Miss Lonelyhearts (7 page)

"Well, my friend, what do you
think of the South Seas?" Miss
Lonelyhearts
tried to stop him by making believe that he was asleep. But Shrike was not
fooled.

"Again silence," he said,
"and again you are right. The South Seas are played out and there's little
use in imitating Gauguin. But don't be discouraged, we have only scratched the
surface of our subject. Let us now examine Hedonism, or take the cash and let
the credit go...

"You dedicate your life to the
pursuit of pleasure. No over-indulgence, mind you, but knowing that your body
is a pleasure
machine,
you treat it carefully in order
to get the most out of it.
Golf as well as booze,
Philadelphia Jack O'Brien and his chest-weights as well as Spanish dancers.
Nor do you neglect the pleasures of the mind. You fornicate under pictures by
Matisse and Picasso, you drink from Renaissance glassware, and often you spend
an evening beside the fireplace with Proust and an apple. Alas, after much good
fun the day comes when you realize that soon you must die. You keep a stiff
upper lip and decide to give a last party. You invite all your old mistresses,
trainers, artists and boon companions. The guests are dressed in black, the
waiters are coons,
the
table is a coffin carved for
you by Eric Gill. You serve caviar and blackberries and licorice candy and
coffee without cream. After the dancing girls have finished, you get to your
feet and call for silence in order to explain your philosophy of life. 'Life,'
you say, 'is a club where they won't stand for squawks, where they deal you
only one hand and you must sit in. So even if the cards are cold and marked by
the hand of fate, play up, play up like a gentleman and a sport. Get tanked,
grab what's on the buffet, use the girls upstairs, but remember, when you throw
box cars, take the curtain like a dead game sport, don't squawk.'...

"I won't even ask you what you
think of such an escape. You haven't the money, nor are you stupid enough to
manage it. But we come now to one that should suit you much better...

"Art! Be an artist or a writer.
When you are cold, warm yourself before the flaming tints of Titian, when you
are hungry, nourish yourself with great spiritual foods by listening to the
noble periods of Bach, the harmonies of Brahms and the thunder of Beethoven. Do
you think there is anything in the fact that their names all begin with B? But
don't take a chance, smoke a 3 B pipe, and remember these immortal lines: When
to the suddenness of melody the echo parting falls the failing day. What a
rhythm! Tell them to keep their society whores and pressed duck with oranges.
For you
l'art
vivant, the living art, as
you call it.
Tell them that you know that your shoes are broken and that
there are pimples on your face, yes, and that you have buck teeth and a club
foot, but that you don't care, for to-morrow they are playing Beethoven's last
quartets in Carnegie Hall and at home you have Shakespeare's plays in one
volume."

After art, Shrike described suicide
and drugs. When he had finished with them, he came to what he said was the goal
of his lecture.

"My friend, I know of course
that neither the soil, nor the South Seas, nor Hedonism, nor art, nor suicide,
nor drugs, can mean anything to us. We are not men who swallow camels only to
strain at stools. God alone is our escape. The church is our only hope, the
First Church of Christ Dentist, where He is worshiped as Preventer of Decay.
The church whose symbol is the trinity new-style: Father, Son and Wirehaired
Fox Terrier...And so, my good
friend,
let me dictate a
letter to Christ for you:

Dear
Miss
Lonelyhearts
of Miss
Lonelyhearts
--

I
am twenty-six years old and in the newspaper game. Life for me is a desert
empty of comfort. I cannot find pleasure in food, drink, or women--nor do the
arts give me joy any longer. The Leopard of Discontent walks the streets of my
city; the Lion of Discouragement crouches outside the walls of my citadel. All
is desolation and a vexation of the spirit. I feel like hell. How can. I
believe, how can I have faith in this day and age? Is it true that the greatest
scientists believe again in you?

I
read your column and like it very much. There you once wrote: 'When the salt
has lost its
savour
, who shall
savour
it again?'
Is the answer: 'None but the
Saviour
?'

Thanking
you very much for a quick reply, I remain yours truly,

A
Regular Subscriber"

Betty came to see Miss
Lonelyhearts
the next day and every day thereafter. With
her she brought soup and boiled chicken for him to eat.

Hie
knew
that she believed he did not want to get well, yet he followed her instructions
because he realized that his present sickness was unimportant. It was merely a
trick by his body to relieve one more profound.

Whenever he mentioned the letters or
Christ, she changed the subject to tell long stories about life on a farm. She
seemed to think that if he never talked about these things, his body would get
well,
that
if his body got well everything would be
well. He began to realize that there was a definite plan behind her farm talk,
but could not guess what it was.

When the first day of spring
arrived, he felt better. He had already spent more than a week in bed and was
anxious to get out. Betty took him for a walk in the zoo and he was amused by
her evident belief in the curative power of animals. She seemed to think that
it must steady him to look at a buffalo.

He wanted to go back to work, but she
made him get Shrike to extend his sick leave a few days. He was grateful to her
and did as she asked. She then told him her plan. Her aunt still owned the farm
in Connecticut on which she had been born and they could go there and camp in
the house.

She borrowed an old Ford touring car
from a friend. They loaded it with food and equipment and started out early one
morning. As soon as they reached the outskirts of the city, Betty began to act
like an excited child, greeting the trees and grass with delight.

After they had passed through New
Haven, they came to
Bramford
and turned off the State
highway on a dirt road that led to
Monkstown
. The
road went through a wild-looking stretch of woods and they saw some red
squirrels and a partridge. He had to admit, even to himself, that the pale new
leaves, shaped and colored like candle flames, were beautiful and that the air
smelt clean and alive.

There was a pond on the farm and
they caught sight of it through the trees just before coming to the house. She
did not have the key so they had to force the door open. The heavy, musty smell
of old furniture and wood rot made them cough. He complained. Betty said that
she did not mind because it was not a human smell. She put so much meaning into
the word "human" that he laughed and kissed her.

They decided to camp in the kitchen
because it was the largest room and the least crowded with old furniture. There
were four windows and a door and they opened them all to air the place out.

While he unloaded the car, she swept
up and made a fire in the stove out of a broken chair. The stove looked like a
locomotive and was almost as large, but the chimney drew all right and she soon
had a fire going. He got some water from the well and put it on the stove to
boil. When the water was scalding hot, they used it to clean an old mattress
that they had found in one of the bedrooms. Then they put the mattress out in
the sun to dry.

It was almost sundown before Betty
would let him stop working. He sat smoking a cigarette, while she prepared
supper. They had beans, eggs, bread,
fruit
and drank
two cups of coffee apiece.

After they had finished eating,
there was still some light left and they went down to look at the pond. They
sat close together with their backs against a big oak and watched a heron hunt
frogs. Just as they were about to start back, two deer and a fawn came down to
the water on the opposite side of the pond. The flies were bothering them and
they went into the water and began to feed on the lily pads. Betty accidentally
made a noise and the deer floundered back into the woods.

When they returned to the house, it
was quite dark. They lit the kerosene lamp that they had brought with them,
then dragged the mattress into the kitchen and made their bed on the floor next
to the stove.

Before going to bed, they went out
on the kitchen porch to smoke a last cigarette. It was very cold and he had to
go back for a blanket. They sat close together with the blanket wrapped around
them.

There were plenty of stars. A
screech owl made a horrible racket somewhere in the woods and when it
quit,
a loon began down on the pond. The crickets made
almost as much noise as the loon.

Even with the blanket around them it
was cold. They went inside and made a big fire in the stove, using pieces of a
hardwood table to make the fire last. They each ate an apple, then put on their
pajamas and went to bed. He fondled her, but when she said that she was a
virgin, he let her alone and went to sleep.

He woke up with the sun in his eyes.
Betty was already busy at the stove. She sent him down to the pond to wash and
when he got back, breakfast was ready. It consisted of eggs, ham, potatoes,
fried apples, bread and coffee.

After breakfast, she worked at
making the place more comfortable and he drove to
Monkstown
for some fresh fruit and the newspapers. He stopped for gas at the Aw-
Kum
-On Garage and told the attendant about the deer. The
man said that there was still plenty of deer at the pond because no
yids
ever went there. He said it wasn't the hunters who
drove out the deer, but the
yids
.

He got back to the house in time for
lunch and, after eating, they went for a walk in the woods. It was very sad
under the trees. Although spring was well advanced, in the deep shade there was
nothing but death--rotten leaves, gray and white fungi, and over everything a
funereal hush.

Later it grew very hot and they
decided to go for a swim. They went in naked. The water was so cold that they
could only stay in for a short time. They ran back to the house and took a
quick drink of gin, then sat in a sunny spot on the kitchen porch.

Betty was unable to sit still for
long. There was nothing to do in the house, so she began to wash the underwear
she had worn on the trip up. After she had finished, she rigged a line between
two trees.

He sat on the porch and watched her
work. She had her hair tied up in a checked handkerchief, otherwise she was
completely naked. She looked a little fat, but when she lifted something to the
line, all the fat disappeared. Her raised arms pulled her breasts up until they
were like pink-tipped thumbs.

There was no wind to disturb the
pull of the earth. The new green leaves hung straight down and shone in the hot
sun like an army of little metal shields. Somewhere in the woods a thrush was
singing. Its sound was like that of a flute choked with saliva.

Betty stopped with her arms high to
listen to the bird. When it was quiet, she turned towards him with a guilty
laugh. He blew her a kiss. She caught it with a gesture that was childishly
sexual. He vaulted the porch rail and ran to kiss her. As they went down, he
smelled a mixture of sweat, soap and crushed grass.

Several days later, they started to
drive back to the city. When they reached the Bronx slums, Miss
Lonelyhearts
knew that Betty had failed to cure him and
that he had been right when he had said that he could never forget the letters.
He felt better, knowing this, because he had begun to think himself a faker and
a fool.

Crowds of people moved through the
street with a dream-like violence. As he looked at their broken hands and torn
mouths he was overwhelmed by the desire to help them, and because this desire
was sincere, he was happy despite the feeling of guilt which accompanied it.

He saw a man who appeared to be on
the verge of death stagger into a movie theater that was showing a picture
called Blonde Beauty. He saw a ragged woman with an enormous goiter pick a love
story magazine out of a garbage can and seem very excited by her find.

Prodded by his conscience, he began
to generalize. Men have always fought their misery with dreams. Although dreams
were once powerful, they have been made puerile by the movies, radio and
newspapers. Among many betrayals, this one is the worst.

The thing that made his share in it
particularly bad was that he was capable of dreaming the Christ dream. He felt
that he had failed at it, not so much because of Shrike's jokes or his own
self-doubt, but because of his lack of humility.

He finally got to bed. Before
falling asleep, he vowed to make a sincere attempt to be humble. In the
morning, when he started for his office, he renewed his vow. Fortunately for
him, Shrike was not in the city room and his humility was spared an immediate
trial. He went straight to his desk and began to open letters. When he had
opened about a dozen, he felt sick and decided to do his column for that day
without reading any of them. He did not want to test himself too severely.