I should like to be there when Fanny opens the trunk. «See, Fanny, this is what I bought in Budapest from an old Jew… This is what they wear in Bulgaria — it’s pure wool… This belonged to the Duke of something or other — no, you don’t wind it, you put it in the sun… This I want you to wear, Fanny, when we go to the Opera … wear it with that comb I showed you… And this, Fanny, is something Tania picked up for me … she’s a little bit on your type…»
And Fanny is sitting there on the settee, just as she was in the oleograph, with Moe on one side of her and little Murray, Murray the genius, on the other. Her fat legs are a little too short to reach the floor. Her eyes have a dull permanganate glow. Breasts like ripe red cabbage; they bobble a little when she leans forward. But the sad thing about her is that the juice has been cut off. She sits there like a dead storage battery; her face is out of plumb — it needs a little animation, a sudden spurt of juice to bring it back into focus. Moldorf is jumping around in front of her like a fat toad. His flesh quivers. He slips and it is difficult for him to roll over again on his belly. She prods him with her thick toes. His eyes protrude a little further. «Kick me again, Fanny, that was good.» She gives him a good prod this time — it leaves a permanent dent in his paunch. His face is close to the carpet; the wattles are joggling in the nap of the rug. He livens up a bit, flips around, springs from furniture to furniture. «Fanny, you are marvelous!» He is sitting now on her shoulder. He bites a little piece from her ear, just a little tip from the lobe where it doesn’t hurt. But she’s still dead — all storage battery and no juice. He falls on her lap and lies there quivering like a toothache. He is all warm now and helpless. His belly glistens like a patent-leather shoe. In the sockets of his eyes a pair of fancy vest buttons. «Unbutton my eyes, Fanny, I want to see you better!» Fanny carries him to bed and drops a little hot wax over his eyes. She puts rings around his navel and a thermometer up his ass. She places him and he quivers again. Suddenly he’s dwindled, shrunk completely out of sight. She searches all over for him, in her intestines, everywhere. Something is tickling her — she doesn’t know where exactly. The bed is full of toads and fancy vest buttons. «Fanny, where are you?» Something is tickling her — she can’t say where. The buttons are dropping off the bed. The toads are climbing the walls. A tickling and a tickling. «Fanny, take the wax out of my eyes! I want to look at you!» But Fanny is laughing, squirming with laughter. There is something inside her, tickling and tickling. She’ll die laughing if she doesn’t find it. «Fanny, the trunk is full of beautiful things. Fanny, do you hear me?» Fanny is laughing, laughing like a fat worm. Her belly is swollen with laughter. Her legs are getting blue. «O God, Morris, there is something tickling me… I can’t help it!»
Sunday! Left the Villa Borghese a little before noon, just as Boris was getting ready to sit down to lunch. I left out of a sense of delicacy, because it really pains Boris to see me sitting there in the studio with an empty belly. Why he doesn’t invite me to lunch with him I don’t know. He says he can’t afford it, but that’s no excuse. Anyway, I’m delicate about it. If it pains him to eat alone in my presence it would probably pain him more to share his meal with me. It’s not my place to pry into his secret affairs.
Dropped in at the Cronstadts’ and they were eating too. A young chicken with wild rice. Pretended that I had eaten already, but I could have torn the chicken from the baby’s hands. This is not just false modesty — it’s a kind of perversion, I’m thinking. Twice they asked me if I wouldn’t join them. No! No! Wouldn’t even accept a cup of coffee after the meal. I’m delicat, I am! On the way out I cast a lingering glance at the bones lying on the baby’s plate — there was still meat on them.
Prowling around aimlessly. A beautiful day — so far. The Rue de Buci is alive, crawling. The bars wide open and the curbs lined with bicycles. All the meat and vegetable markets are in full swing. Arms loaded with truck bandaged in newspapers. A fine Catholic Sunday — in the morning, at least.
High noon and here I am standing on an empty belly at the confluence of all these crooked lanes that reek with the odor of food. Opposite me is the Hôtel de Louisiane. A grim old hostelry known to the bad boys of the Rue de Bud in the good old days. Hotels and food, and I’m walking about like a leper with crabs gnawing at my entrails. On Sunday mornings there’s a fever in the streets. Nothing like it anywhere, except perhaps on the East Side, or down around Chatham Square. The Rue de l’Echaudé is seething. The streets twist and turn, at every angle a fresh hive of activity. Long queues of people with vegetables under their arms, turning in here and there with crisp, sparkling appetites. Nothing but food, food, food. Makes one delirious.
Pass the Square de Furstenberg. Looks different now, at high noon. The other night when I passed by it was deserted, bleak, spectral. In the middle of the square four black trees that have not yet begun to blossom. Intellectual trees, nourished by the paving stones. Like T. S. Eliot’s verse. Here, by God, if Marie Laurencin ever brought her Lesbians out into the open, would be the place for them to commune. Très lesbienne ici. Sterile, hybrid, dry as Boris’ heart.
In the little garden adjoining the Eglise St. Germain are a few dismounted gargoyles. Monsters that jut forward with a terrifying plunge. On the benches other monsters — old people, idiots, cripples, epileptics. Snoozing there quietly, waiting for the dinner bell to ring. At the Galerie Zak across the way some imbecile has made a picture of the cosmos — on the flat. A painter’s cosmos! Full of odds and ends, bric-a-brac. In the lower left-hand corner, however, there’s an anchor — and a dinner bell. Salute! Salute! O Cosmos!
Still prowling around. Mid afternoon. Guts rattling. Beginning to rain now. Notre-Dame rises tomblike from the water. The gargoyles lean far out over the lace façade. They hang there like an idée fixe in the mind of a monomaniac. An old man with yellow whiskers approaches me. Has some Jaworski nonsense in his hand. Comes up to me with his head thrown back and the rain splashing in his face turns the golden sands to mud. Bookstore with some of Raoul Dufy’s drawings in the window. Drawings of charwomen with rosebushes between their legs. A treatise on the philosophy of Joan Miró. The philosophy, mind you!
In the same window: A Man Cut in Slices! Chapter one: the man in the eyes of his family. Chapter two: the same in the eyes of his mistress. Chapter three: — No chapter three. Have to come back tomorrow for chapters three and four. Every day the window trimmer turns a fresh page. A man cut in slices… You can’t imagine how furious I am not to have thought of a title like that! Where is this bloke who writes «the same in the eyes of his mistress … the same in the eyes of… the same …?» Where is this guy? Who is he? I want to hug him. I wish to Christ I had had brains enough to think of a title like that — instead of Crazy Cock and the other fool things I invented. Well, fuck a duck! I congratulate him just the same.
I wish him luck with his fine title. Here’s another slice for you — for your next book! Ring me up some day. I’m living at the Villa Borghese. We’re all dead, or dying, or about to die. We need good titles. We need meat — slices and slices of meat — juicy tenderloins, porterhouse steaks, kidneys, mountain oysters, sweetbreads. Some day, when I’m standing at the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, I’m going to remember this title and I’m going to put down everything that goes on in my noodle — caviar, rain drops, axle grease, vermicelli, liverwurst — slices and slices of it. And I’ll tell no one why, after I had put everything down, I suddenly went home and chopped the baby to pieces. Un acte gratuit pour vous, cher monsieur si bien coupé en tranches!
How a man can wander about all day on an empty belly, and even get an erection once
