Little Casino (15 page)

Darkness and oblivion are often recognized by means of the small, tentative steps taken toward the “realm of silence,” and at the most unlikely times in the most unlikely places.

The driver of the car reportedly cried out, spitting out partly chewed kernels of sweet (butter-and-cream) corn, “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” This should count as a rumor. Many years later, on his deathbed, he said, “Five minutes more?” as if his nurse could grant this request.

A regiment, its battalions under their snapping flags and guidons, wheeling, company by company, at the far end of a parade grounds so as to pass in review, often marches to John Philip Sousa, the “semper fidelis maniac,” as Edward Dorn calls him in one of the great poems of the century. Such a regiment on parade is something to see.

Incidentally, “Five minutes more?” is, essentially, what Dr. Faustus cried out when his time came.

John Philip Sousa knew all of
Hamlet
and
Dr. Faustus
by heart. Or so the driver of the car said.

Gallant improvisation

H
E MORE OR LESS INTENDED TO MAKE A
fool of himself. That’s what he wanted to do, wanted to be, a fool. He got drunk in a rather casual way, not so as to be able to make a fool of himself, but so as to be able to deny to himself that he wanted to do this. A subtle drunk, oh yes, and a subtle fool. It might be useful to remember that the woman he called up was a woman he hadn’t seen in many years. He had, as the serviceable locution puts it, gotten over her almost immediately after she had broken off their relationship, or whatever she called it. Relationship sounds like her kind of word. He had, as a matter of fact, not even thought of her for eleven years, and here he was, in a saloon’s phone booth, calling her up. People are, for the most part, utterly absurd. This is proven over and over again.

After she realized who it was on the line, she expressed a kind of bored surprise, then an equally bored irritation, and then he confessed, lying wildly, in a kind of gallant improvisation, that he still loved her, he had always and always loved her, he was crazy abouther still, he thought of her constantly. He had, he said, built a sort of a shrine to her in his memory. That’s what he said. Oh, brother!

Her husband got on the line then and shouted at him and he surprised himself by suddenly sobbing. He hung up, got out of the booth, and sat at the bar. He’d be late for supper again, and when he got home his wife would be angry and silent and the food would be in the refrigerator already. Why go home? Maybe there was somebody else he could call. He used to know a lot of girls. How about Amelia, in the black dress, he knew her! And then there were all the other ones, the other girls he knew once.

The bartender dropped a coaster in front of him and he ordered a Fleischmann’s with beer back. The bartender paid no attention to the fact that he was still sniffling. I made some goddamn fool of myself, he said to the bartender, some goddamn fool! He banged his fist on the bar. The bartender poured a hooker of whiskey and drew a beer. You’re not gonna give me any grief, are you, champ? He shook his head. No grief, he said. He threw the whiskey down and took a sip of beer. Did you ever happen to know if a girl called Ruth ever used to come in here some time ago? he asked. Ruth? the bartender said. I don’t even know
you,
champ. Drink up and take a walk, ok? You’ve had plenty.

It may well be that this fool wanted to say to this woman—let’s call her Ruth, too—“Be careful! It’s my heart.”

Later that night, he thought that it would have been a good idea to remind Ruth’s loudmouth belligerent yahoo husband that love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement.

His wife wasn’t home. Good news at last! He took a Tudor beer out of the refrigerator and got the bottle of Paul Jones down from the cupboard. The prince of beers, he said. The king of whiskeys. The new taste of modern luxury, old fellow! Then he sat down in the living room and lighted a cigarette. The bird of time has but a little way to flutter, Ruth, he said.

He could call Amelia. She used to wear a pearl choker with her black dress.

It has not been explained how this drunken fool got Ruth’s number, since he did not know her married name. It has, however, been commented on by an astute copy editor that neither Ruth nor her loudmouth belligerent yahoo husband asked, “How did you get this number?”

Epistolary associates

DEAREST BELOVED,

I
DREAM OF YOU OFTEN, MOST RECENTLY
,of the way you looked on that night when your loose gown fell from your shoulders and you embraced me with your gentle delicate arms and kissed me, so sweetly. I can still hear your lovely whispering voice, “Dear heart, how do you like this?”
That
was no dream, no, I lay wide awake, but now I have little more than dreams. Everything that we had together is gone, changed, because of my gentleness perhaps, a gentleness which led, curiously, to your forsaking me. And yet I still love you, for love is love for beggars as for kings, as the saying has it, and love doesn’t change because the circumstances that surround it change, no, it is like a fixed star. That is to say, my love is as it always was, even though your love has ceased to be, but, perhaps, perhaps, not ceased forever? You are my true love, you have my heart. Wake, love, to this fact, and please give yourself a moment to listen to the cheerful birds singing, singing, caroling of love! Don’t be as unkind as man’s ingratitude, or a proof that loving is mere folly. Where, where
are
you? And where is your heart roaming? Please come home to me.

Every wise man, and every wise man’s son, knows that love is for now, for the present, not for the hereafter. What is to come is unknown, and still unsure. When you were just twenty, and I used to say to you, “Come and kiss me, sweet,” wherever we were, at parties, the movies, in the park or on the street, anywhere, you’d blush and laugh, but you will surely recall that you always
did
kiss me, when I reminded you, lightly, to be sure, that youth is a quality that will not endure. I know that you remember this. You were made all of light in those days, and the pure beams of that light scorched me, I’m afraid, not that I didn’t welcome such sweet torture. I would welcome it still if you could tell me where all those past years are, where they went, those years so full of laughter and loving that are now as lost as a falling star. I still remember you as true and fair and honest, I still see the beauty of your face, like a heavenly paradise, and stupidly, often, all too often, I think that we might meet anywhere, just down the street, in the market, even next door! I thought that our love would never die, never decay, I thought that we were made, I confess it, that we were
invented
by such a love, I thought that our love somehow proved that we were—I don’t quite know how to put this—mysterious. Do you know what I mean?

Oh dearest, please come back to me, or, at least, please reply to this letter. Give me a little hope, allow yourself, once again, to be desired, let me tell you, once again, how sweet and fair you are. I will love you until the world ends, until it is destroyed by flood or fire, until the whole world turns to coal! But we don’t, now, have enough world, or enough time to see how, as you once said, “things will work out.” At our backs, every minute, every second, time hurries on and in front of us is eternity, like a vast desert of loneliness. So let’s devour this time, let’s put our strength and our sweetness together, as we used to do.
Please
write or call. As it is, I admit, openly, that your absence has displaced my mind so that it is quite hopelessly locked into endless dreams of you.

As ever, my Beloved, good night, with a soft lullaby,

Your devoted, enamored, and faithful friend.

Dear friend:

Thanks for your recent letter. I enjoyed it, and think that the writing is wonderful, just as writing. But you don’t quite engage that crucial faculty of response in me that must be engaged in order for me to respond as I feel I should respond to wonderful writing. You seem sure of yourself, but you’re not getting it across to me, you don’t manage to “jolt” me into taking a fresh view of our relationship. You, as always, have a good, though perhaps obsessive, sense of the past, and you often manage to convey marvelous emotional effect, but in the end your recollection of what we “had” together seems, I’m afraid, rather flat. I’m sorry.

In addition, your letter seems much too long, and I could not, for the life of me, unravel its real purpose, which is, perhaps, my failing. You seem, as always, obsessed with repetitions and, to be blunt, “fancy phrases,” which are not really what I’m looking for right now, verbally speaking. Despite these objections, it’s clear that what you do well you do
really
well, but my question, in the last analysis, is: Why did you write this? You’ve always had a talent for conversation, the “gift of gab,” as an old, wise editor I once knew liked to say—she was a spark plug of a woman, indeed, in what was a man’s world!—but I just did not
feel
this letter, chatty though it is. It seems full of repetitions, and for what you have to say, or plead, the letter’s inordinate length really can’t be justified. In a word, it is much too long.

I won’t go into any unwanted song and dance concerning my view of our past relationship and your obsessions with the past and my physical person—I always told you these things, but you never listened to me. I can only say, as objectively as possible, that your letter, much like the last unfortunate months of our relationship, is neither engaging nor exhilarating. Indeed, I found myself struggling to read it all the way through, given its inordinately “poetic” language and its needless repetitions. In a way, it’s an amazing letter, because you occasionally manage to make pain and paranoia funny as hell, but, finally, I just got bored. I’m sorry. Somehow, the gist, the real “heart” of your message cannot survive the irony of its presentation, I’m sorry to say. Perhaps it’s the repetitiveness of the themes that damages your sincerity. I believe you, I do, really, when you say that you love me, but a letter that wishes to convey such a sentiment, such a passion, should do more than just say so. It should be a virtually perfect stunner. As it is, some of your phrases tickled my somewhat perverse and perhaps even “vulgar” sense of humor, an effect that I strongly doubt you intended. But then I may be wrong, since I could not figure out the purpose of your letter: Why, why did he do this? I kept asking myself, to the point of almost obsessive repetition. You are quite successful at conveying certain emotional states, if that was your intention, but you never allowed me to take a fresh “look” at our relationship, which is presented as rather flat and tame from its very inception, although I—and you—know better. You can, however, when you wish, convey strong emotional effects, repetitious though they may be.

I’m disappointed not to be coming back to you with an offer to touch base again with you. You know that I’ve always been a big “fan” of yours, even during those times when you were obsessed with lists of “fancy phrases.” I know that I was supposed to like, or at least admire, those lists, but I was never really able to get into them. They were, of course, occasionally powerful and intriguing, but they were also somewhat paranoid and compulsive. I regret to say that I am not at all comfortable at the thought of reviving our friendship, relationship, what have you. I feel, strongly, that a decision to do so would be a disservice to both of us. Your letter, despite its length and, if I may be forgiven for saying so, its obsessive repetitiousness, has its poignant beauties, but it is also dark and claustrophobic and extremely narrow in scope. I might even go so far as to say that I found it full of a kind of disguised, benign unpleasantness. I don’t think, really, my old friend, that you desire a resumption of what you call “strengthened sweetness,” when such a relationship does not suit my particular needs at the present time.