the flesh) had made the stained glass windows, the frescoes on the walls and ceiling, and the carved pulpit.
Though his children were fearful of him, though he was stern, tyrannical, aloof, I was always strongly drawn to this sombre man. At bed-time we were always led to his study in the garret to bid him good-night. Invariably he was sitting at his table, painting water colors. A student’s lamp threw a soft light on the table, leaving the rest of the room in chiaroscuro. He looked so earnest and tender then, distraught, and ever remote. I used to wonder what impelled him to remain long hours of the night glued to his work table. But what registered most of all was that he was different: he was of another breed … Still strolling about. At the railroad tracks now, where we used to play in the ravine: a sort of no man’s land between the edge of the village and the cemeteries on the other side of the tracks. Somewhere hereabouts there had lived a distant relative whom I called Tante Grussy, a youngish woman of great beauty, with large gray eyes and black hair, who even then, even though I was but a child, I sensed to be an unusual person. No one had ever known her to raise her voice in anger; no one had ever heard her speak ill of another; no one had ever asked her for help in vain. She had a contralto voice, and when she sang she accompanied herself on the guitar; sometimes she dressed in masquerade and danced to the tambourine, fluttering a long Japanese fan. Her husband became a drunkard; he used to beat her up, it was said. But Tante Grussy only became sweeter, gentler, more compassionate, more charming and gracious. And them, after a time, it began to be rumored about that she had become religious—this was always said in whispers, as if to imply that she had gone mad. I wanted so much to see her again. I searched and searched for the house but no one seemed to have any knowledge of her. It was hinted that she may have been committed to the asylum … Strange thoughts, strange remembrances, walking about in the sleepy village of Glendale. This adorable, this saintly Tante Grussy, and the jovial sensual tub of flesh whom I called Uncle Charlie—I loved them both. The one spoke of nothing but torturing and killing the Igorotes, of tracking down Aguinaldo in the swamps and mountain fastnesses of the Philippines; the other hardly spoke at all, she was a presence, a goddess in earthly guise who had elected to stay with us and illumine our lives through the divine radiance which she shed.
When he left for the Philippines as a lance corporal, this Charlie boy was a normal sized individual. Some eight years later, when he returned as commissary sergeant, he weighed almost four hundred pounds and was constantly perspiring. I remember vividly a gift he made me one day—six dumdum bullets for which he had had a blue linen case made. These, he maintained, had been taken from one of Aguinaldo’s men; for being guilty of using these bullets (which the Germans had furnished the Filipinos) they had executed the rebel and stuck his head on a pole. Stories such as this, together with horripilating tales about the water-cure which our soldiers administered to the Filipinos, made me sympathize with Aguinaldo. I used to pray every night that the Americans would never capture him. Unwittingly, Uncle Charlie had made him my hero.
Thinking of Aguinaldo, I suddenly recalled a banner day on which I was dressed in my best Lord Fauntleroy outfit and taken early in the morning to a beautiful brown stone house on Bedford Avenue, where, from a balcony, we were to watch the parade. The first contingent of our heroes had just returned from the Philippines. Teddy Roosevelt was there—up front—leading his Rough Riders. There was tremendous excitement over this event;
