Plexus (48 page)

Thinking of Rothermel's early morning condition I got to ruminating on how various people I knew greeted the new day. It was a delightful game. From friends and acquaintances I moved over into the realm of celebrities—artists, actors and actresses, political figures, criminals, religious leaders, all classes and all levels. It grew positively fascinating when I began digging into the habits of the great historical personages. How did Caligula greet the day? A swarm of distant personalities suddenly took possession of my brain: Sir Francis Bacon, Mohammed the Great, Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Confucius, Tamerlane, Napoleon at St. Helena, Herbert Spencer, Modjeska, Sir Walter Scott, Gustavus Adolphus, Friedrich Barbarossa, P. T. Barnum.…

Approaching Bronx Park I forgot what had led me to this spot. I was just rehearsing my first impressions of the three-ring circus, that awesome moment in a boy's life when he sees his idol in flesh and bone. Mine was Buffalo Bill. I loved him. To see him gallop into the center of the sawdust ring and doff his huge sombrero to the applauding spectators was something unforgettable. He has long locks, a goatee, and a big curling moustache. There is an elegance to the spectacular garb he sports. One hand holds the reins lightly, the other grasps the faithful rifle. In a moment he will display his unerring marksmanship. He is making the full circle of the arena first, his proud steed snorting fire. What a splendid figure of a man! His friends are the fierce Indian chiefs—Sioux, Comanches, Crows, Blackfeet. What a boy admires is unostentatious strength—skill,
poise, flexibility. Buffalo Bill was the epitome of all these. We never saw him except in full costume, and then only once a year—if we were lucky. In those few moments allotted to us he never missed a shot, never made an awkward move, never departed one iota from the ideal portrait we carried in our hearts. He never deceived us, never betrayed us.
Always at par
.

Buffalo Bill was to us what Saladin was to his followers—and to his enemies. A boy never forgets his idols. Well,
fuck a duck
—here we are at the Zoo. The first thing I see is a giraffe. Then a Bengal tiger, then a rhinoceros, then a tapir. Ah, here are the monkeys! Home again. Nothing cleans out the psychological system like looking at wild animals.
Tabula rasa
. The very names of their habitats are inspiring. One drifts back into the old Adamic world where the serpent reigned supreme. Evolution explains nothing. We were all there together, from the beginning of time, and we will remain together until eternity. The stars and the constellations drift, the continents drift, man drifts together with his companions of antediluvian days—the armadillo, the dodo bird, the dinosaur, the saber-toothed tiger, the diminutive horse of upper Mongolia. Everything in the cosmos is drifting towards some drifting point in space. And God Almighty is probably drifting too, together with his Creation.

Drifting along, one with the Zoo and all its occupants, I suddenly had the clearest vision of Renée Tietjen. Renée was the sister of Richie Tietjen with whom I used to play as a boy of ten. He was like a bloodthirsty Zouave, this Richie. He would bite a piece out of you if you angered him. It was important, when choosing sides for a game of prisoner's base, to have Richie on your side. Now and then Renée, his sister, would stand at the gate and watch us. She was about six years older than him, quite a woman already, and to us youngsters utterly ravishing. When you got close to her you inhaled the perfume which she used—or was it simply the fragrance of her delicious flesh? From
the time I had ceased playing in that street I had never given a thought to Renée Tietjen. Now suddenly, and for no reason I could think of, her image danced before me. She was leaning on the iron fence beside the gate and the wind molded her thin silk dress about her limbs. I realized now what had made her so ravishing and unattainable: she was an exact replica of one of the medieval French madonnas. All light and grace, chaste, seductive, with golden tresses and sea-green eyes. Always silent, always seraphic. Buffeted by the wind, she swayed back and forth like a young willow. Her breasts, which were two nubile hemispheres, and the little tuft which adorned the pelvis, seemed extraordinarily alive and sensitive. They met the wind like the bulging contour of a ship's prow. Within a few feet of her we were dashing about like mad bulls, ripping, slashing, biting, squealing, as if possessed. Renée always stood there imperturbable, her lips faintly parted in an enigmatic smile. Some said she had a lover who had jilted her. Some said she was lame. Not one of us had the courage to address her. She took her place at the railing and remained there like a statue. Now and then the wind lifted her skirt and we gasped when we caught sight of the milky flesh above her knees. Towards evening old man Tietjen would come trudging home, a long whip in his hand. Seeing Richie, his clothes torn, his face spattered with mud and blood, the old man would flick him with the whip. Richie never uttered a sound. The old man would greet his daughter surlily and disappear through the front door. A strange scene whose sequel we never knew.

All this came back to me so vividly that I felt impelled to make a few notes immediately. I rushed frantically out of the park in search of paper and pencil. Now and then I stopped to make water. Finally I found a little stationery store run by an old Jewish woman. She was wearing one of those hideous wigs the color of a cockroach's wings. For some reason she had difficulty in understanding me. I began making signs in the air. She thought I was deaf. She
began to yell at me. I yelled back at her, drowning her with oaths. She grew frightened and ran to the back of the store to call for help. Baffled, I stood there a moment, then dashed into the street. A bus was standing at the corner. I got in and sat down. Beside me was a newspaper. I picked it up and began making notes, first in the margins, then across the black print. When we came to Morningside Park I furtively threw the paper out the window. I felt relieved, as relieved as if I had just had a good fuck. Renée had faded out, along with the giraffes, the camels, the Bengal tigers, the peanut shells and the sullen roar of the lions. I would tell Ulric all about it, he would enjoy it. Unless he was just in the midst of a banana campaign.

Once again we are living in a sedate neighborhood, not far from Fort Greene Park. The street is as wide as a boulevard, the houses set far back from the sidewalk, most of them of brownstone and adorned with high stoops of the same material. Some of the houses are veritable mansions flanked by immense lawns studded with shrubs and statues. Ample driveways lead to the stables and servants' quarters in the rear. The whole atmosphere of this old neighborhood is redolent of the '80s and '90s. The remarkable thing about it is its state of preservation. Even the hitching posts are intact and gleaming, as if just wiped with an oil rag. Sumptuous, elegant, somnolescent, it seems like a wonderful haven to us.

It was Mona, of course, who had found the two rooms. And once again, we had a congenial landlady, one of those witless young American widows who didn't know what to
do with herself. We had taken our furniture out of storage and fitted up the two rooms. The landlady was delighted to have us as tenants. She ate with us frequently. Quite a jolly creature, with a melodious voice and the indolence of a lost soul. Things promised to go well here. The rent was cheap, the gas, water and electricity functioned perfectly, an abundance of good food, movies afternoons and evenings, if we desired it, a game of cards now and then, to please the landlady, and no visitors. Not a soul knew our address. Where the funds came from I wasn't too sure. Mathias, still in the offing, and Rothermel, more alive than ever, I knew contributed the bulk of it. But there must have been others, too, for we were living high. The landlady, of course, was liberal with food and drink, and often invited us to the theater or took us to a cabaret. What fascinated her was that we were obviously artists—“Bohemians,” as she put it. Her husband had been an insurance agent and had left her a tidy sum. But he had been a pretty dull bird, according to her, and she intended to make merry now that he was gone.

I rented a typewriter and began writing once more. Everything was just ducky. The beautiful silk bathrobe, the pajamas, the Moroccan slippers I wore, all were gifts from the landlady: heirlooms. The mornings were luxurious. We would get out of bed around ten, bathe leisurely while the phonograph played, then sit down to a delicious breakfast, usually prepared by the landlady. Always fresh fruit and berries smothered in cream, muffins fresh from the oven, thick strips of bacon, marmalade, steaming coffee with whipped cream. I felt like a pasha. Though I had no use for them, I was equipped with two beautiful cigarette cases and a long cigarette holder, which I used only at mealtime, and to please the good landlady who had given me them.

I must stop calling her “the landlady.” Her name was Marjorie, and it suited her to a T. There was something lascivious about her, as if she were always picking up the scent. She had a beautiful figure and she displayed it freely,
especially in the morning when all she wore was a filmy bathrobe. It didn't take long before we were patting one another affectionately on the rump. She was the sort of woman who could grab your cock and make you laugh at the same time. One couldn't help liking her, even if she were pockmarked, which she wasn't. Everything she did was open and aboveboard. If you merely voiced a desire, she sought at once to appease it. Whatever she possessed was yours for the asking.

What a change from Karen's establishment! The meals alone were enough to put one in a state of divine contentment. Her rooms adjoined ours but the door between was never locked. We wandered to and fro at ease, as if we were sharing a common ménage.

After breakfast I would usually take a walk, to work up an appetite for lunch. It was early fall and the weather was superb. Often I strolled to the Park and flopped on a bench to doze in the bright sunshine. A marvelous sense of well-being possessed me. No worries of any kind, no responsibilities, no intrusions. Completely my own master, and waited on hand and foot by two eager, beautiful women who treated me like a peacock. Faithfully each day I wrote for an hour or two; the rest of the day was—fuck, feast and fun. What I wrote must have been of slight consequence—probably dreams and fantasies. It was too good a life to inspire serious work. I wrote to keep my hand in, nothing more. Now and then I knocked out something expressly for Marjorie's benefit, something whimsical and humorous, which I would read aloud at table between sips of cognac or some precious liqueur from her inexhaustible stock. It wasn't difficult to please either of them. All they demanded of me was to go through the motions.

“I wish I knew how to write,” Marjorie would say sometimes. (To her the art of writing was sheer magic.) She wondered, for example, where I got my ideas. “You hatch them, like eggs,” I said. “And those big words, Henry?” She doted on them, mispronounced them deliberately,
rolled them over on her tongue lasciviously. “You sure can juggle them,” she'd say. Sometimes she made up a tune in which she introduced these jawbreakers. What a pleasure it was to hear her hum a tune—or whistle softly! Her sex seemed to move right up into her throat. Often she burst out laughing in the midst of a tune. Such laughter! As if she were getting her ashes hauled.

Sometimes of an evening I would go for a solitary promenade. I knew the neighborhood intimately, having lived for a time right opposite the Park. Only a few blocks away—Myrtle Avenue was the boundary line—the slums commenced. After strolling through the sedate quarters it was a thrill to cross the line, to mingle with Italians, Filipinos, Chinese and other “undesirables.” A pungent odor invested the poor quarters: it was compounded of cheese, salami, wine, punk, incense, cork, dried fish skins, spices, coffee, stale horse piss, sweat and bad plumbing. The shops were full of nostalgic wares familiar from childhood. I loved the funeral parlor (the Italian ones especially), the religious shops, the junk shops, the delicatessen stores, the stationery stores. It was like passing from a cool, immaculate mausoleum into the thick of life. The tongues employed had a musical quality, even when it was nothing but an exchange of oaths. People dressed differently, each one in his own crazy fashion. The horse and wagon were still in evidence. Children were everywhere, amusing themselves with that lusty exuberance which only the children of the poor display. There were no longer the stereotyped wooden faces of the born American but racial types, all saturated with character.

If I kept walking in a certain direction I would come eventually to United States Street. It was somewhere near here that my friend Ulric was born. Here it was easy to wander astray; in every direction fascinating detours opened up. At night one walked with dream feet. Everything appeared to be upended, churned, tossed about. Sometimes I found myself winding up at Borough Hall,
sometimes in Williamsburg. Always within striking distance where the Navy Yard, fantastic Wallabout Market, the sugar refineries, the big bridges, roller mills, grain elevators, foundries, paint factories, tombstone yards, livery stables, glaziers, saddlers, grill works, canneries, fish markets, slaughterhouses, tin factories—a vast conglomeration of workaday horrors over which hung a pall of smoke impregnated with the stench of burning chemicals, rotting flesh and seared metals.

If I thought of Ulric on such walks I thought also of the Middle Ages, and of Breughel the Elder, and Hieronymus Bosch, or of Petronius Arbiter, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Fra Lippo Lippi… to say nothing of the Seven Dwarfs, Swiss Family Robinson and Sinbad the Sailor. Only in a Godforsaken hole like Brooklyn could one assemble the monsters, freaks and anomalies of this world. At the Star Theater, which was given over to burlesque, one rubbed elbows with the hairy denizens of this incredible region. The performance was always on a level with the almost extinct imagination of the audience. No holds were barred, no gestures considered too indecent, no filth too slimy to be rippled off the tongue of the comedian. It was always a visual and aural feast such as Peeping Tom craves. I was thoroughly at home in this broth: smut was my maiden name.