good, maybe they’ll come back with a little sense! A lot of them didn’t come back, of course. But the others! – listen, do you suppose they got more human, more considerate? Not at all! They’re all butchers at heart, and when they’re up against it they squeal. They make me sick, the whole fucking lot of ’em. I see what they’re like, bailing them out every day. I see it from both sides of the fence. On the other side it stinks even worse. Why, if I told you some of the things I knew about the judges who condemn these poor bastards you’d want to slug them. All you have to do is look at their faces. Yes sir. Henry, I’d like to think there was once a time when things were different. We haven’t seen any real life – and we’re not going to see any. This thing is going to last another few thousand years, if I know anything about it. You think I’m mercenary. You think I’m cuckoo to want to earn a lot of money, don’t you? Well I’ll tell you, I want to earn a little pile so that I can get my feet out of this muck. I’d go off and live with a nigger wench if I could get away from this atmosphere. I’ve worked my balls off trying to get where I am, which isn’t very far. I don’t believe in work any more than you do -1 -was trained that way, that’s all. If I could put over a deal, if I could swindle a pile out of one of these dirty bastards I’m dealing with, I’d do it with a dear conscience. I know a little too much about the law, that’s the trouble. But I’ll fool them yet, you’ll see. And when I put it over I’ll put it over big…”

Another shot of rye as the sea food’s coming along and he starts in again. “I meant that about taking you on a trip with me. I’m thinking about it seriously. I suppose you’ll tell me you’ve got a wife and a kid to look after. Listen when are you going to break off with that battle-axe of yours? Don’t you know that you’ve got to ditch her?” He begins to laugh softly. “Ho! Ho! To think that I was the one who picked her out for you! Did I ever think you’d be chump enough to get hitched up to her? I thought I was recommending you a nice piece of tail and you, you poor slob, you marry her. Ho ho! Listen to me. Henry, while you’ve got a little sense left: don’t let that sour-balled puss muck up your life for you, do you get me? I don’t care what you do or where you go. I’d hate to see you leave town … I’d miss you, I’m telling you that frankly, but Jesus, if you have to go to Africa, beat it, get out of her clutches, she’s no good for you. Sometimes when I get hold of a good cunt I think to myself now there’s something nice for Henry – and I have in mind to introduce her to you, and then of course I forget. But Jesus, man, there’s thousands of cunts in the world you get along with. To think that you had to pick on a mean bitch like that .. . Do you want more bacon? You’d better eat what you want now, you know there won’t be any dough later. Have another drink, eh? Listen, if you try to run away from me to-day I swear I’ll never lend you a cent…

What was I saying? Oh yeah, about that screwy bitch you married. Listen, are you going to do it or not? Every time I see you you tell me you’re going to run away, but you never do it. You don’t think you’re supporting her, I hope? She don’t need you, you sap, don’t you see that? She just wants to torture you. As for the kid… well, shit, if I were in your boots I’d drown it. That sounds kind of mean, doesn’t it, but you know what I mean. You’re not a father. I don’t know what the hell you are… I just know you’re too god-damned good a fellow to be wasting your life on them. Listen, why don’t you try to make something of yourself? You’re young yet and you make a good appearance. Go off somewhere, way the hell on, and start all over again. If you need a little money I’ll raise it for you. It’s like throwing it down a sewer, I know, but I’ll do it for you just the same. The truth is. Henry, I like you a hell of a lot. I’ve taken more from you than I would from anybody in the world. I guess we have a lot in common, coming from the old neighbourhood. Funny I didn’t know you in those days. Shit, I’m getting sentimental…”

The day wore on like that, with lots to eat and drink, the sun out strong, a car to tote us around, cigars in between, dozing a little on the beach studying the cunts passing by, talking, laughing, singing a bit too – one of many, many days I spent like that with MacGregor. Days like that really seemed to make the wheel stop. On the surface it was jolly and happy go lucky; time passing like a sticky dream. But underneath it was fatalistic, premonitory, leaving me the next day morbid and restless. I knew very well I’d have to make a break some day; I knew very well I was pissing my time away. But I knew also that there was nothing I could do about it – yet. Something had to happen, something big, something that would sweep me off my feet. All I needed was a push, but it had to be some force outside my world that could give me the right push, that I was certain of. I couldn’t eat my heart out, because it wasn’t in my nature. All my life things had worked out all right – in the end. It wasn’t in the cards for me to exert myself. Something had to be left to Providence – in my case a whole lot. Despite all the outward manifestations of misfortune or mismanagement I knew that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And with a double crown too. The external situation was bad, admitted – but what bothered me more was the internal situation. I was really afraid of myself, of my appetite, my curiosity, my flexibility, my permeability, my malleability, my geniality, my powers of adaptation.

No situation in itself could frighten me: I somehow always saw myself sitting pretty, sitting inside a buttercup, as it were and sipping the honey. Even if I were flung in jail I had a hunch I’d enjoy it. It was because I knew how not to resist, I suppose. Other people wore themselves out tugging and straining and pulling; my strategy was to float with the tide. What people did to me didn’t bother me nearly so much as what they were doing to others or to themselves. I was really so damned well off inside that I had to take on the problems of the world. And that’s why I was in a mess all the time. I wasn’t synchronized with my own destiny, so to speak. I was trying to live out the world destiny. If I got home of an evening, for instance, and there was no food in the house, not even for the kid, I would turn right around and go looking for the food. But what I noticed about myself, and that was what puzzled me, was that no sooner outside and hustling for the grub than I was back at the Weltanschauung again. I didn’t think of food for us exclusively, I thought of food in general, food in all its stages, everywhere in the world at that hour, and how it was gotten and how it was prepared and what people did if they didn’t have it and how maybe there was a way to fix it so that everybody would have it when they wanted it and no more time wasted on such an idiotically simple problem. I felt sorry for the wife and kid, sure, but also felt sorry for the Hottentots and the Australian Bushmen, not to mention the starving Belgians and the Turks and the Armenians. I felt sorry for the human race, for the stupidity of man and his lack of imagination. Missing a meal wasn’t so terrible – it was the ghastly emptiness of the street that disturbed me profoundly. All those bloody houses, one like another, and all so empty and cheerless-looking. Fine paving stones under foot and asphalt in the middle of the street and beautifully-hideously-elegant brown-stone stoops to walk up, and yet a guy could walk about all day and all night on this expensive material and be looking for a crust of bread. That’s what got me.

The incongruousness of it. If one could only dash out with a dinner bell and yell “Listen, listen, people, I’m a guy what’s hungry. Who wants shoes shined? Who wants the garbage brought out? Who wants the drainpipes cleaned out?” If you could only go out in the street and put it to them dear like that. But no, you don’t dare to open