A queer one, Melanie, and even though her wits had flown, she understood in a primitive, almost cannibalistic way that sex was everywhere, like food and water and sleep and bunions. It used to exasperate me that Maude kept up such unnecessary pretences when Melanie was around. If we lay on the couch after dinner, to enjoy a quiet little fuck in the dark, Maude would suddenly jump up and switch on a soft light—so that Melanie wouldn’t suspect what we were up to, or that she wouldn’t intrude absent-mindedly to hand us a letter which she had forgotten to give us at breakfast. I used to enjoy the thought of Melanie breaking in on us (say just as Maude is climbing over me), breaking in on us to hand me a letter, and me taking the letter with a smile and a thank you, and Melanie standing there a moment to say some little nothing about the hot water being too hot or asking Maude if she wanted eggs for the morning or some head cheese. It would have given me a great kick to pull off a stunt like that on Maude. But Maude could never admit to herself that Melanie knew we had intercourse together. Regarding her either as an idiot or wholly daft, she had made herself believe that people like Melanie never thought of sex. Her step-father had had no sex life with this demented creature, that she was certain of. She wouldn’t go into it, why she was so certain, but she was positive of it, and the way she dismissed the subject indicated all too clearly that she thought a crime had been done her step-father. One would almost think, to follow her, that Melanie had deliberately addled her pate in order to deprive the step-father of his sexual due.
Melanie had a soft spot in her heart for me, always took my part when I quarreled with Maude, and never once that I can remember made any attempt to reproach me for my flagrant misbehavior. It was that way from the very beginning. Maude used to try to keep her out of sight, in the early days. Melanie was something she was deeply ashamed of—a walking reminder, it would seem, of the family taint. Melanie seemed not to notice the difference between good and bad people; she had only one guiding principle, an immediate response to kindness. And so, when she discovered that I was not trying to run away from her as soon as she opened her trap, when she found that I could listen to her prattle and not become distraught, like Maude, when she found that I enjoyed food and beer and wine, especially cheeses and bolognas, she was willing to be my slave. I held the most wonderful moronic conversations with her some times when Maude was absent—usually in the kitchen with a bottle of beer between us and perhaps a little liverwurst and a bit of Liederkranz on the side. Giving her free rein as I would on such occasions, I caught remarkable glimpses of her not uninteresting past. «They» seemed to have hailed from some indolent, semi-constipated region where the Wurzburger flows. The women were always getting caught and the men were always going to jail for some trivial reason. It was a sort of Sunday School picnic atmosphere with kegs of beer, pumpernickel sandwiches, taffeta petticoats, lace drawers” and stray goats fucking contentedly on the greensward. Sometimes I had a mind to ask her if she had ever let herself be fucked by a Shetland pony. If Melanie thought you sincerely wanted to know, she would answer a question like that without the least to do. You could pass from a question like that to a query about the communion service without modulating. There was no censor standing on her subliminal threshold; messengers came and went without the least formality.
It was wonderful to see how she took up the little Jap who was our star boarder. Tori Takekuchi was his name, and a delightful, gracious, princely little chap he was. He had taken the situation in at a glance, despite his inadequate grasp of the language. Of course, being a Jap, it was easy for him to smile and beam at Melanie when she posted herself at his door-sill and prattled like a cracked nannygoat. He smiled the same way at us, even when we informed him of a grave catastrophe. I think he would have given the same smile had I told him that I was going to die in a few minutes. Of course Melanie knew that Orientals smile in this inscrutable way, but she thought Mr. T’s smile—that was how she called him always, «Mr. T.»—was particularly engaging. She thought he was like a doll. So clean and tidy too! Never left a crumb of dirt behind him.
When we got more intimate, and I must say that we all became very intimate before a month or two was out, Mr. T. began bringing girls to his room. He had, to be sure, discreetly taken me aside one day and asked if he might be permitted to bring a young lady home occasionally, offering the flimsy excuse (with a broad grin) that he had business to transact. I used his excuse to obtain Maude’s consent. I pretended that the little bugger was so unattractive that it couldn’t possibly be anything but business which would bring a pretty American girl to his room. Maude consented reluctantly, torn between the desire to keep up appearances with the neighbors and the fear of losing a generous boarder whose money we needed.
I wasn’t home when the first intruder stepped across the threshold, but I heard about it the next day—heard that she was «terribly cute». It was Melanie who spilled the beans. She was so glad that he had found a little friend—like himself.
«But she’s not a friend,» Maude put in ceremoniously.
«Oh well,» drawled Melanie, «maybe it’s just business… but she was awfully cute. He has to have a girl, just like any one else.»
A few weeks later Mr. T. had switched to another girl. This one wasn’t so «cute». She was a good head taller than him, built like a panther, and quite obviously not there to talk business.
I congratulated him the next morning at table, asking him point blank where he had picked up such a blazing beauty.
«Dance hall,» said Mr. T.. baring his yellow fangs most amiably, then bursting into a girlish giggle.
«Very intelligent, yes?» I queried, just to keep the ball rolling.
«Oh yes, her very intelligent, her very good girl.»
«Look out she doesn’t give you a dose of clap,» says I, calmly swallowing my coffee.
I thought Maude would fall off the chair. How could I talk that way to Mr. T.? It was insulting as well as disgusting, she wanted me to know.
Mr. T. looked puzzled. He hadn’t yet learned the word clap. He was smiling, of course, and why shouldn’t he? He didn’t give a fuck what we said so long as we allowed him to do as he pleased.
Out of politeness I volunteered a definition. Headache, I explained.
He laughed uproariously at this. Very good joke. Yes, he understood. He understood nothing, the little prick, but it was polite to let him think he understood. Then I smiled too, a banjo smile, which made Mr. T. giggle some more, rinse his fingers in the water tumbler, belch and throw his napkin on the floor.
I must confess that he had good taste, Mr. T. No doubt he was generous with his money. They made my mouth water, some of them. To him I don’t think their beauty meant very much; he probably was more interested in their weight, the texture of their skin, and above all, in their cleanliness. He had all kinds—red heads, blondes, brunettes, short, tall, plump, lithe ones—quite as if he had drawn them from a grab bag. He was buying cunt—and that was all there was to it. At the same time he was learning a little more English. («How you say this…?» «What that called?» «You like bon-bons, yes?») He was good at making gifts—it was an art with him. I often thought, when I saw him taking a girl to his room, heard him giggle and stammer in that fuckee-wuckee way of the Japs, how much better off the girls were to have got hold of Mr. T. than some young American college boy out on a spree. I felt sure, too, that Mr. T. always got his money’s worth. («You turn over, please.» «You suck now, yes?») Compared to the artists in his own country, these dumb American bitches must have cut a sorrowful figure in Mr. T.’s eyes. I remembered O’Mara’s description of his visits to the bordels in Japan. They were like opium dreams, to hear him tell. The emphasis was placed on the preliminaries, apparently. There was music, incense, baths, massages, caresses, a full orchestration of seduction and enchantment, making the final consummation a thing of unbearable ecstasy. «Just like dolls,» O’Mara would say. «And so gentle, so loving. They bewitch you.» And then he would go into raptures about the tricks they had up their sleeves. They seemed to have a manual of
