I remember coming to a bridge, and looking down into the water I saw myself drowning. I jumped off the bridge head first and when I came up I saw Yetta floating under the bridge. She was dead.” And then suddenly he added: “You were there yesterday when I knocked at the door, weren’t you? I knew you were there and I couldn’t go away. I knew too that Yetta was dying and I wanted to be with her, but I was afraid to go alone.” I said nothing and he rambled on. “The first girl I ever loved died in the same way. I was only a kid and I couldn’t get over it. Every night I used to go to the cemetery and sit by her grave. People thought I was out of my mind. I guess I was out of my mind. Yesterday; when I was standing at the door, it all came back to me. I was back in Trenton, at the grave, and the sister of the girl I loved was sitting beside me.
She said it couldn’t go on that way much longer, that I would go mad. I thought to myself that I really was mad and to prove it to myself I decided to do something mad and so I said to her it isn’t her I love, It’s you, and I pulled her over me and we lay there kissing each other and finally I screwed her, right beside the grave. And I think that cured me because I never went back there again and I never thought about her any more -until yesterday when I was standing at the door. If I could have gotten hold of you yesterday I would have strangled you. I don’t know why I felt that way but it seemed to me that you had opened up a tomb, that you were violating the dead body of the girl I loved. That’s crazy isn’t it? And why did I come to see you to-night? Maybe it’s because you’re absolutely indifferent to me … because you’re not a Jew and I can talk to you… because you don’t give a damn, and you’re right… Did you ever read The Revolt of the Angels?”
We had just arrived at the bicycle path which encircles the park. The lights of the boulevard were swimming in the mist. I took a good look at him and I saw that he was out of his head. I wondered if I could make him laugh. I was afraid, too, that if he once got started laughing he would never stop. So I began to talk at random, about Anatole France at first, and then about other writers, and finally, when I felt that I was losing him, I suddenly switched to General Ivolgin, and with that he began to laugh, not a laugh either, but a cackle, a hideous cackle, like a rooster with its head on the block. It got him so badly that he had to stop and hold his guts; the tears were streaming down his eyes and between the cackles he let out the most terrible, heart-rending sobs. “I knew you would do me good,” he blurted out, as the last outbreak died away. “I always said you were a crazy son of a bitch… You’re a Jew bastard yourself, only you don’t know it… Now tell me, you bastard, how was it yesterday? Did you get your end in? Didn’t I tell you she was a good lay? And do you know who she’s living with, Jesus, you were lucky you didn’t get caught. She’s living with a Russian poet – you know the guy, too. I introduced you to him once at the Cafe Royal. Better not let him get wind of it. He’ll beat your brains out… and he’ll write a beautiful poem about it and send it to her with a bunch of roses. Sure I knew him out in Stelton, in the anarchist colony. His old man was a Nihilist. The whole family’s crazy. By the way, you’d better take care of yourself. I meant to tell you that the other day, but I didn’t think you would act so quickly. You know she may have syphilis. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just telling you for your own good. . . .”
This outburst seemed to really assuage him. He was trying to tell me in his twisted Jewish way that he liked me. To do so he had to first destroy everything around me – the wife, the job, my friends, the “nigger wench”, as he called Valeska, and so on. “I think some day you’re going to be a great writer,” he said. “But,” he added maliciously, “first you’ll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don’t know what the word means yet. You only think you’ve suffered. You’ve got to fall in love first. That nigger wench now… you don’t really suppose that you’re in love with her, do you? Did you ever take a good look at her ass … how it’s spreading, I mean? In five years she’ll look like Aunt Jemima. You’ll make a swell couple walking down the avenue with a string of pickaninnies trailing behind you. Jesus, I’d rather see you marry a Jewish girl. You wouldn’t appreciate her, of course, but she’d be good for you. You need something to steady yourself. You’re scattering your energies. Listen, why do you run around with all these dumb bastards you pick up?
You seem to have a genius for picking up the wrong people. Why don’t you throw yourself into something useful? You don’t belong in that job – you could be a big guy somewhere. Maybe a labour leader … I don’t know what exactly. But first you’ve got to get rid of that hatchet-faced wife of yours. Ugh! when I look at her I could spit in her face. I don’t see how a guy like you could ever have married a bitch like that. What was it – just a pair of streaming ovaries? Listen, that’s what’s the matter with you -you’ve got nothing but sex on the brain… No, I don’t mean that either. You’ve got a mind and you’ve got passion and enthusiasm … but you don’t seem to give a damn what you do or what happens to you.
If you weren’t such a romantic bastard I’d almost swear that you were a Jew. It’s different with me -1 never had anything to look forward to. But you’ve got something in you – only you’re too damned lazy to bring it out. Listen, when I hear you talk sometimes I think to myself – if only that guy would put it down on paper! Why you could write a book that would make a guy like Dreiser hang his head. You’re different from the Americans I know; somehow you don’t belong, and it’s a damned good thing you don’t. You’re a little cracked, too – I suppose you know that. But in a good way. Listen a little while ago, if it had been anybody else who talked to me that way I’d have murdered him. I think I like you better because you didn’t try to give me any sympathy. I know better than to expect sympathy from you. If you had said one false word to-night I’d have really gone mad. I know it. I was on the very edge. When you started in about General Ivolgin I thought for a minute it was all up with me.
That’s what makes me think you’ve got something in you … that was real cunning! And now let me tell you something … if you don’t pull yourself together soon you’re going to be screwy. You’ve got something inside you that’s eating you up. I don’t know what it is, but you can’t put it over on me. I know you from the bottom up. I know there’s something griping you – and it’s not just your wife, nor your job, nor even that nigger wench whom you think you’re in love with. Sometimes I think you were born in the wrong time. Listen, I don’t want you to think I’m making an idol of you but there’s something to what I say… if you had just a little more confidence in yourself you could be the biggest man in the world to-day. You wouldn’t even have to be a writer. You might become another Jesus Christ for all I know. Don’t laugh -1 mean it. You haven’t the slightest idea of your own possibilities … you’re absolutely blind to everything except your own desires. You don’t know what you want. You don’t know because you never stop to think. You’re letting people use you up. You’re a damned fool, an idiot. If I had a tenth of what you’ve got I could turn the world upside down. You think that’s crazy, eh? Well, listen to me… I was never more sane in
