Useless to waste more time in that direction. Better to borrow the money. But from whom? I could think of no one who would offer me more than a buck or two. She needed at least a hundred dollars. Two hundred would be still better.
If only I knew how to reach that millionaire pervert! I thought of Ludwig, the mad ticket-chopper—another pervert!—but with a heart of gold, so Mona always said, But what to tell him?
I was passing Grand Central Station. Would run down to the sub-basement, where the messengers were herded, and see if any one was there who remembered me. (Costigan, the old reliable, had passed away.) I sneaked down and looked over the crew. Not a soul I could recognize. Climbing the ramp to the street I recalled that Doc Zabriskie was somewhere in the neighborhood. In a jiffy I was leafing the telephone directory. Sure enough, there he was—on West 45th Street. My spirits rose. Here was a guy I could surely count on. Unless he was broke. That was hardly likely, now that he had set up an office in Manhattan. My pace quickened. I didn't even bother to think what kind of cock and bull story I would trump up ... In the past, when I would visit him to have a tooth filled, it was he who would ask me if I wasn't in need of a little dough. Sometimes I would say No, ashamed of myself for imposing on such good nature. But that was back in the 18 th century.
Hurrying along, I suddenly recalled the location of his old office. It was that three-story red brick building where I once lived with the widow. Carlotta. Every morning I hauled the ash cans and the garbage pails from the cellar and placed them at the kerb. That was one of the reasons he had taken such a fancy to me, Doc Zabriskie—because I wasn't ashamed to soil my hands. It was so Russian, he thought. Like a page out of Gorky ... How he loved to chat with me about his Russian authors! How elated he was when I showed him that prose poem I had written on Jim Londos, Londos the little Hercules, as he was called. He knew them all—Strangler Lewis, Zbysko, Earl Caddock, Farmer what's his name ... all of them. And here I was writing like a poet—he couldn't get over my style!—about his great favorite, Jim Londos. That afternoon, I remember, he stuffed a ten dollar bill in my hand as I was leaving. As for the manuscript, he insisted on keeping it—in order to show it to a sports writer he knew. He begged me to show him more of my work. Had I written anything on Scriabin? Or on Alekhine, the chess champion? Come again soon, he urged. Come any time, even if your teeth don't need attention. And I would go back from time to time, not just to chew the fat about chess, wrestlers and pianoforte, but in the hope that he would slip me a fiver, or even a buck, on leaving. I was trying to recall, as I entered the new office, how many years it was since I had last talked to him. There were only two three clients in the waiting room. Not like the old days when there was standing room only, and women with shawls sat red-eyed holding their swollen jaws, some with brats in their arms, and all of them poor, meek, down-trodden, capable of sitting there for hours on end. The new office was different. The furniture looked brand new and luxuriously comfortable, there were paintings on the wall—good ones—and all was noiseless, even (he drill. No samovar though.
I had hardly seated myself when the door of the torture chamber opened to evacuate a client. He came over to me at once, shook hands warmly, and begged me to wait a few minutes. Nothing serious? he hoped. I told him to take his time. A few cavities, nothing more. I sat down again and picked up a magazine. Poring over the illustrations I decided that the best thing to say was that Mona had to undergo an operation. A tumor in the vagina, or something like that.
With Doc Zabriskie a few minutes usually meant an hour or two. Not this time, however. Everything was running smoothly and efficiently now.
I sat down in the big chair and opened wide my mouth. There was only one little cavity; he would fill it immediately. As he drilled away he plied me with questions: how were things going? was I still writing? did I have any children? why hadn't I looked him up before? how was So-and-So? did I still ride the bike? To all of which I replied with grunts and a roll of the eyes.
Finally it was over. Don't run away! he said. Have a little drink with me first! He opened a cabinet and got out a bottle of excellent Scotch, then pulled a stool up beside me. Now tell me all about yourself!
I had to make quite a preamble before coming to the issue. That is, where we stood at the present moment, financially and otherwise. At last I blurted it out—the tumor. Immediately he informed me that he had a good friend, an excellent surgeon, who would do the job for nothing. That stumped me. All I could say was that arrangements had already been made, that I had already advanced a hundred dollars toward the cost of the operation.
I see, he said. That's too bad. He thought a moment, then asked: When must you have it, the balance?
Day after to-morrow.
I tell you what, he said, I'll give you a post-dated check. Right now my bank balance is low, very low. How much is it you need exactly?
I said two hundred and fifty dollars.
That's a shame, he said. I could have saved you all this expense.
I was suddenly struck with remorse. Listen, I said, forget about it! I don't want to take your last penny.
He wouldn't listen to me. People were slow in paying their bills, that's all, he explained. He got out a big ledger, began thumbing through it. By the end of the month I should take in over three thousand dollars. You see, he grinned, I'm not exactly poor.
The check safely in my pocket, I lingered a while to save face. When at last he escorted me to the elevator—I already had one foot in—he said: Better ring me up before depositing that check ... just to make sure it's covered. Do that, will you?
I'll do that, I said, and waved good-bye.
The same good-hearted fellow, thought I to myself, as the elevator descended. Too bad I hadn't thought to get a little cash too. A coffee and a piece of pie was what I needed now. I felt in my pocket. Just a few pennies short. Same old story.
Approaching the library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street I found myself weighing the pros and cons of setting up as a bootblack. What ever could have put such a thought in my head, I wondered. Going on forty and thinking about shining other people's shoes. How the mind wanders!
Abreast of the esplanade guarded by the placid stone lions, the impulse seized me to visit the library. Always pleasant and cosy up in the big reading room. Besides, I had suddenly developed a curiosity to see how it had fared, at my age, with other men of letters. (There was also a possibility of running into an acquaintance and still getting that pie and coffee.) One thing was certain, there was no need to delve into the private lives of such as Gorky, Dostoievsky, Andreyev or any of their ilk. Nor Dickens either. Jules Verne! There was a writer about whose life I knew absolutely nothing. Might be interesting. Some authors, it seemed, never had a private life; everything went into their books. Others, like Strindberg, Nietzsche, Jack London ... their lives I knew almost as well as my own.
What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly, without plan, purpose or goal, and then suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death. What I wanted to lay hold of—as if one could ever come to grips with such impalpables!—was that crucial point in the evolution of a genius when the hard dry rock suddenly yields water. As the heavenly vapors are eventually collected in vast water-sheds and there converted into streams and rivers, so in the mind and soul, I felt, there must ever exist this reservoir waiting to be transformed into words, sentences, books, to be drowned again in the ocean of thought.