Letty Fox (69 page)

“You must be crazy,” said Susannah, staring at me in her hard, bright way. “What is eating you? I'll bet anything you like that when you get married and get a kid you'll do just the same as me.”

“Does that disprove it? I can go loony too.”

I lighted a cigarette and said impatiently: “I'm sick of fake radicalism and fake education. You've got no theory at all for one or the other.”

“Well, what do you know about that,” she said, laughing, “so I have no theory in radicalism!”

“You know the headlines of the day,” said I, smoking furiously, and through my cigarette.

Susannah said, “But all the radicals send their children to those schools; it's the best thing, they get all the newest ideas.”

“It's all empiricism and parent-flattery, there's no theory,” said I. “But a system can't exist without some thought behind it. The thought is just what I say, you've got to strip yourself of every cent you have, to immolate yourself before capitalism. It's a frenzy they've got you into. You're really adoring and worshiping capitalism. Because, if you were serious, wouldn't you all be starting up free progressive schools for the poor, for the slum kids? But it's only for your little doctors, artists, and teachers in embryo. So you're not serious. You're just trying to force the kids so they'll bring in big money later on.”

“Let's have another drink,” said Aleck, with his sweet atony. He brought one over, but did not kiss me, because the eye of his mistress was on him.

“Letty's always boiling over.”

“Why not?” said I. “If I'm crazy, I like to know it, at any rate.” “Well, why don't you get out of the middle classes,” said Susannah, bitterly, “if they're so bad.”

“Go back to where I came from, do you mean? Listen, Sue, your Blaise when he grows up—will he be in an itsy-bitsy world with fifteen fancy bosses trying to bring out his individualism, or will he be in a world where he's got to get a job in the Metropolitan Life, or Ford's assembly-plant, or U.S. Steel, or something? The Blaise-world's a fantasy-world. And to be sure he'll go crazy, you send him to witch doctors too, who make him think there's something divine in his innermost I. There'll never be anything in his eye, but the kind of twinkle you know. And I'm damned if you're not cultivating his sex, too, so that his sex acts will be super-duper and he'll have a good time seducing all kinds of poor youngsters who work in Woolworth basements and innocents like Jacky and me who think that you ought to learn something about Aristotle and Pascal. You're just training him to be a complete rotter. And he's got there already.”

We went at it hammer and tongs. Susannah would not have done defending her son's genius. Of course, he was just an ordinary pup like a million others, who would end up as a bridge-playing knight of Pythias, or something.

Well, this was my exit. I went away quite sick of them all and angry with myself. I was sick of the brainless corruption, and thought, “Business is a thousand times cleaner.”

I was a ship at sea, without a port. I was no hulk nor ghostship, but a good freighter made to carry bread and Bibles about the world; I was a good, deep draft, built on dependable old-fashioned lines, no victory ship, no canal boat, and no ship of the line. But a freighter doesn't particularly care for the heaving billow; a freighter has a destination; and as Grandma Fox would have said, also: “A worker, I say, a worker must work, or have money.” I couldn't float around for very long. I was in a bad state of mind. I could analyze anything right under my nose, and was not in want of theory—but about my personal life, I had no theory. I often wondered who and what I was. If people ran me down, I half believed it; if they praised me, I believed it, more than half. It was easy for me to come under the influence of an amoral, ignorant, but brilliant and unflinching sex-careerist like my new friend Amy Bourne.

Amy lived on a bit of income from Australia, which was her birthplace; and Lorna did odd jobs: she wrote society notes, or took photographs, or handled a gardening column, or worked in an advertising agency, or sang new songs in a record-ingle in a smart store, or took old men out dancing and necking, or sold chocolates, or designed wallpaper, or drew baby angels for stork events, or was hostess in Schraffts', or did the night clubs with a wealthy male, or mistressed it a bit, just as she could. She was a hefty, handsome brunette, who could have played lady to a nicety, but she lost her men through clumsy promiscuities; and Amy was the only natural man-hunter I've ever met. I felt like a gawking schoolchild with her. She was a short, dark chip of a girl, with almost a boy's figure; her face, the perfect, pointed oval. She was one of the few abstracted human beings alive. She regarded moralizing as a natural haltingtime for some (not for her) to catch up on imperfections. She was veritably keen and penetrating, with flawless manners, an excellent heart; she made a good companion for women and men. While in pursuit, your game was no concern of hers: she did not man-steal until she saw something suitable, delectable in your grasp. At times I was less delicate. I stole out of jealousy, ambition, sulkiness.

This was the worst year of my life, perhaps, this and the one succeeding. I won't go into the numerous temporary affairs, disappointments, things unworthy of me, one-night stands; the disillusions and shames that I went through. On my twentieth birthday I would be able to say: “
En l'an vingtième de mon age quand toutes mes hontes j'ai bues
,” with an apostrophe to François Villon, “
Mon semblable, mon frère, quel escargot que tu fus!
—Brother and kin! What a slowcoach you were!”

It was the plague year for me, as if Clays had been all my luck. All the same, in the first few months when I was rooming with my pillow girls, Amy and Lorna, I had some sober entertainment. I was not free to go to the deuce, as I liked; I was obliged to take lessons from the indomitable Amy. I was thirsty for hints on the love affair and I did not despise any laboratory techniques of the Casanovas, male and female. I had suffered too much, composing messages, reproaches, declarations, speeches, most of which brought simply failure and insult, not to be glad to learn the standbys, which save the self-respect and soul of the chain-lover who might otherwise commit suicide. All the love speeches invented by sixteen-year-olds, however banal, are an effort of the heart; and the heart is wounded when they evoke laughter. Later on, with much more experience, one suffers in the same way, and one feels less rejected if the words one proffers as the bouquet of oneself are simply a formula, part of the classic drama. They have two uses—You comfort yourself by saying, “I didn't really mean it”; and clear your conscience of crime by saying, “He must have known it was just a formula of politeness.”

I listened eagerly to all the tales, trying to pick up the bestworn, most celebrated lines of whoremongers, seducers, Love-laces, Don Juans, for the words of this song are the same for both sexes, it's a sexless game, indeed. Thus, “I love you, you are wonderful to me, I was so worried because you didn't telephone me, I sat all day waiting for your call, I couldn't sleep last night thinking of you, all last week I was dreaming of you,” and the whole juke-box story, may be blighting sentences leading to suicides in the beginning of a career; but, after a few years, these are slugs passed about at will, and leading only to a pleasant feeling. Sometimes, of course, one hands these slugs to the wrong person; likewise, when one wishes to believe, one believes, alas, these well-worn stories, and again suffers. But this peculiar usage, common with the sex-careerist and criminal, is intended to save him from pain, not others.

Amy had a unique idea of sex, beautiful as the finished workmanship of any born craftsman. She admitted everything— the troubles of youth, the difficulties of the world, the necessity of marriage, love of children and husband, woman's traditional place in the scheme of things, philandering, passion, love-crime and lovesanctity. She was a kind of Prioress, and not only had her rule and loved to guide other women, but loved to adjudicate on each separate case. She trained us for the profession of love.

I won't discuss, at this moment, her other pupil, Lorna—a girl able to win scholarships, but abysmally stupid; a beautiful girl, awkward and backward; a girl with society manners who had not the penetration of an ox. Besides Lorna, Amy had me. She said I was just a finer Lorna, but educable. She took no notice of my foul temper; she was sharp and cruel, pointing out all my physical defects and laughing at my strategy. This baby Chesterfield tried to make me take lessons in dramatic art and in voice, said I must learn to ride again, play golf, and dance elegantly. I must gesture, thus and thus; I must not tickle my nose, scratch my head, take off my shoes; I must make the best of this line, subdue that line, and watch out for this other line. I must smile without mincing it, and learn all the proper tones of voice; know how to sound comradely, languishing, angry, passionate. Nothing must be left to chance, until chance was long past and it was a settled thing. Walk properly, relax properly, she said; and there is the whole of physical culture. She was a thin, wiry creature. Do not jig and stretch and put your arms akimbo, she said; this annoys a man very much, and don't keep flirting your cigarette, spilling your ashes, jingling your ice, pulling out strands of hair, dancing on your toes. As to what walk to cultivate, she made us cultivate the one that suited us; Lorna was tall and hippy, I was the short, Spanish type, but without
déhanchement
. It is useless trying to cultivate the French slippy hip roll if you haven't it; much better the panther-stride or the athletic chop-chop, if it is your type. She had us walking up and down the room, lifting our feet, dragging our feet, going brittle, going languid, passing through a door looking our hostess up and down, leaving a lingering glance behind us, leaving a jolly brisk thank-you behind us; we walked in a long dress and with the brisk flirt-flirt of a tailored suit.

She had no hips, no plumpness, scarcely any breasts, and thin arms, but she was a beautiful dancer, full of muscular giving grace like an under-fed, house-blighted, but passionate Spanish girl at the onset of puberty. She studied our manners, Lorna's and mine, with the utmost particularity. She also performed for us all the usual services, such as telephoning when a beau was there, and pretending to be another beau, sending telegrams at appropriate times, telegraphing flowers (paid for by us, of course), sending orchids. Her genius stooped to anything and included anything. She actually got this heavy-limbed Lorna, a regular Flanders mare, married off, by pretending for about seven months to be an infatuated lover living in Hot Springs. She dug out a forwarding agency, which corresponded with another forwarding agency in Hot Springs, and so Lorna had a pile of love letters which greatly stirred the man she eventually married.

I did not let Amy mix in my affairs as much as this, for I never told her all my affairs. I lied about them, and I fancy Amy knew and respected this. I moved away from the girls after about three months, for, though Amy had a string of men of her own, Lorna was so stupid she lost all hers, and would cast her eyes on mine.

Meanwhile, I copy from an old notebook, in which I began to study Amy's method, some of Amy's tricks, rules, and aphorisms.

AMY'S QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q. He is through with me, I think; should I make it final by asking for my love letters back?

A. Certainly, if they're good ones; you can use them again.

Q. Should I give him his letters back, instead? That would be final!

A. Heavens, no. They're exhibit A.

Q. Should I give his presents back?

A. What, he gave presents? Keep them, and he'll tag along after them.

Q. I love my fiancé, but I love another man too—what shall I do?

A. Throw up a nickel. If it comes down heads, stick to your fiancé; if it comes down tails, stick to your fiancé.

Q. What about a girl most attracts a man?

A. Other men.

Q. But how can you hold a man?

A. If there were any known way, we wouldn't have marriage laws.

Q. Still, I think a child holds a man.

A. How old a child?

Q. Mother says the only way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

A. What's her batting average?

Q. I wouldn't look at another man after I was married.

A. Well, don't let him see it in your face beforehand.

Q. I'm taller than he is; I'm embarrassed when we're walking down the street. What can I do?

A. Walk in the gutter while he walks on the curb; or let him take you about in a wheelchair.

Q. Should I have to do with him? The girls all say he's dangerous; and I feel it.

A. That's Nature's (and the girls') way of advertising their favorites.

Q. Each time he writes to me he asks for something.

A. Keep him in hopes: he'll keep writing.

Q. Can you love two men at the same time?

A. A woman is supposed to be able to love her nine children at the same time.

Q. I decided not to sleep with him before we're married; and he's too poor yet. What shall I do?

A. Conceal your decision from your girlfriends.

Q. He doesn't respect me now that we've slept together.

A. Then it's a good thing you didn't marry him.

Q. He writes me such lovely letters. Do you think he's serious?

A. More is required in a court of law.

Q. He wants me to go to Afghanistan if I marry him.

A. Is it immoral?

Q. I love him, but he doesn't make enough to live on.

A. Marry someone else.

Q. I wrote him a letter saying that I loved him, but he didn't answer; whatever shall I do?

A. Write to him saying you put a letter intended for another in his envelope.

Q. He fights with my mother.

A. Leave them to it; congratulate the winner and sympathize with the loser—separately.