Plexus (50 page)

“If you don't mind,” I said to Marjorie, “we'll take a little snooze ourselves. Call us when he wakes up, won't you?”

Towards evening we found Ulric sitting on the divan sipping a cool drink. He was thoroughly refreshed and in a mellow mood.

“Golly, but it's good to be with you folks again,” he said, twisting his lips and moving that one infernal eyebrow up and down. “I've just been giving Marjorie an earful about our life in the old days.” He beamed at us affectionately, set his drink carefully down on the taboret beside him, and took a deep breath. “You know, when I don't see you for a long time there are so many things I want to ask you about. I make hundreds of notes—about the damnedest things—and then when I see you I forget everything.… I say, wasn't it somewhere around here that you once had a flat with O'Mara and—what was his name again, that crazy Hindu… you know, the one with the long hair and the hysterical laugh?”

“You mean Govindar,” I said.

“That's it. He sure was a weird one, that fella. You thought quite highly of him, I remember. Wasn't he writing a book then?”

“Several,” I said. “One of them, a long metaphysical treatise, was really extraordinary. I only realized how good it was years later, when I began comparing his work with the soporific tomes of our distinguished numskulls. Govindar was a metaphysical Dadaist, I should say. But in those days he was just a joke to us. I was a pretty insensitive brute, as you know. I didn't give a shit about Hindu philosophy then; he might just as well have written his books in Sanskrit. He's back in India now—one of Gandhi's chief disciples, I'm told. Probably the most unusual Hindu I ever met.”

“You ought to know,” said Ulric, “you sure had a flock of them on your hands. And then there were those Egyptians—especialy that cockeyed fellow.…”

“Shukrullah, you mean!”

“What a memory! Yes, I do remember the name now.
And the other one, who wrote you those flowery epistles that never ended?”

“Mohamed Eli Sarwat.”

“Christ, what names! He was a Lulu, Henry. I hope you saved those letters.”

“I'll tell you the chap I can never forget, Ulric. That was the little Jewish boy, Sid Harris. Do you remember—‘Merry Xmas, President Carmichael, and be sure to ask Santa Claus to give all the messenger boys a raise!' What a guy! I can see him all over again, as he sat beside me filling out the application blank. Sid Harris, born in his mother's womb, address the East Side, religion unknown, previous occupation—errand boy, shoeshine boy, fire insurance, skeleton keys, soda water jerker, lifesaver, coughdrops, and Merry Xmas from the American flag waving high over the Statue of Liberty.”

“You didn't give him a job, I suppose?”

“No, but he used to call regularly every week and fill out an application blank. Always smiling, whistling, shouting Merry Xmas to everyone. I used to throw him a quarter to go to the movies. Next day I'd get a letter telling me what he had seen, whether he had sat in the third or fourth row, how many peanuts he ate, what the next program would be, and whether there were fire extinguishers or not. At the end he would sign his name in full: Sidney Roosevelt Harris, or Sidney R. Harris, or S. Roosevelt Harris, or S. R. Harris, or just plain Sidney—one after the other, one under the other, followed of course by the perennial Xmas greeting. Sometimes he would add a postscript saying that he preferred to be a night messenger, or a telegraph operator, or just a manager. He was a nuisance, of course, but I enjoyed his visits—they gave me a lift for the day. Once I gave him an old trumpet which I had found in a rubbish bag. It was a battered-looking thing and all the stops were eaten away. He polished it up, tied it around his shoulder with a piece of string, and came trooping into my office one morning, looking like the Angel
Gabriel. Nobody had noticed him coming up the stairs. There were about fifty boys waiting to be hired, the telephones were ringing like mad—one of those days when I thought I would burst a blood vessel. Suddenly there came a tremendous blast. I nearly fell off my perch. There he stood, little Sidney, trying to blow taps. Immediately there was pandemonium. Before we could collar him, Sidney began to sing The Star-Spangled Banner; the other boys joined in of course, jeering, laughing, cursing, upsetting the inkwells, throwing the pens around like darts, marking the walls with chalk, and in general raising ructions. We had to clear the office out and lock the door downstairs. Outside, that damned trumpet was blasting away.… He was completely cuckoo, Sidney, but in a delightful way. I could never get angry with him. I tried to find out where he lived, but it was impossible. He probably didn't have a home, he probably slept in the streets. In winter he wore a man's coat that reached right to the ground—and woollen mittens, b'Jesus! He never wore a hat or a cap, unless as a joke. Once, in midwinter, he made his appearance in that grotesque overcoat and mittens—and on his head was a huge straw hat, a sort of Mexican sombrero with a gigantic conelike crown. He came up to my desk, made a low bow, and doffed his huge straw hat. It was filled with snow. He shook the snow out on my desk and then scurried away like a rat. At the door he stood a moment and shouted ‘Merry Xmas and don't forget to bless President Carmichael!'”

“I certainly remember those days,” said Ulric, swallowing the remnants of his drink. “I never did understand how you managed to hold your job. I'm sure there wasn't another employment manager like you in all New York.”

“In all America, you mean,” said Mona.

Ulric looked around appraisingly. “Quite another life, this. I certainly do envy you.… The thing I'll always remember about this fellow”—he looked from one to the other with a melting glow—“is his inextinguishable gaiety.
I don't think I've seen him depressed more than once or twice in all the time I've known him. As long as there's food and a place to flop…
isn't that it?”
He turned his gaze on me with unmingled affection. “Some of my friends—you know the ones I mean—ask me occasionally if you aren't just a bit touched. I always say, ‘Certainly he is … too bad we're not all touched in the same way.' And then they ask me how you support yourself—and your family. There I have to give up.…”

We all began to laugh rather hysterically. Ulric laughed even more heartily than the rest of us. He laughed at himself—for raising such silly issues. Mona, of course, had a different reason for laughing.

“Sometimes I think I'm living with a madman,” she blurted out, tears in her eyes.

“Yes?” said Ulric, drawling the word out.

“Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and begins laughing. He's laughing about something that happened eight years ago. Something tragic usually.”

“I'll be damned,” said Ulric.

“Sometimes he laughs that way because things are so hopeless he doesn't know what to do. It worries me when he laughs that way.”

“Shucks,” I said, “it's only another way of weeping.”

“Hear that!” said Ulric. “Golly, I wish I could see things that way.” He raised the empty glass for Marjorie to replenish.

“It sounds silly to ask, perhaps,” he continued, gulping down a good throatful, “but when you get into a state like that isn't it usually followed by a rather painful fit of depression?”

I shook my head. “It might be followed by anything,” I answered. “The important thing is to first have a good meal. That usually sets me up, gives me equilibrium.”

“You never drink to drive away a mood, do you? Pshaw! don't bother answering… I know you don't. That's
another thing I envy about you.…
Just a good meal
, you say. How simple!”

“You think so?” I said. “I wish it were.… Well, let's skip that! now that we have Marjorie, food is no longer a problem. I never ate better in my life.”

“I can well believe that,” said Ulric, smacking his lips. “It's strange—with me it's often a job to work up an appetite. I'm the worrying sort, I guess. A guilty conscience, probably. I inherited all the old man's bad traits. Including this”—and he tapped the glass he was holding.

“Nonsense,” I said, “you're just a perfectionist.”

“You ought to get married,” said Mona, knowing that this would provoke a reaction.

“That's another thing,” said Ulric, making a wry grimace. “The way I treat that girl of mine is a crime. We've been going together for five years now—but if she dares to mention the word marriage I take a fit. The very thought of it scares the life out of me. I'm selfish enough to want her all for myself and yet I'm ruining her chances. I sometimes urge her to leave me and find someone else. That only makes things worse, of course. Then I make a halfhearted promise to marry her, which I forget about the next day, to be sure. The poor girl doesn't know where she stands.” He looked at us half-sheepishly, half-roguishly. “I'll be a bachelor all my life, I guess. I'm selfish to the core.”

At this we all laughed uproariously.

“I think we should be thinking about dinner soon,” said Marjorie. “Why don't you men go for a walk? Come back in an hour and dinner will be ready.”

Ulric thought it a good idea.

“You might try to find a good piece of Roquefort,” said Marjorie as we sauntered out. “And a loaf of sour rye, if you can.”

We walked aimlessly along one of the sedate, spacious streets peculiar to this neighborhood. We had had many walks together through similar vacuums. Ulric was reminded
of the days long ago when we used to promenade along Bushwick Avenue of a Sunday afternoon, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shy young girls we were in love with. It was like an Easter Parade every Sunday—from the little White Church to the reservoir near Cypress Hill cemetery. Midway one passed the lugubrious Catholic church of St. Francois de Sales, situated a block or two away from Trommers' beer garden. I speak of a period before the first war, the period when in France men like Picasso, Derain, Matisse, Vlaminck and others were just becoming known. It was still the “end of the century.” Life was easy, though we weren't aware of it. The only thought in our heads was girls. If we succeeded in stopping them long enough to chat for a few minutes we were in seventh heaven. Weekdays we sometimes repeated the promenade in the evening. Then we became bolder. If we had the good fortune to encounter a couple of girls—near the reservoir or in the dark lanes of the park, or even at the confines of the cemetery—we would really attempt some daring advances. Ulric could remember the names of all of them. There was one couple he particularly remembered—Tina and Henrietta. They had been in the same class with us at graduation time, but, being somewhat backward, were two or three years older than the rest of the class. Which meant they were quite mature. And not only mature but bursting with sex. Everyone knew that they were just a pair of sluts. Tina, who was really audacious, was like one of Degas' women; Henrietta was bigger, juicier, already a wench. They were always whispering smutty stories under their breath, to the amusement of the class. Now and then they drew their dresses up above their knees—to give us a look. Or sometimes Tina would grab Henrietta by the teat and squeeze it playfully—all this in class, behind the teacher's back, of course. What more natural, therefore, than to be on the lookout for them when out for a walk in the evening? Now and then it happened. Hardly any words exchanged. Pushing them back against the iron railing, or
against a tombstone, we slobbered all over them, fingered them, mauled them—everything but the real thing. It took older, more experienced boys to get away with that. At best we could manage a dry fuck. And go home limping, our balls aching like sixty toothaches.

“Did I ever tell you,” said Ulric, “how I tried to make Miss Bairnsfeather, the graduating teacher? I mean, of course, several years after we had graduated. What a gawk I must have been! Well, you know what a juicy piece of tail she was.… I could never get her out of mind. So one day I wrote her a note—I had just taken a little studio and thought myself quite an artist, I can tell you—and to my surprise she answered it, urging me to look her up some time. I was so excited I nearly pissed in my pants. I called her up and invited her over to the studio. Of course I had prepared for her coming—all kinds of drinks, delicious little cakes, my canvases casually strewn about, a few nudes conspicuously placed over the divan, and so on… you know what I mean. What I had forgotten was the difference in age. She was still appetizing, of course, but so much of a woman now that I was intimidated. It took a bit of maneuvering to establish the right footing. I could see that she was trying to help me, but I was so damned shy, so gauche, that I nearly had nervous prostration. After all, one doesn't just rip the pants off one's favorite teacher.”

He interrupted himself to chuckle and waggle his ears.

“Did you manage it eventually?” I asked, to help him out.

“I did indeed,” said Ulric, “but only after a heap of drinks. By that time she was so damned eager for it that she just fished my pecker out and pulled me on top of her. I had one of those eternal hardons that you get sometimes from drinking. We did just about everything, I can assure you, and still it wouldn't go down. She was lying on the divan with just a blouse on, panting like a bitch. I had just washed myself with cold water, hoping that would do the
trick. ‘Come here,' she said, ‘I want to have a good look at that tool of yours. Ulric, why didn't I know about this when you were in my class?' I looked at her in amazement. ‘You mean you would have let me…?'
‘Let you?'
she said—'I would have eaten you alive. Didn't the other boys ever tell you about me?' I could hardly believe my ears. All the while, Henry, I was standing over her, my prick pointing heavenward. Suddenly she sat up and grabbed it; I thought she would break it in two. Soon she was on her knees, sucking me off. Even then I didn't come. I tell you, I was getting frantic. At last I turned her over, put it in from behind—until she began to moan. Then I eased it out, dragged her off the divan and, lifting her by the middle, I walked her around the studio on her hands. It was just like pushing a wheelbarrow upside down.… And even that had no effect. Desperate, I sat down in the big easy chair and let her straddle me. ‘Just let's sit and fuck,' I said. ‘Or don't fuck—just leave it there till it melts.' We had another drink, sitting there like that, and then another, and then another. It was still a brute of a bird when we unhitched. But limp.…
But get this Henry
. What do you suppose she says to me at that moment?”