At the same time he had a shyness which was quixotic. If Mona were to seat herself opposite him and cross her legs he would avert his eyes. If she put her make-up on in his presence he would pretend not to be aware of it. Her beauty itself made him self-conscious. It also made him suspicious. A woman as beautiful and intelligent as Mona marrying a guy like me—there was something louche about it in his eyes. He knew of course where and how I had met her. Now and then he referred to it casually, but always tellingly. When she spoke of her childhood in Poland or Vienna he would watch me attentively, hoping, I suppose, that I would embellish the story, fill in the long missing details. There was a gap somewhere and it bothered him. Once he went so far as to remark that he doubted she was ever born in Poland. But that she was a Jewess, that he never suspected. She was American through and through, that was his private belief. But an unusual American, for a female, that is. He couldn’t get over her diction, which was without the slightest trace of accent or locale. How did she ever learn to speak such a pure English? he would ask. How could I be sure of anything concerning her? I know you, he would say, you’re a Romantic … you prefer to have it a mystery. Which was quite true. Me, he said, I want to know what’s what.
I want things above board. No hide-and-seek games for me. Yet it was he, Stanley, who was so enamoured of Herr Nagel, the hero of Mysteries. What discussions we had by the kitchen fire a propos this enigmatic figure of Hamsun’s! He would have given his right arm, Stanley, to have created such a character. It was not only that Herr Nagel enveloped himself in a shroud of mystery, it was also his sense of humor, his pranks, his voile-faces which appealed to Stanley. But what he adored above all was the contradictory nature of the man. Herr Nagel’s helplessness in the presence of the woman he loved, his masochism, his diabolism, his sentimentality, his extreme vulnerability—these qualities made him extraordinarily precious. I tell you, Henry, that Hamsun is a master, Stanley would say. He had said the same of Conrad, of Balzac, of Anatole France, of de Maupassant, of Loti. He had said the same of Reymont when he finished The Peasants. (For quite different reasons, to be sure.) Of one thing I could be certain, he would never say it of me, even if the whole world were unanimous about it. A master of literature, from Stanley’s viewpoint, had to be a type like the above-mentioned. He had first of all to be of the Old World; he had to be suave, he had to have finesse, subtlety, velleity. He had to have a style which was finished; he had to be adept with plot, characters, situations; he had to command a broad knowledge of the world and of human affairs. In his opinion I would never, never be able to spin a good yarn. Even in Sherwood Anderson, whom he grudgingly admitted now and then to be an excellent story-teller, he found grave faults. His style was too fresh, too raw, too new for Stanley’s taste. Yet he laughed until the tears came to his eyes when he read The Triumph of the Egg. He admitted it resentfully. He had laughed in spite of himself, as it were. And then he took on about Jerome K. Jerome, certainly a strange bird for a Polski to mention. In Stanley’s opinion nothing funnier had ever been written than Three Men in a Boat. Even the Polish writers had no one to equal him. But then the Poles were seldom funny. If a Pole calls something funny, said Stanley, it means that he finds it bizarre. He’s too sombre, too tragic, to appreciate horseplay. Speaking thus, the word droll would inevitably cross his lips. Droll was his favorite word, and it expressed a multitude of dissimilar things. To be droll implied a certain vein of excellence, of uniqueness, which Stanley prized exceedingly. If he said of an author—He’s a droll chap—he meant thereby to pay him a weighty compliment. Gogol, for instance, was one of these droll chaps. On the other hand he could refer to Bernard Shaw as a droll chap too. Or Strindberg. Or even Maeterlinck.
A rum bird, Stanley. Droll, what!
As I say, these sessions often took place in the garden. If we had the money I would get a few bottles of beer for him. He liked only beer and vodka. Now and then we held conversation with a Syrian neighbor leaning out of a second storey window. They were friendly people and the women were ravishingly beautiful. Mona with her heavy dark tresses they had taken at first to be one of them. Our landlady, we soon learned, was violently prejudiced against the Syrians. For her they represented the scum of the earth—first, because they were dark-skinned, second, because they spoke a language which no one else understood. She made it clear to us in no uncertain terms that she was horrified by the attention we gave them. She trusted we would have sense enough not to invite them to our quarters. After all, she put it tersely, she was running a respectable rooming house.
I swallowed her remarks as best I could, always bearing in mind that we might one day need a stay-of-grace. I dismissed her as an eccentric old witch about whom the less said the better. I took the precaution to warn Mona never to leave our door unlocked when we were absent. One look at my manuscripts and we would be done for.
It was after we were here a few weeks that Mona informed me one day that she had run into Tony Maurer again. He and the Milwaukee millionaire were gadding about together. Apparently, Tony Maurer was sincerely desirous of helping Mona. He had confided that he was working on his friend to get him to write out a sizeable check—perhaps for a thousand dollars.
This was precisely the sort of break we had been praying for. With a sum like that we would be able to break out and see something of the world. Or we might join O’Mara. The latter was constantly sending us post-cards from the sunny South telling us how smooth and easy things were down there. At any rate, we were through with little ole New York.
It was Mona who kept urging a change of scene. It disturbed her profoundly that I no longer made any effort to write. To be sure, I had half convinced her that it was all her fault, that so long as she continued to lead a double life I could do nothing. (Not that I distrusted her, I emphasized, but that she caused me too much worry.) As I say, she was only partially convinced. She knew that the trouble went deeper. In her simple, naive way she concluded that the only way to alter the situation was to alter the scene.
Then one day there came a telephone call from Tony Maurer, apprising her that everything was set for the kill. She was to meet the two of them at Times Square where a limousine would be waiting to take them up the Hudson. A good meal at an inn and the check would be forthcoming. (It would be for seven hundred and fifty, not a thousand.)
After she had gone I picked up a book. It was Wisdom and Destiny. I hadn’t read a line of Maeterlinck for years: it was like getting back to a raw diet. Towards midnight, feeling somewhat restless and uneasy, I went for a stroll. Passing a department store I noticed a window crammed with camping and porting outfits. That gave me the idea of tramping through the South.
With knapsacks over our backs we could hitch-hike to the Virginia border and then foot it the rest of the way. I saw just the outfit I intended to don, including a magnificent pair of brogans. The idea so fascinated me that I suddenly grew hungry, hungry as a bear. I headed for Joe’s restaurant at Borough Hall where I treated myself to a porterhouse steak smothered in onions. As I ate I dreamed. In a day or two we would be out of the filthy city, sleeping under the stars, fording streams, climbing mountains, sweating, panting, singing at the top of our lungs. I prolonged the reverie while putting away a huge piece of home-made apple pie (deep-dish fashion) together with a strong cup of coffee. I was about ready now to pick my teeth and saunter homeward. At the cash register I noticed the array of choice cigars. I selected a Romeo and Juliet and, with a feeling of peace and good-will toward the whole world, I bit off the tip of the cigar and spat it out.
It must have been two o’clock when I got home. I undressed and got into bed; I lay there with eyes wide open, expecting any minute to hear her footsteps. Towards dawn I dozed off.
It was eight-thirty when she came tripping in. Not the least bit tired
