As he said one day—Henry, even if I wanted to get married I couldn't. I can't afford a wife.
One day, as he was telling me of his tribulations, he said: My best days were when I was president of that athletic club. You remember? No politics then. Say, do you remember when I ran the Marathon and had to be taken to the hospital? I was tops then. He looked down at his navel and rubbed his paunch. That's from sitting up nights with the boys. Do you wonder sometimes why I'm late every day? I never get to bed till three or four in the morning. Fighting hangovers all the time. Gad, if my folks knew what I was doing to make a name for myself they'd disown me. That's what comes from being an immigrant's son. Being a dirty wop, I had to prove myself. Lucky you don't suffer from ambition. All you want of life is to be a writer, eh? Don't have to wade through a lot of shit to become a writer, do you?
Henry, me lad, sometimes it all looks hopeless to me. So I become President one day ... so what? Think I could really change things? I don't even believe it myself, to-be honest with you. You have no idea what a complicated racket this is. You're beholden to every one, like it or not. Even Lincoln had to make compromises. And I'm no Lincoln. No, I'm just a Sicilian boy who, if the gods are kind, may get to Congress one day. Still, I have my dreams. That's all you can have in this racket—dreams.
Yeah, that athletic club ... people thought the world of me then. I was the shining light of the neighborhood. The shoemaker's son who had risen from the bottom. When I got up to make a speech they were spellbound before I opened my mouth.
He paused to relight his cigar. He took a puff, made a grimace of disgust, and threw it away.
It's all different now. Now I'm part of the machine. A yes man, for the most part. Biding my time and getting deeper in the hole each day. Man, if you had my problems you'd have gray hair by now. You don't know what it is to keep the little integrity you have in the midst of all the temptation that surrounds you. One little misstep and you're tabbed. Every one is trying to get something on the other fellow. That's what holds them together, I guess. Such petty bastards, they are! I'm glad I never became a judge—because if I had to pass sentence on these pricks I'd be unmerciful. It beats me how a country can thrive on intrigue and corruption. There must be higher powers watching over this Republic of ours...
He stopped short. Forget it! he said. I'm just letting off steam. But maybe you can see now that I'm not sitting so pretty.
He rose and reached for his hat. By the way, how are you fixed? Need any more dough? Don't be afraid to ask, if you do. Even if it's for that wife of yours. How is she, by the way? Still in gay Paree?
I gave him a broad smile.
You're lucky, Henry me boy. Lucky she's there, not here. Gives you a breathing spell. She'll be back, never fear. Maybe sooner than you think ... Oh, by the way, I meant to tell you before ... the Commissioner thinks you're pretty good. So do I. Ta ta now!
Evenings after dinner I would usually take a walk—either in the direction of the Chinese Cemetery or the other way, the way that used to lead me past Una Gifford's home. On the corner, posted like a sentinel, old man Martin took his stand every night, winter or summer. Hard to pass him without exchanging a word or two, usually about the evils of drink, tobacco and so on.
Sometimes I merely walked around the block, too dispirited to bother stretching my legs. Before retiring I might read a passage from the Bible. It was the only book in the house. A great sleepy time story book it is too. Only the Jews could have written it. A Goy gets lost in it, what with all the genealogical bitters, the incest, the mayhem, the numerology, the fratricide and parricide, the plagues, the abundance of food, wives, wars, assassinations, dreams, prophecies ... No consecutivity. Only a divinity student can take it straight. It doesn't add up. The Bible is the Old Testament plus the Apocrypha. The New Testament is a puzzle book—for Christians only.
Anyway, what I mean to say is that I had taken a fancy to the Book of Job. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. That was a sentence I liked; it suited my bitterness, my anguish. I particularly liked the rider—Declare, if thou hast understanding. No one has that kind of understanding. Jehovah wasn't content to saddle Job with boils and other afflictions, he had to give him riddles too. Time and again, after a hassle and a snaffle with Kings, Judges, Numbers and other soporific sections dealing with cosmogony, circumcision and the woes of the damned, I would turn to Job and take comfort that I was not one of the chosen ones. In the end, if you remember, Job is squared off. My worries were trifling; they were hardly bigger than a piss pot.
A few days later, as they say, sometime in the afternoon I think it was, came the news that Lindbergh had safely flown the Atlantic. The whole force had poured out on to the lawn to shout and cheer and whistle and congratulate one another. All over the land there was this hysterical rejoicing. It was an Homeric feat and it had taken millions of years for an ordinary mortal to accomplish it.
My own enthusiasm was more contained. It had been slightly dampened by the receipt of a letter that very morning, a letter in which I was notified, so to speak, that she was on her way to Vienna with some friends. Dear Stasia, I learned, was somewhere in North Africa; she had gone off with that crazy Austrian who thought her so wonderful. The way she sounded one might believe that she had run off to Vienna to spite some one. No explanation, naturally, as to how she was accomplishing this miracle. I could easier understand Lindbergh's conquest of the air than her journey to Vienna.
Twice I read the letter through in an effort to discover who her companions were. The solution of the mystery was simple: take the s away and read companion. I hadn't the slightest doubt but that it was a rich, idle, young and handsome American who was acting as her escort. What irritated me the more was that she had failed to give an address in Vienna to which I might write her. I would simply have to wait. Wait and champ the bit.
Lindbergh's magnificent victory over the elements only served to set my own wretched frustration in relief. Here I was cooped up in an office, performing nonsensical labors, deprived even of pocket money, receiving only meagre replies to my long, heart-rending letters, and she, she was gallivanting about, winging it from city to city like a bird of paradise. What sense was there in trying to get to Europe? How would I find a job there when I had such difficulties in my own country? And why pretend that she would be overjoyed to see me arrive?
The more I thought about the situation the more morose I grew. About five that afternoon, in a mood of utter despair, I sat down at the typewriter to outline the book I told myself I must write one day. My Domesday Book. It was like writing my own epitaph.
I wrote rapidly, in telegraphic style, commencing with the evening I first met her. For some inexplicable reason I found myself recording chronologically, and without effort, the long chain of events which filled the interval between that fateful evening and the present. Page after page I turned out, and always there was more to put down.
Hungry, I knocked off to walk to the Village and get a bite to eat. When I returned to the office I again sat down to the machine. As I wrote I laughed and wept. Though I was only making notes it seemed as if I were actually writing the book there and then; I relived the whole tragedy over again step by step, day by day.