Only through trial and tribulation, it is said, are we opened up. Was that what I would find—nothing more?—in scanning the pages of biography? Were the creative ones tormented beings who found salvation only through wrestling with the media of art? In man's world beauty was linked with suffering and suffering with salvation. Nothing of the sort obtained in Nature.
I took a seat in the reading room with a huge biographical dictionary before me. After reading here and there I fell into a reverie. To pursue my own thoughts proved more exciting than to pry into the lives of successful failures. Could I trace my own meanderings, beneath the roots, perhaps I might stumble on the stream which would lead me into the open. Stasia's words came to mind—the need to meet a kindred spirit, in order to grow, to give forth fruit. To hold converse (on writing) with the lovers of literature was fruitless. There were many I had already met who could talk more brilliantly on the subject than any writer. (And they would never write a line.) Was there any one, indeed, who could speak discerningly about the secret processes?
The great question was that eternal, seemingly unanswerable one: what have I to tell the world which is so desperately important? What have I to say that has not been said before, and thousands of times, by men infinitely more gifted? Was it sheer ego, this coercive need to be heard? In what way was I unique? For if I was not unique then it would be like adding a cipher to an incalculable astronomic figure.
From one thing to another—a delicious Traumerei!—until I found myself pondering this most absorbing aspect of the writer's problem: openings. The way in which a book opened—there in itself lay a world. How vastly different, how unique, were the opening pages of the great books! Some authors were like huge birds of prey; they hovered above their creation, casting immense, serrated shadows over their words. Some, like painters, began with delicate, unpremeditated touches, guided by some sure instinct whose purpose would become apparent later in the application of mass and color. Some took you by the hand like dreamers, content to linger at the edges of dream, and only slowly, tantalizingly permitted themselves to reveal what was obviously inexpressible. There were others who, as if perched in signal towers, derived intense enjoyment from pulling switches, blinking lights; with them everything was delineated sharply and boldly, as though their thoughts were so many trains pulling into the station yard. And then there were those who, either demented or hallucinated, began at random with hoarse cries, jeers and curses, stamping their thoughts not upon but through the page, like machines gone wild. Varied as they were, all these methods of breaking the ice were symptomatic of the personality, not expositions of thought out techniques. The way a book opened was the way an author walked or talked, the way he looked at life, the way he took courage or concealed his fears. Some began by seeing clear to the end; others began blindly, each line a silent prayer leading to the next. What an ordeal, this lifting of the veil! What a shuddering risk, this laying bare the mummy! No one, not even the greatest, could be certain what he might be called upon to present to the profane eye. Once engaged, anything could happen. It was as if, by taking pen in hand, the archons were summoned. Yes, the archons! Those mysterious entities, those cosmic enzymes, who are at work in every seed, who engineer the creation, structural and aesthetic, of every flower, every plant, every tree, every universe. The powers within. An everlasting ferment from which stemmed law and order.
And while these invisible ones went about their task the author—what a misnomer!—lived and breathed, performed the duties of a householder, a prisoner, a vagabond, whatever the role, and as the days passed, or the years, the scroll unrolled, the tragedy (his own and his characters') spelled itself out, his moods varying like the weather from day to day, his energies rising and sinking, his thoughts seething like a maelstrom, the end ever approaching, a heaven which even if he has not earned it he must force, because what is begun must be finished, consummated, even if on the cross.
What need, eh, to read the pages of biography? What need to study the worm or the ant? Think, for just a moment, of such willing victims as Blake, Boehme, Nietzsche, of Holderlin, Sade, Nerval, of Villon, Rimbaud, Strindberg, of Cervantes or Dante, or even of Heine or Oscar Wilde! And I, was I to add my name to this host of illustrious martyrs? To what further depths of degradation had I to sink before acquiring the right to join the ranks of these scapegoats?
As on those interminable walks to and from the tailor shop, I was suddenly seized with a fit of writing. All in the head, to be sure. But what marvelous pages, what magnificent phraseology! My eyes half closed, I slumped deeper into the seat and listened to the music welling up from the depths. What a book this was! If not mine, whose then? I was entranced. Entranced, yet saddened, humbled, chastened. Of what use to summon these invisible workers? For the pleasure of drowning in the ocean of creation? Never, through conscious effort, never, with pen in hand, would I be able to invoke such thoughts! Everything to which I would eventually sign my name would be marginal, peripheral, the maunderings of an idiot striving to record the erratic flight of a butterfly ... Yet it was comforting to know that one could be as a butterfly.
To think that all this wealth, this wealth of the primeval chaos, must be infused, to be palatable and potable, with the Homeric minutiae of the daily round, with the repetitious drama of petty humans whose sufferings and aspirations have, even to mortal ears, the monotonous hum of windmills whirring in remorseless space. The petty and the great: separated by inches. Alexander dying of pneumonia in the desolate reaches of Asia; Caesar in all his purple proved mortal by a pack of traitors; Blake singing as he passed away; Damien torn on the wheel and screaming like a thousand twisted eagles ... what did it matter and to whom? A Socrates hitched to a nagging wife, a saint plagued with a thousand woes, a prophet tarred and feathered ... to what end? All grist for the mill, data for historians and chroniclers, poison to the child, caviar for the schoolmaster. And with this and through this, weaving his way like an inspired drunkard, the writer tells his tale, lives and breathes, is honored or dishonored. What a role! Jesus protect us!
9
No coffee, no apple pie. It was dark and the avenue deserted when I hit the air. I was famished. With the few cents I had I bought a candy bar and walked home.
A horrendous jaunt, particularly on an empty stomach.
But my head was buzzing like a bee-hive. For company I had the martyrs, those gay self-willed birds who had long since been devoured by the worms.
I dove straight into bed. Why wait up for them, even though there was a promise of food? Anything from their lips would be so much gibberish after the biographical fling I had enjoyed.
I waited a few days before breaking the news to Stasia.
She was dumbfounded when I handed her the check.
Never believed it possible of me. But wasn't I rushing her at bit? And the check, could she be certain it wouldn't bounce?
Such questions! I said nothing about Doc Zabriskie's request to call him before cashing the check. No use running the risk of hearing something disagreeable. Cash it first, then worry—that was my thought.
It never entered my head to inquire if she had changed her mind about going. I had done my part, it was up to her to fulfill hers. Ask nobody nothing, it's too risky. Forward, at all costs!
A few days later, however, came the bad news. It was like a double-barreled shot-gun going off. First, as I might have known, the check bounced. Second, Stasia had decided against leaving—for a while anyway. On top of it I got hell from Mona for trying to get rid of Stasia. I had broken my word again. How could they ever trust me? And so on. My hands were tied, or my tongue rather. Impossible to tell her what Stasia and I had agreed upon in private. That would only have made me more of a traitor.