To borrow successfully one has to be a monomaniac on the subject, as with everything else. If you can give yourself up to it, as with Yoga exercises, that is to say, whole-heartedly, without squeamish-ness or reservations of any kind, you can live your whole life without earning an honest penny. Naturally the price is too great. In a pinch the best single quality is desperation. The best course is the unusual one. It is easier, for example, to borrow from one who is your inferior than from an equal or from one who is above you. It’s also very important to be willing to compromise yourself, not to speak of lowering yourself, which is a sine quanon. The man who borrows is always a culprit, always a potential thief. Nobody ever gets back what he lent, even if the sum is paid with interest. The man who exacts his pound of flesh is always short-changed, even if by nothing more than rancor or hatred. Borrowing is a positive thing, lending negative. To be a borrower may be uncomfortable, but it is also exhilarating, instructive, life-like. The borrower pities the lender, though he must often put up with his insults and injuries.
Fundamentally borrower and lender are one and the same. That is why no amount of philosophizing can eradicate the evil. They are made for one another, just as man and woman are made for each other. No matter how fantastic the need, no matter how crazy the terms, there will always be a man to lend an ear, to fork up the necessary. A good borrower goes about his task like a good criminal. His first principle is never to expect something for nothing. He doesn’t want to know how to get the money on the least terms but exactly the contrary. When the right men meet there is a minimum of talk. They take each other at face value, as we say. The ideal lender is the realist who knows that to-morrow the situation may be reversed and the borrower become the lender.
There was only one person I knew who could see it in the right light and that was my father. He was the one I always held in reserve for the crucial moment. And he was the only one I never failed to pay back. Not only did he never refuse me but he inspired me to give to others in the same way. Every time I borrowed from him I became a better lender—or I should say giver, because I’ve never insisted on being repaid. There is only one way to repay kindnesses and that is to be kind in turn to those who come to you in distress. To repay a debt is utterly unnecessary, so far as the cosmic bookkeeping is concerned. (All others forms of bookkeeping are wasteful and anachronistic.) «Neither a borrower nor a lender be,» said the good Shakespeare, voicing a wish-fulfillment out of his Utopian dream life. For men on earth, borrowing and lending is not only essential but should be increased to outlandish proportions. The fellow who is really practical is the fool who looks neither to the left nor the right, who gives without question and asks unblushingly.
To make it short, I went to my old man and without beating about the bush I asked him for fifty dollars. To my surprise he didn’t have that much in the bank but he informed me quickly that he could borrow it from one of the other tailors. I asked him if he would be good enough to do that for me and he said sure, of course, just a minute.
«I’ll give it back to you in a week or so,» I said, as I was saying good-bye.
«Don’t worry about that,» he replied, «any time will do. I hope everything’s all right with you otherwise.»
At twelve-thirty sharp I handed Mara the money. She ran off at once, promising to meet me the next day in the garden of the Pagoda Tea Room. I thought it a good day to make a little touch for myself and so I trotted off to Costigan’s office to ask for a five spot. He was out, but one of the clerks, suspecting the nature of my errand, volunteered to help me out. He said he wanted to thank me for what I had done for his cousin. Cousin? I couldn’t think who his cousin might be. «Don’t you remember the boy you took to the psychiatric clinic?» he said. «He was a. runaway boy from Kentucky—his father was a tailor, remember? You telegraphed his father that you would take care of the boy until he arrived. That was my cousin.»
I remembered that lad very well. He wanted to be an actor—his glands were out of order. At the clinic they said he was an incipient criminal. He had stolen some clothes belonging to a buddy of his while at the Newsboy’s Home. He was a fine lad, more of a poet than an actor. If his glands were out of order then mine were completely disorganized. He had given the psychiatrist a kick in the balls for his pains—that’s why they had tried to make him out a criminal. When I heard about it I laughed my head off. He should have used a blackjack on that sadistic Jake of a psychiatrist…. Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise to find I had an unknown friend in the wardrobe attendant. Nice, too, to hear him say I could have more any time I was in need of a little change. In the street I bumped into an ex-wardrobe attendant now working as a messenger. He insisted on giving me two tickets for a ball to be run under the auspices of the Magicians and Conjurors’ Association of New York City of which he was the president. «I wish you could get me a wardrobe attendant’s job again,» he said. «I have so many things to attend to now since I’m president of the Association that I can’t do justice to the messenger work. Besides, my wife is going to have another baby soon. Why don’t you come up to see us—I have some new tricks to show you. The little boy is learning to be a ventriloquist; I’m going to put him on the stage in a year or so. We have to make a living somehow. You know, magic doesn’t pay very much. And I’m getting too old to run my feet down too much. I was cut out for the professional life. You understand my personal capabilities and idiosyncrasies. If you come to the ball I’m going to introduce you to the great Thurston— he’s promised to be there. I’ve got to go now—I’ve got a death message to deliver.»
You understand my personal capabilities and idiosyncrasies. I stood at the corner and wrote it down on the back of an envelope. Seventeen years ago. Here it is. Fuchs was his name. Gerhardt Fuchs of FU Office. Same name as that of the «hundski picker in Glendale where Joey and Tony lived. Used to meet this other Fuchs coming through the cemetery grounds, a sack of dog, bird and cat shit over his shoulder. Brought it to a perfumery house somewhere. Always smelt like a skunk. A foul, evil-minded bugger, one the original tribe of blind Hessians. Fuchs and Kunz—two obscene birds who could be seen drinking every night in Laubscher’s Beer Garden near the Fresh Pond Road. Kunz was tubercular, a dermatologist by profession. They talked a bird and skin language over their stinking pots of beer. Ridgewood was their Mecca. Never spoke English unless they had to. Germany was their God and the Kaiser His spokesman. Well, bad ‘cess to them! May they die like dirty umlauts— if they haven’t already. Funny, though, to find a pair of inseparable twins with names like that. Idiosyncratic, I should say….
3
And now it’s Saturday afternoon, the sun’s out bright and strong, and I’m sipping some pale Chinese tea in Dr. Wuchee Hachee Tao’s garden. He’s just handed me a long poem about Mother written on fire-cracker paper. He looks like a superior type of man—not very communicable either. I’d like to ask him something about the original Tao
