If I were reading a book and happened to strike a wonderful passage I would close the book then and there and go for a walk. I hated the thought of coming to the end of a good book. I would tease it along, delay the inevitable as long as possible. But always, when I hit a great passage, I would stop reading immediately. Out I would go, rain, hail, snow or ice, and chew the cud. One can become so full with the spirit of another being as to be literally afraid of bursting. Every one, I presume, has had the experience. This other being, let me observe, is always a sort of alter ego. It isn’t a mere matter of recognizing a kindred soul, it is a matter of recognizing oneself. To come suddenly face to face with yourself! What a moment! Closing the book you continue the act of creation. And this procedure, this ritual, I should say, is always the same: a communication on all fronts at once. No more barriers. More alone than ever, you are nevertheless glued to the world as never before. Incorporated in it. Suddenly it becomes clear to you, that when God made the world He did not abandon it to sit in contemplation—somewhere in limbo. God made the world and He entered into it: that is the meaning of creation.
2
It was only a few months of bliss we enjoyed in the Japanese love nest. Once a week I paid my visit to Maude and the child, brought the alimony, went for a stroll in the park. Mona had her job in the theatre and from her earnings took care of her mother and two healthy brothers. About once every ten days I ate at the French-Italian grocery, usually without Mona because she had to be at the theatre early. Occasionally I visited Ulric to play a quiet game of chess with him. The session usually ended in a discussion of painters and how they painted. Sometimes I simply went for a stroll in the evening, generally to the foreign quarters. Often I stayed home and read or played the gramophone. Mona usually arrived home about midnight; we would have a little snack, talk for a few hours, and then to bed. It was getting more and more difficult to get up in the morning. To say good-bye to Mona was always a tussle. Finally it came about that I remained away from the office three days handrunning. It was just a sufficient break to make it impossible for me to return. Three glorious days and nights, doing exactly what I pleased, eating well, sleeping long, enjoying every minute of the day, feeling immeasurably rich inside, losing all ambition to battle with the world, itching to begin my own private life, confident of the future, done with the past, how could I go back into harness? Besides, I felt that I had been doing Clancy, my boss, a great injustice. If I had any loyalty or integrity I ought to tell him that I was fed up. I knew that he was constantly defending me, constantly making excuses for me to his boss, the right holy Mr. Twilliger. Sooner or later, Spivak, always on my trail, would get the goods on me. Of late he had been spending a great deal of time in Brooklyn, right in my own precincts. No, the jig was up. It was time to make a clean breast of it.
On the fourth day I got up early as if in preparation for work. I waited almost until ready to leave before broaching my thought to Mona. She was so delighted at the idea that she begged me to resign at once and be back for lunch. It seemed to me likewise that the quicker it was over the better. Spivak would undoubtedly find another employment manager in jig time.
When I got to the office there was an unusual swarm of applicants waiting for me. Hymie was at his post, his ear glued to the telephone, frantically operating the switchboard as usual. There were so many new vacancies that if he had had an army of waybills to manipulate he would still have been helpless, I went to my desk, emptied it of my private effects, gathered them up in a brief-case, and beckoned Hymie to approach.
Hymie, I’m quitting, I said. I’ll leave it to you to notify Clancy or Spivak.
Hymie looked at me as if I had taken leave of my wits. There was an awkward pause and then in a matter of fact tone he asked me what I was going to do about my pay. Let them keep it, I said.
What? he yelled. This time, I could see, he knew definitely I was nuts.
I haven’t got the heart to ask for my pay since I’m leaving without notice, don’t you see? I’m sorry to leave you in the lurch, Hymie. But you won’t be here long either, I take it. A few more words and I was off. I stood outside the big show window a few moments to observe the applicants stewing and milling about. It was over with. Lake a surgical operation. It didn’t seem possible to me that I had spent almost five years in the service of this heartless corporation. I understood how a soldier must feel on being mustered out of the army.
Free! Free! Free!
Instead of ducking immediately into the subway I strolled up Broadway, just to see how it felt to be on one’s own and at large at that hour of the morning. My poor fellow-workers, there they were scurrying to their jobs, all with that grim, harried look I knew so well. Some were already grinding the pavement, hopeful even at that early hour of receiving an order, selling an insurance policy, or placing an ad. How stupid, meaningless, idiotic it appeared now, the rat race. It always had seemed crazy to me, but now it appeared diabolical as well.
If only I were to run into Spivak! If only he were to ask me what I was doing strolling about so leisurely!
I walked about aimlessly for the sheer thrill of tasting my new-found freedom; it gave me a perverse pleasure to watch the slaves fulfilling their appointed rounds. A whole lifetime lay ahead of me. In a few months I would be thirty-three years of age—and my own master absolute. Then and there I made a vow never to work for any one again. Never again would I take orders. The work of the world was for the other blokes—I would have no part in it. I had talent and I would cultivate it. I would become a writer or I would starve to death.
On the way home I stopped off at a music shop and bought an album of records—a Beethoven quartet, if I remember rightly. On the Brooklyn side I bought a bunch of flowers and wangled a bottle of Chianti out of the private stock of an Italian friend. The new life would begin with a good lunch—and music. It would take a lot of good living to wipe out all remembrance of the days, months, years I had wasted in the cosmococcic tread-mill. To do absolutely nothing for a stretch, to idle the days away, what a heavenly pastime that would be!
It was the glorious month of September; the leaves were turning and there was the smell of smoke in the air. It was hot and cool at the same time. One could still go to the beach for a swim. There were so many things I wanted to do all at once that I was almost jumping out of my skin. First of all I would get a piano and start playing again. Perhaps I would even take up painting. Letting my mind roam at will, suddenly it came to rest on a beloved image. The bike! How wonderful it would be if I could get my old racing wheel back again! It was only about two years ago that I had sold it to my cousin who lived nearby. Perhaps he would sell it back to me. It was a special model which I had picked up from a German cyclist at the end of a six-day race. Made in Chemnitz, Bohemia. Ah, but it was a long time since I had taken a spin to Coney Island. Autumn days! Just made for cycling. I prayed that my fool cousin hadn’t changed the saddle; it was a Brooks saddle and well broken in. (And those straps that fitted round the toe-clips, I hoped he hadn’t discarded them.) Recalling the feel of my foot slipping into the toe-clip, I re-experienced the most delicious sensations. Riding now along the gravel path under the archway of trees that runs from Prospect Park to Coney Island, my rhythm one with the machine, my brain thoroughly emptied, only the sensation of rushing through space, fast or slow, according to the dictates of the chronometer inside me. The landscape to
