Arguing with Kronski he was a different person. That mania for perfection, that pedagogic fury which was such a powerful asset to him as a music teacher, reduced him to ridiculous proportions when he launched into the world of ideas. Kronski toyed with him as a cat toys with a mouse. He delighted in tripping his adversary up. He defended nothing, except his own nimble security. Arthur Raymond had something of the Jack Dempsey style, when it came to a heated discussion. He bore in steadily, always with short, swift jabs, like a chopping block fitted with dancing legs. Now and then he made a lunge, a brilliant lunge, only to find that he was grappling with space. Kronski had a trick of vanishing completely just when he seemed to be on the ropes. You would find him a second later hanging from the chandelier. He had no recognizable strategy, unless it was to elude, to jibe and taunt, to infuriate his opponent, and then do the disappearing stunt. Arthur Raymond seemed to be saying all the time: «Put up your dukes! Fight! Fight, you bastard!» But Kronski had no intention of making a punching bag of himself.
I never caught Arthur Raymond reading a book. I don’t think he read many books, yet he had an amazing knowledge of many things. Whatever he read he remembered with astonishing vividness and accuracy. Aside from my friend Roy Hamilton, he could extract more from a book than any one I knew. He literally eviscerated the text. Roy Hamilton would proceed millimetre by millimetre, so to speak, lingering over a phrase for days or weeks at a time. It sometimes took him a year or two to finish a small book, but when he was through with it he did seem to have added a cubit to his stature. For him a half dozen good books were sufficient to supply him with spiritual fodder for the rest of his life. Thoughts to him were living things, as they were to Louis Lambert. Having read one book thoroughly he gave the very real impression of knowing all books. He thought and lived his way through a book, emerging from the experience a new and glorified being. He was the very opposite of the scholar whose stature diminishes with each book he reads. Books for him were what Yoga is to the earnest seeker after truth: they helped him unite with God.
Arthur Raymond, on the other hand, gave the illusion of devouring a book’s contents. He read with muscular attention. Or so I imagined, observing their effect upon him. He read like a sponge, intent upon absorbing the writer’s thoughts. His sole concern was to ingest, to assimilate, to redistribute. He was a vandal. Each new book represented a new conquest. Books fortified his ego. He didn’t grow, he became puffed with pride and arrogance. He looked for corroborations in order to sally forth and give battle. He wouldn’t permit himself to be made over. He could render tribute to the author he admired but he could never bend the knee. He remained adamant and inflexible; his carapace grew thicker and thicker.
He was the type who, upon finishing a book, can talk of nothing else for weeks to come. No matter what one touched upon, in conversing with him, he related it to the book he had just devoured. The curious thing about these hangovers was that the more he talked about the book the more one felt his unconscious desire to destroy it. At bottom it always seemed to me that he was really ashamed of having permitted another mind to enthrall him. His talk was not of the book but of how thoroughly and penetratingly he, Arthur Raymond, had understood it. To expect him to give a resume of the book was futile. He gave you just enough information about its subject matter to enable you to follow his analyses and elaborations intelligently. Though he kept saying to you—«You must read it, it’s marvelous,» what he meant was—«You can take it from me that it’s an important work, else I shouldn’t be wasting my time discussing it with you.» And what he implied, moreover, was that it was just as well you hadn’t read it because you would never by your own efforts be able to unearth the gems which he, Arthur Raymond, had found in it. «When I get through telling you about it,» he seemed to say, «you won’t need to read it. I know not only what the author said but what he intended to say and didn’t.»
At the time I speak of one of his passions was Sigmund Freud. I don’t mean to imply that he knew only Freud. No, he spoke as though he had an acquaintance with the whole swarm, from Krafft-Ebing and Stekel on down. He regarded Freud not only as a thinker but as a poet. Kronski, on the other hand, whose reading was wider and deeper in this field, who had the advantage of clinical experience as well, who was then making a comparative study of psycho-analysis and not merely endeavoring to assimilate one new contribution after the other, irritated Arthur Raymond beyond words by what the latter was pleased to call «his corrosive skepticism».
It was in our cubicle that these discussions, which were not only bitter but interminable, took place. Mona had given up the dance hall and was looking about for work in the theatre. Often we all ate together in the kitchen, attempting towards midnight to disperse and reach our respective quarters. But Arthur Raymond had absolutely no regard for time; when he was interested in a subject he thought nothing of food, sleep or sex. If he went to bed at five in the morning he would get up at eight, if he chose to, or remain in bed for eighteen hours. He left it to Rebecca to rearrange his schedule. Naturally this sort of life created an atmosphere of chaos and postponement. When it got too complicated Arthur Raymond would throw up his hands and walk out on it, sometimes remaining away for days. After these periods of absence strange rumors would come floating back, stories which shed quite a different lustre upon his character. Apparently these excursions were necessary to complete the physical being; the life of a musician couldn’t possibly satisfy his robust nature. He had to get away occasionally and mix with his cronies—a most incongruous assortment of characters, incidentally. Some of his escapades were innocent and amusing, others were sordid and ugly. Brought up as a sissy, he had found it imperative to develop the brutal side of his nature. He enjoyed picking a quarrel with some burly, blustering idiot much bigger than himself and cold-bloodedly breaking the man’s arm or leg. He had done what so many little fellows always dream of doing— mastered ju-jitsu. He had done it in order to have the pleasure of insulting the menacing giants who make up the world of bullies which the little man dreads. The bigger they were the better Arthur Raymond liked it. He didn’t dare to use his fists for fear or injuring his hands, but, rather meanly I thought, he would always pretend to fight and then of course take his adversary by surprise. «I don’t admire that in you at all,» I told him once. «If you played me a trick like that I’d break a bottle over your head.» He looked at me in astonishment. He knew that I didn’t care to fight or to wrestle. «I wouldn’t mind,» I added, «if you resorted to those tricks as a last extremity. But you just want to show off. You’re a little bully, and a little bully is even more obnoxious than a big one. Some day you’ll tackle the wrong man….»
He laughed. I always interpreted things in a queer way, he said.
«That’s why I like you,» he would say. «You’re unpredictable. You have no code. Really, Henry» —and he would give a hearty guffaw—«you’re essentially treacherous. If we ever make a new world you’ll have no place in it. You don’t seem to understand what it means to give and take. You’re an intellectual hobo…. At times I don’t understand you at all. You’re always gay and affable, almost sociable, and yet …well, you have no loyalties. I try to be friends with you… we were friends once, you remember… but you’ve changed… you’re hard inside… you’re untouchable. God, you think I’m hard… I’m just cocky, pugnacious, full of spirits. You’re the one who’s hard. You’re a gangster, do you know that?» He chuckled. «Yes, Henry, that’s what you are— you’re a spiritual gangster. I don’t trust you…»
It nettled him to observe the easy rapport which existed between Rebecca and myself. He wasn’t jealous, nor had he reason to be, but he was envious of my ability to create such a smooth relationship with his wife. He was always telling me of her intellectual attainments’, as though that should be the basis of attraction between us, but in a discussion, if Rebecca were present, he behaved towards her as if her opinions were of negligible importance. Mona he listened to with a gravity that was almost comical. He listened, of course, just long enough to hear her
