Yes, but he’s leaving soon now. He wants to go South. Has a hunch he can clean up down there.
I suppose you won’t miss him too much, what?
But I will, I said. I like O’Mara, despite his faults.
To this Ulric nodded his head, as if to say that I was over-indulgent but it was a good trait.
And that Osiecki fella … what’s happened to him?
In Canada now. His two friends—you remember them—are looking after his girl.
I see, said Ulric, rubbing his tongue back and forth over his ripe red lips. Chivalrous lads, what? and he chuckled some more.
By the way, he said, turning to Mona, doesn’t it seem to you that the Village is getting rather seedy these days? I made the mistake of taking some of my Virginia friends down there the other night. We got out in a hurry, I can tell you. All I could see were dives and joints. Maybe we didn’t have enough under our belts … There was one spot, a restaurant, I think, over on Sheridan Square. Quite a place, I don’t mind saying.
Mona laughed. You mean Minnie Douchebag’s hang-out?
Minnie Douchebag?
Yes, that crazy fairy who sings and plays the piano … and wears women’s clothes. Wasn’t he there?
Of course! said Ulric. I didn’t know that was his name. I must say it fits him. A real zany, by God. I thought at one point he’d climb the chandeliers. What a vile, stinking tongue he has too! He turned to me. Henry, things have changed some since our time. Try to picture me sitting there with two staid, conservative Virginians. To tell the truth, they hardly understood a word he said.
The dives and joints, as Ulric called them, were of course the places we had been haunting. Though I pretended to make fun of Ulric’s squeamishness, I shared his opinion of these places. The Village had indeed deteriorated. There were nothing but dives and joints, nothing but pederasts, Lesbians, pimps, tarts, fakes and phonies of all description. I didn’t see the point of telling Ulric about it, but the last time we were at Paul and Joe’s the place was entirely dominated by homos in sailors’ uniforms. Some lascivious little bitch had tried to bite off a piece of Mona’s right breast—right in the dining room. Coming away from the place we had stumbled over two sailors writhing on the floor of the balcony, their pants down and grunting and squealing like stuck pigs. Even for Greenwich Village that was going pretty far, it seemed to me. As I say, I saw no point in relaying these incidents to Ulric—they were too incredible for him to swallow. What he liked to hear were Mona’s tales about the clients she shook down, those queer birds, as he called them, from Weehawken, Milwaukee, Washington, Porto Rico, the Sorbonne, and so on. It was plausible but mystifying to him that men of good standing should prove so vulnerable. He could understand shaking them down once, but not again and again.
How does she ever manage to hold them off? he blurted out, then made as if he were biting his tongue.
Suddenly he switched. You know, Henry, that man McFarland has been asking for you repeatedly. Ned, of course, doesn’t understand how you could turn down a good offer like that. He keeps telling McFarland you will turn up one day. You must have made a tremendous impression on the old boy. I suppose you have other plans, but—if you ever change your mind I think you could get most anything you want of McFarland. He told Ned confidentially that he would sack the whole office in order to keep a man like you. Thought I ought to tell you this. You never know…
Mona quickly diverted the talk to another trend. Soon we had drifted to the subject of burlesque. Ulric had a diabolical memory for names. He could not only recall the names of the comedians, the soubrettes, the hoochee-koochee dancers of the last twenty years, he could also give the names of the theatres where he has seen them, the songs they sang, whether it was winter or spring, and who had accompanied him on each occasion. From burlesque he drifted to musical comedies and thence to the various Quat’z’Arts Balls.
These pow-wows, when the three of us got together, were always rambling, hectic, diffuse. Mona, who was never able to concentrate on anything for long, had a way of listening which would drive any man crazy. Always, just when you had reached the most interesting part of your story, she was suddenly reminded of something, and it had to be communicated at once. It made no difference whether we were talking of Cimabue, Sigmund Freud or the Fratellini brothers: the things she thought so important to tell us were as remote as the asteroids. Only a woman could make such outlandish connections. Nor was she one of those who could have her say and then let you have yours. To get back to the point was like trying to reach the shore directly opposite by fording a swift stream. One always had to allow for drift.
Ulric had grown somewhat accustomed to this form of conversation, much against the grain. It was a pity to subject him to it, though, for when given free play he could rival the Irish harp. That photographic eye of his, those soft palps with which he touched things, particularly the things he loved, his nostalgic memory which was inexhaustible, his mania for detail, certitude, exactitude (time, place, rhythm, ambiance, magnitude, temperature) gave to his talk a quality such as the old masters achieved in pigment. Indeed, often when listening to him I had the impression that I was actually in the company of an old master. Many of my friends referred to him as quaint—charming and quaint. Which meant, old-fashioned. Yet he was neither a scholar, a recluse, nor a crank. He was simply of another time. When he spoke of the men he loved—the painters—he was one with them. Not only had he the gift of surrendering himself, he had also the art of identifying himself with those whom he revered.
He used to say that my—talk could send him home drunk. He pretended that in my presence he could never say things the way he wanted to, the way he meant. He seemed to think it only natural that I should be a better story teller than he, because I was a writer. The truth is, it was just the other way round. Except for rare moments when I was touched off, when I went hay-wire, when I blew my top, I was a stuttering gawk by comparison.
What really roused Ulric’s admiration and devotion was the raw content of my life, its underlying chaos. He could never reconcile himself to the fact that, though we had sprung from the same milieu, had been reared in the same stupid German-American atmosphere, we had developed into such different beings, had gone in such totally opposite directions. He exaggerated this divergence, of course. And I did little to correct it, knowing the pleasure it gave him to magnify my eccentricities. One has to be generous sometimes, even if it makes one blush.
Sometimes, said Ulric, when I talk about you to my friends it sounds fabulous, even to me. In the short time since we’ve known each other again it seems to me you already led a dozen lives. I hardly know anything about that period in between—when you were living with the widow and her son, for example. When you had those rich sessions with Lou Jacobs—wasn’t that his name? That must have been a rewarding period, even if a trying one. No wonder that man McFarland sensed something different in you. I know I’m treading on dangerous ground in opening that subject again—he gave a quick, appealing glance at Mona—but really, Henry, this life of adventure and movement which you crave … excuse me, I don’t mean to put it crudely … I know you’re a man of contemplation too … Here he sort of gave up, chuckled, snorted, rolled his tongue over his lips, swallowed a few drops of cognac, slapped his thighs, looked from one to the other of us, and let out a good long belly laugh. Damn it, you know what I mean! he blurted out. I’m stuttering like a school-boy. I think what I intended to say is just this—you need a larger scope to your life. You need to meet men who are more near your own stature. You should be able to travel, have money in your pocket, explore, investigate. In short—bigger adventures, bigger exploits.
I nodded my head smilingly, urging him to continue.
Of course I realize also that this life which you’re now leading is rich in ways that are beyond me … rich to you as a writer, I mean. I know that a man doesn’t choose the material of life which is to make his art. That’s given, or ordained, by the cast of his temperament. These queer characters who seem attracted to you as if by a magnet, no doubt there are vast worlds to be plumbed there. But at what a cost! It would exhaust me to spend an evening with most of them. I enjoy listening to you telling about them, but I don’t think I could cope with all that myself. What I mean, Henry, is that they don’t seem to give anything in return for the attention you bestow on them. But there I go again. I’m wrong, of
