What’s the meaning of this? His stern, thundering voice scared the wits out of me.
Tell him, commended the girl. Tell him what you called me!
I was too terrified to open my mouth. I just gasped.
I see, said the sergeant, raising his bushy black eyebrows and glaring at me threateningly. He’s been using dirty language, has he?
Yes, your honor, said the girl.
Well, we’ll see about that. He rose from his throne and made as if to descend.
I began to whimper, then to bellow. He’s really a good boy, said the girl, coming over to me and patting my head affectionately. His name is Henry Miller.
Henry Miller? said the sergeant. Why I know his father and his grandfather. You don’t mean to tell me this little shaver is using bad language?
With this he came down from his high place and, stooping over me, he took me by the hand. Henry Miller, he said, I’m surprised at you. Why…
(The mention of my name in this public place, in the police station of all places, had a tremendous effect upon me. I already regarded myself as a criminal, saw my name being heralded all over the street, printed in headlines five feet tall. I trembled to think what my parents would say when I got home, for I surmised that the news would have traveled ahead of me. Perhaps the sergeant had already detailed a man to inform my mother of the predicament. Perhaps she would have to come to bail me out. Together with such fears and forebodings there was a certain pride, too, in hearing my name ring out in that empty police station. I had a status now. No one had ever called me by both names at once. I was always just Henry. Now I had become Henry Miller, a full-fledged personage. The man would write my name and address down in the big book. They would have a record of me … I grew ten years older in that fearful moment.)
A few minutes later, safe on my own street, the girl having released me with a promise never to use such words again, I felt heroic. I sensed that it was all a game, that no one had any intention of prosecuting me, or even of telling my parents. I was ashamed of myself for bawling like a sissy in front of the sergeant. The fact that he was such a good friend of my father and grandfather meant that he would never do me harm. Instead of thinking of him as some one to be feared, I began to look upon him as my protector and confidential ally. It had impressed me enormously that my family was in good standing with the police, perhaps on intimate terms with them. Then and there I developed a contempt for the powers that be-Before tearing myself away from the old haunts I just had to sneak through the hall and out into the backyard where the outhouse had once stood. On the side where the old smoke house used to be was a figure—painted on the fence—of a woman leading a little dog. It had been done in black paint and tar. It was almost obliterated now. This crude piece of art haunted me as a child. It was so to speak, my private Egyptian tomb painting. (Curiously, later on, when I myself took up painting, I often made figures which reminded me of this stark delineation. Instinctively my hand traced the same stiff outline; for years, it seemed, I could never do anything full on, but always in this same archaic profile. My heads always had a hawk or witch-like expression; people thought I was deliberately trying to be nightmarish but I wasn’t, it was the only way I could represent the human figure.)
Returning to the street I involuntarily raised my eyes, as if to greet Mrs. O’Melio, who used to harbor all the stray cats of the neighborhood on her flat roof. There were over a hundred which she fed twice daily. She lived alone, and my mother always hinted that she must be cracked. Such Gargantuan solicitude was beyond my mother’s comprehension.
I walk slowly towards the South side where I will catch the crosstown trolley for home. Every store front is rich with memories. After twenty-five years, despite all the changes, all the work of demolition, the old dwellings are still there. Faded, ill-kept, crumbling, like sturdy old teeth they still do their work. The light that once animated them, the radiance they once shed, are gone. It was in Summer that they were especially redolent: they actually perspired, like human beings. The owners felt a pride in keeping their homes neat and trim; the glow of fresh paint, the deep shadows thrown by the awnings, were the reflections of their own humble spirits. The homes of the physicians were always a little better than the others, a little more pretentious. In the Summer one entered the doctor’s office through beaded curtains which tinkled as one swished through. The doctor always seemed to be a connoisseur of art; on the walls there were usually sombre oil paintings framed in heavy gilt. The subject matter of these paintings was thoroughly alien to me. We had nothing like these on our walls; our pictures were given us by tradesmen at holiday times, bright, vile chromos which we looked at every day and forgot instantly. (Whenever my mother felt obliged to give something away to some poor neighbor she always chose a picture from the wall. Thank God we’re rid of that, she would murmur. Sometimes I would run to her with an offering of my own, a bright new toy, a pair of boots, a drum, because I too was surfeited with possessions. Oh no, Henry, not that! I can hear her say. That’s too new!
But I don’t want it any more, I would insist. Don’t talk that way, she would answer, or God will punish you.
Passing the old Presbyterian Church. At two o’clock the Sunday School class used to meet. How delightfully cool it was down there in the’ basement where we congregated! Outside the heat danced from the pavement. Big flies buzzed away, darting in and out of the shadows. When I think of what Summer then meant to me, the tangible, earth-born Summer which shimmered and vibrated throughout the long, festive days, I think of Debussy’s music. Was he a lion of the Midi, I wonder? Did he have an African strain in his blood? Or were those plangent melodies studded with clustered chords an expression of yearning for a sun he had never known?
Every joyous period I have known seems to be connected with the sun. Thinking of Mr. Roberts, our Sunday School superintendent, I think not only of that blazing orb in the sky but of the celestial warmth which this queer old Englishman radiated. His long flowing moustache, the color of corn, his cheery, ruddy face, what health and confidence they imparted! He always appeared in the same cutaway suit with gray spats and an ascot under his chin. Like the minister and the deacons of the church, he was a wealthy man. They ought to have moved to better quarters long ago, but they were attached to the old neighborhood and, besides, they enjoyed patronizing the poor and humble. At Christmas time they were truly bountiful with their gifts. My mother was frightfully impressed by this largesse; it was probably on this account that I grew up a Presbyterian instead of a Lutheran.
That evening, rehearsing my boyhood days with Mona, it suddenly occurred to me that it would be a good touch to send the old minister, who was still alive, a sample of my work. I thought it might make him feel good to know that one of his little boys was now a writer. God knows what it was I sent him but it had anything but the desired effect. Almost by return mail I received my manuscript back together with a letter couched in impeccable English, telling me of his sorrow and bewilderment. That I, who had been nurtured in the shelter of the fold, should descend to such crude, realistic means of expression, pained him. There was something in his letter about the garbage can, I remember. That riled me. Without wasting time, I sat down and replied in the most abusive terms, informing him that he was a fool and a dotard, that my one aim in life was to, live down the stupid nonsense he had tried
