Tropic of Cancer (15 page)

But before I have an opportunity to venture an opinion, or even to laugh in his face, Van Norden goes on with his monologue.

“Listen, I suppose he told you everything… did he tell you how he stood on the balcony in the moonlight and kissed her? That sound banal when you repeat it, but the way that guy describes it… I can just see the little prick standing there with the woman in his arms and already he’s writing another letter to her, another flowerpot about the roof tops and all that crap he steals from his French authors. That guy never says a thing that’s original, I found that out. You have to get a clue like… find out whom he’s been reading lately… and it’s hard to do that because he’s so damned secretive. Listen, if I didn’t know that you went there with him, I wouldn’t believe that the woman existed. A guy like that could write letters to himself. And yet he’s lucky… he’s so damned tiny, so frail, so romantic looking, that women fall for him now and then… they sort of adopt him… they feel sorry for him, I guess. And some cunts like to receive flowerpots… it makes them feel important… But this woman’s an intelligent woman, so he says. You ought to know… you’ve seen her letters. What do you suppose a woman like that saw in him? I can understand her falling for the letters… but how do you suppose she felt when she saw him?

“But listen, all that’s beside the point. What I’m getting at is the way he tells it to me. You know how he embroiders things… well, after that scene on the balcony—he gives me that like an hors d’œuvre, you know—after that, so he says, they went inside and he unbuttoned her pajamas. What are you smiling for? Was he shitting me about that?”

“No, no! You’re giving it to me exactly as he told me. Go ahead…”

“After that”—here Van Norden has to smile himself,—”after that, mind you, he tells me how she sat in the chair with her legs up… not a stitch on… and he’s sitting on the floor looking up at her, telling her how beautiful she looks… did he tell you that she looked like a Matisse?… Wait a minute… I’d like to remember exactly what he said. He had some cute little phrase there about an odalisque… what the hell’s an odalisque anyway? He said it in French, that’s why it’s hard to remember the fucking thing… but it sounded good. It sounded just like the sort of thing he might say. And she probably thought it was original with him… I suppose she thinks he’s a poet or something. But listen, all this is nothing… I make allowances for his imagination. It’s what happened after that that drives me crazy. All night long I’ve been tossing about, playing with these images he left in my mind. I can’t get it out of my head. It sounds so real to me that if it didn’t happen I could strangle the bastard. A guy has no right to invent things like that. Or else he’s diseased…

“What I’m getting at is that moment when, he says, he got down on his knees and with those two skinny fingers of his he spread her cunt open. You remember that? He says she was sitting there with her legs dangling over the arms of the chair and suddenly, he says, he got an inspiration. This was after he had given her a couple of lays already… after he had made that little spiel about Matisse. He gets down on his knees—
get this!
—and with his two fingers… just the tips of them, mind you… he opens the little petals…
squish-squish
… just like that. A sticky little sound… almost inaudible.
Squish-squish!
Jesus, I’ve been hearing it all night long! And then he says—as if that weren’t enough for me—then he tells me he buried his head in her muff. And when he did that, so help me Christ, if she didn’t swing her legs around his neck and lock him there.
That finished me!
Imagine it! Imagine a fine, sensitive woman like that swinging her legs around
his neck!
There’s something poisonous about it. It’s so fantastic that it sounds convincing. If he had only told me about the champagne and the ride in the Bois and even that scene on the balcony I could have dismissed it. But this thing is so incredible that it doesn’t sound like a lie any more. I can’t believe that he ever read anything like that anywhere, and I can’t see what could have put the idea into his head unless there was some truth in it. With a little prick like that, you know, anything can happen. He may not have fucked her at all, but she may have let him diddle her… you never know with these rich cunts what they might expect you to do…”

When he finally pulls himself out of bed and starts to shave the afternoon is already well advanced. I’ve finally succeeded in switching his mind to other things, to the moving principally. The maid comes in to see if he’s ready—he’s supposed to have vacated the room by noon. He’s just in the act of slipping into his trousers. I’m a little surprised that he doesn’t excuse himself, or turn away. Seeing him standing there nonchalantly buttoning his fly as he gives her orders I begin to titter. “Don’t mind her,” he says, throwing her a look of supreme contempt, ” she’s just a big sow. Give her a pinch in the ass, if you like. She won’t say anything.” And then addressing her, in English, he says, “Come here, you bitch, put your hand on this!” At this I can’t restrain myself any longer. I burst out laughing, a fit of hysterical laughter which infects the maid also, though she doesn’t know what it’s all about. The maid commences to take down the pictures and the photographs, mostly of himself, which line the walls. “
You
,” he says, jerking his thumb, “come here! Here’s something to remember me by”—ripping a photograph off the wall—”when I go you can wipe your ass with it. See,” he says, turning to me, “she’s a dumb bitch. She wouldn’t look any more intelligent if I said it in French.” The maid stands there with her mouth open; she is evidently convinced that he is cracked. “Hey!” he yells at her as if she were hard of hearing. “Hey,
you!
Yes,
you!
Like this…!” and he takes the photograph, his own photograph, and wipes his ass with it. “
Comme ça!
Savvy? You’ve got to draw pictures for her,” he says, thrusting his lower lip forward in absolute disgust.

He watches her helplessly as she throws his things into the big valises. “Here, put these in too,” he says, handing her a toothbrush and the douche bag. Half of his belongings are lying on the floor. The valises are crammed full and there is nowhere to put the paintings and the books and the bottles that are half empty. “Sit down a minute,” he says. “We’ve got plenty of time. We’ve got to think this thing out. If you hadn’t come around I’d never have gotten out of here. You see how helpless I am. Don’t let me forget to take the bulbs out… they belong to me. That wastebasket belongs to me too. They expect you to live like pigs, these bastards.” The maid has gone downstairs to get some twine… “Wait till you see… she’ll charge me for the twine even if it’s only three sous. They wouldn’t sew a button on your pants here without charging for it. The lousy, dirty scroungers!” He takes a bottle of Calvados from the mantelpiece and nods to me to grab the other. “No use carrying these to the new place. Let’s finish them off now. But don’t give
her
a drink! That bastard, I wouldn’t leave her a piece of toilet paper. I’d like to ruin the joint before I go. Listen… piss on the floor, if you like. I wish I could take a crap in the bureau drawer.” He feels so utterly disgusted with himself and everything else that he doesn’t know what to do by way of venting his feelings. He walks over to the bed with the bottle in his hand and pulling back the covers he sprinkles Calvados over the mattress. Not content with that he digs his heel into the mattress. Unfortunately there’s no mud on his heels. Finally he takes the sheet and cleans his shoes with it. “That’ll give them something to do,” he mutters vengefully. Then, taking a good swig, he throws his head back and gargles his throat, and after he’s gargled it good and proper he spits it out on the mirror. “There, you cheap bastards! Wipe that off when I go!” He walks back and forth mumbling to himself. Seeing his torn socks lying on the floor he picks them up and tears them to bits. The paintings enrage him too. He picks one up—a portrait of himself done by some Lesbian he knew and he puts his foot through it. “That bitch! You know what she had the nerve to ask me? She asked me to turn over my cunts to her after I was through with them. She never gave me a sou for writing her up. She thought I honestly admired her work. I wouldn’t have gotten that painting out of her if I hadn’t promised to fix her up with that cunt from Minnesota. She was nuts about her… used to follow us around like a dog in heat… we couldn’t get rid of the bitch! She bothered the life out of me. I got so that I was almost afraid to bring a cunt up here for fear that she’d bust in on me. I used to creep up here like a burglar and the lock the door behind me as soon as I got inside… She and that Georgia cunt—they drive me nuts. The one is always in heat and the other is always hungry. I hate fucking a woman who’s hungry. It’s like you push a feed inside her and then you push it out again… Jesus, that reminds me of something… where did I put that blue ointment? That’s important. Did you ever have those things? It’s worse than having a dose. And I don’t know where I got them from either. I’ve had so many women up here in the last week or so I’ve lost track of them. Funny too, because they all smelled so fresh. But you know how it is…”

The maid has piled his things up on the sidewalk. The
patron
looks on with a surly air. When everything has been loaded into the taxi there is only room for one of us inside. As soon as we commence to roll Van Norden gets out a newspaper and starts bundling up his pots and pans; in the new place all cooking is strictly forbidden. By the time we reach our destination all his luggage has come undone; it wouldn’t be quite so embarasssing if the madam had not stuck her head out of the doorway just as we rolled up. “My God!” she exclaims, “what in the devil is all this? What does it mean?” Van Norden is so intimidated that he can think of nothing more to say than
“C’est moi… c’est moi, madame!”
And turning to me he mumbles savagely: “That cluck! Did you notice her face? She’s going to make it hard for me.”

The hotel lies back of a dingy passage and forms a rectangle very much on the order of a modern penitentiary. The
bureau
is large and gloomy, despite the brilliant reflections from the tile walls. There are bird cages hanging in the windows and little enamel signs everywhere begging the guests in an obsolete language not to do this and not to forget that. It is almost immaculately clean but absolutely poverty-stricken, threadbare, woebegone. The upholstered chairs are held together with wired things; they remind one unpleasantly of the electric chair. The room he is going to occupy is on the fifth floor. As we climb the stairs Van Norden informs me that Maupassant once lived here. And in the same breath remarks that there is a peculiar odor in the hall. On the fifth floor a few windowpanes are missing; we stand a moment gazing at the tenants across the court. It is getting toward dinner time and people are straggling back to their rooms with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly. Most of the windows are wide open: the dingy rooms have the appearance of so many yawning mouths. The occupants of the rooms are yawning too, or else scratching themselves. They move about listlessly and apparently without much purpose; they might just as well be lunatics.

As we turn down the corridor toward room 57, a door suddenly opens in front of us and an old hag with matted hair and the eyes of a maniac peers out. She startles us so that we stand transfixed. For a full minute the three of us stand there powerless to move or even to make an intelligent gesture. Back of the old hag I can see a kitchen table and on it lies a baby all undressed, a puny little brat no bigger than a plucked chicken. Finally the old one picks up a slop pail by her side and makes a move forward. We stand aside to let her pass and as the door closes behind her the baby lets out a piercing scream. It is room 56, and between 56 and 57 is the toilet where the old hag is emptying her slops.

Ever since we have mounted the stairs Van Norden has kept silence. But his looks are eloquent. When he opens the door of 57 I have for a fleeting moment the sensation of going mad. A huge mirror covered with green gauze and tipped at an angle of 45 degrees hangs directly opposite the entrance over a baby carriage which is filled with books. Van Norden doesn’t even crack a smile; instead he walks nonchalantly over to the baby carriage and picking up a book begins to skim it through, much as a man would enter the public library and go unthinkingly to the rack nearest to hand. And perhaps this would not seem so ludicrous to me if I had not espied at the same time a pair of handle bars resting in the corner. They look so absolutely peaceful and contented, as if they had been dozing there for years, that suddenly it seems to me as if we had been standing in this room, in exactly this position, for an incalculably long time, that it was a pose we had struck in a dream from which we never emerged, a dream which the least gesture, the wink of an eye even, will shatter. But more remarkable still is the remembrance that suddenly floats up of an actual dream which occurred only the other night, a dream in which I saw Van Norden in just such a corner as is occupied now by the handle bars, only instead of the handle bars there was a woman crouching with her legs drawn up. I see him standing over the woman with that alert, eager look in his eye which comes when he wants something badly. The street in which this is going on is blurred—only the angle made by the two walls is clear, and the cowering figure of the woman. I can see him going at her in that quick, animal way of his, reckless of what’s going on about him, determined only to have his way. And a look in his eyes as though to say—”you can kill me afterwards, but just let me get it in… I’ve got to get it in!” And there he is, bent over her, their heads knocking against the wall, he has such a tremendous erection that it’s simply impossible to get it in her. Suddenly, with that disgusted air which he knows so well how to summon, he picks himself up and adjusts his clothes. He is about to walk away when suddenly he notices that his penis is lying on the sidewalk. It is about the size of a sawed-off broomstick. He picks it up nonchalantly and slings it under his arm. As he walks off I notice two huge bulbs, like tulip bulbs, dangling from the end of the broomstick, and I can hear him muttering to himself “flowerpots… flowerpots.”