“I am always alert for death. He doesn’t fool me. I spot him right away. He loves to come in his country-bumpkin disguise; a comical wart that suddenly grows and grows; the dark, hairy mole that sends its roots to the very bone; or hiding behind a pretty little fever blush. Then suddenly that grinning skull appears to take the victim by surprise. But never me. I’m waiting for him. I take my precautions.
“Parallel to death, love is a tiresome, childless business, though men believe more in love than death. Women are another story. They have a powerful secret. They don’t take love seriously and never have.
“But again, don’t go away. Again, this is not a love story. Forget about love. I will show you all the stretches of power. First the life of a poor struggling writer. Sensitive. Talented. Maybe even some genius. I will show you the artist getting the shit kicked out of him for the sake of his art. And why he so richly deserves it. Then I will show him as a cunning criminal and having the time of his life. Ah, what joy the true artist feels when he finally becomes a crook. It’s out in the open now, his essential nature. No more kidding around about his honor. The son of a bitch is a hustler. A conniver. An enemy of society right out of the clear instead of hiding behind his whore’s cunt of art. What a relief. What pleasure. Such sly delight. And then how he becomes an honest man again. It’s an awful strain being a crook.
“But it helps you to accept society and forgive your fellow-man. Once that’s done no person should be a crook unless he really needs the money.
“Then on to one of the most amazing success stories in the history of literature. The intimate lives of the giants of our culture. One crazy bastard especially. The classy world. So now we have the poor struggling genius world, the crooked world, and the classy literary world. All this laced with plenty of sex, some complicated ideas you won’t be hit over the head with and may even find interesting. And finally on to a full-blast ending in Hollywood with our hero gobbling up all its rewards, money, fame, beautiful women. And…don’t go away-don’t go away-how it all turns to ashes.
“That’s not enough? You’ve heard it all before? But remember I’m a master of magic. I can bring all these people truly alive. I can show you what they truly think and feel. You’ll weep for them, all of them I promise you that. Or maybe just laugh. Anyway, we’re going to have a lot of fun. And learn something about life. Which is really no help.
“Ah, I know what you’re thinking. That conning bastard trying to make us turn the page. But wait, it’s only a tale I want to tell. What’s the harm? Even if I take it seriously, you don’t have to. Just have a good time.
“I want to tell you a story, I have no other vanity. I don’t desire success or fame or money. But that’s easy, most men, most women don’t, not really. Even better, I don’t want love. When I was young, some women told me they loved me for my long eyelashes. I accepted. Later it was for my Wit. Then for my power and money. Then for my talent. Then for my mind-deep. OK, I can handle all of it. The only woman who scares me is the one who loves me for myself alone. I have plans for her. I have poisons and daggers and dark graves in caves to hide her head. She can’t be allowed to live. Especially if she is sexually faithful and never lies and always puts me ahead of everything and everyone.
“There will be a lot about love in this book, but it’s not a love book. It’s a war book. The old war between men who are true friends. The great ‘new’ war between men and women. Sure it’s an old story, but it’s out in the open now. The Women’s Liberation warriors think they have something new, but it’s just their armies coming out of their guerrilla hills. Sweet women ambushed men always: at their cradles, in the kitchen, the bedroom. And at the graves of their children, the best place not to hear a plea for mercy.
“Ah well, you think I have a grievance against women. But I never hated them. And they’ll come out better people than men, you’ll see. But the truth is that only women have been able to make me unhappy, and they have done so from the cradle on. But most men can say that. And there’s nothing to be done.
“What a target I’ve given here. I know-I know-how irresistible it seems. But be careful. I'm a tricky storyteller; not just one of your vulnerable sensitive artists. I’ve taken my precautions. I’ve still got a few surprises left.
“But enough. Let me get to work. Let me begin and let me end.”
And that was Osano’s great novel, the book that would cinch the Nobel Prize, restore his greatness. I wish he had written it.
That he was a great con artist, as those pages showed, was irrelevant. Or maybe part of his genius. He wanted to share his inner worlds with the outside world, that was all. And now as his final joke he had given me his last pages. A joke because we were such different writers. He so generous. And, I, I realized now, so ungenerous.
I was never crazy about his work. And I don’t know whether I really loved him as a man. But I loved him as a writer. And so I decided, maybe for luck, maybe for strength, maybe just for the con, to use his pages as my own. I should have changed one line. Death has always surprised me.
Chapter 51
I have no history. That is the thing Janelle never understood. That I started with myself. That I had no grandparents or parents, uncles and aunts, friends of the family or cousins. That I had no childhood memories of a special house, or a special kitchen. That I had no city or town or village. That I began my history with myself and my brother, Arthur. And that when I extended myself with Valerie and the kids and her family and lived with her in a house in the city, when I became a parent and a husband, they became my reality and my salvation. But I don’t have to worry about Janelle anymore. I haven’t seen her for over two years and it’s three years since Osano died.
I can’t bear to remember about Artie, and when I even think of his name, I find tears coming from my eyes, but he is the only person I have ever wept for.
For the last two years I have sat in a working study in my home, reading, writing and being the perfect father and husband. Sometimes I go to dinner with friends, but I like to think that finally I have become serious, dedicated. That I will now live the life of a scholar. That my adventures are over. In short, I am praying that life holds no more surprises. Safely in this room, surrounded by my books of magic, Austen, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Hemingway, Dreiser and finally, Osano, I feel the exhaustion of an animal who has escaped many times before reaching its haven.
Beneath me in the house below, the house that is now my history, I knew my wife was busy in the kitchen preparing Sunday dinner. My children were watching TV and playing cards in the den, and because I knew they were there, sadness was bearable in this room.
I read all Osano’s books again and he was a great writer at the beginning. I tried to analyze his failure in later life, his inability to finish his great novel. He started off amazed by the wonderment of the world around him and the people in it. He ended writing about the wonderment of himself. His concern, you could see, was to make a legend of his own life. He wrote to the world rather than to himself. In every line he screamed for attention to Osano rather than to his art. He wanted everyone to know how clever, how brilliant he was. He even made sure that the characters he created would not get credit for his brilliance. He was like a ventriloquist getting jealous of the laughs his dummy earned. And it was a shame. Yet I think of him as a great man. His terrifying humanity, his terrifying love of life, how brilliant he was and what fun to be with.