As regards this appellation, which disconcertingly took wing from my otherwise so choice vocabulary, it seems I should explain that it denotes a low-down sort of character. By lummox, one should understand a fusion of every conceivable ineptitude in the person of a particular social fellow being. With a splendid, because moderate, velocity I strode today, as it happens, into a shoe solery to ask what steps had been taken, what progress made, toward finishing work in which I knew I had an interest. Instead of saying “lummox,” in a country that delights in its reputation for hospitality and where, besides which, I too am permitted to live, some folks make use of the designation dummer Cheib, or fathead. Neither the latter nor the former manner of speaking sounds polite; both shed a certain uncultivated dimness upon persons who put them to use. Like a bird of paradise he flew across the far-flung and not by any means entirely bland and composed carpet of meadows historically called the sea, the fool or lummox, who may be called a lummox insofar as he was gambling, so audaciously as to be well-nigh presumptuous, with the indisputable treasure of his life, on which apparently, since he was thus exposing it to all vicissitudes, he placed little value, in a manner which was, well now, how should one put it, almost indiscreet; for surely one may be right to think that a person who commits himself to the discharge of a duty, a general human concern, and thereby shows little or no regard for his own person, is in equal proportions a tall and broad, perhaps even towering, lummox or fathead? On the other hand, I can see in him someone who empowers himself to inhale and exhale the glory and delight of life, for when enjoyment, meaning the principle of healthy egoism, is set aside, then precisely does the richer and purer source of what is initially disdained begin. The careless or selfless person, it is my conviction, does persistently care for himself, although I am ready at any moment to admit the contradictoriness here apparent, which, in itself, is of great significance for me.
When, for instance, someone becomes self-important, it is popularly said that he has “a bee in his bonnet.” A person can be just as important as he pleases, in fact; but to appear so is not always pleasant for others.
In the finer sense, as in the one just indicated, I launch toward you, somewhat like a bee, the present essay.
[1927]
The Pimp
WHAT an irreparable error it would be, if to the high pile of errors that during my lifetime have slipped from me, as if hatched from eggs of misconception, I were to add that of declaring this house somewhere on a hilltop to be a palace, seeming as it did more like a villa or pavilion, a neat little convalescent home, where, as a lackey, for I could not have figured there as anything loftier or better, I performed tasks that were in my opinion of preeminent quality, although I cannot but realize that my manner of speaking is rather long-winded.
Even if I saw that my employer — I do not know if I should be saying this — sometimes indulged her habit of pressing together her unspeakably thin lips, still she was for me the world’s most beautiful woman, while it would never have occurred to me to extol her as a miracle of rare proportions, to which reality did give me every imaginable reason.
The mountain ridge upon which one looked across from one of the surely very numerous windows had a very pleasant face, by which I would like to have intimated that it was a joy to devote to it a proper measure of the attention it well deserved. Oh, the freedom, the finesse, of which it was, from afar, seeming to be at once both far and near, a perfect expression! I thought I could touch the mountain with my hands; in any event, its stoninesses had the effect of a face that responded, in content as in form, to each and every demand.
Days and days went by before I could somewhat orient myself as to what sort of business the delightfully located house, ringed around as it was, so to speak, with little dancings, might be based upon. What very remarkable purpose did it serve? More than once, this was my question.
Unbelievably diffuse festivities spreading out for as long as one could wish over fabulously beautiful gardens and lasting from first light, each time so graceful it was like a goddess awakening, far into the dusk and longer still, to the edge of night, were lavished in the countryside in which this estate stood, proud as a temple and yet modest in every way, on all who wished to have a share in a healthy and thus worthwhile experience, some of whom had been invited by word of mouth, some in writing.
That the meadows, enlivened here and there most charmingly by trees, were of a green to the intensity of which even the most intense grumblers, and to the gaiety of which even the most innate peeves, could raise little if any objection, is almost certain to be as good as obvious.
The house was thronged with well-disciplined girls, vying with one another as regards their proper tasks, which is probably the best and most civil thing to be said about human apparitions clad generally in aprons and equipped with feathered dust absorbers.
From time to time I heard my beautiful and doubtless much beleaguered employer exclaim in quite a loud voice: “Don’t put me on edge!” To what species of earth dweller did she say this? Naturally for me it could only remain for a long time an inscrutable riddle, whose insolubility was like a sumptuous garment, of which I became, so to speak, enamored.
One thing I may and must mention with due care. In the garden which, bordered to the south perhaps by a stream that propelled itself with extraordinary gentleness along its course, and extending northward into a most motley hilliness, there was, like a bouquet of flowers, a multitude of delicious nooks, which really did appear like friendly little faces, and where, at one’s pleasure, that is to say, most freely, one could lark about, take a rest, make a little love — saying which reminds me that kind fate, of which I have undertaken never to complain, since that would not, in my opinion, be appropriate, once led me into a theater to share the spectacle of a play which simultaneously delighted me and left me somewhat dissatisfied. Might I confess to finding that it is exquisite to be of two minds regarding works of art? To find fault with something that I welcome on the whole, how nice I find this is!
As regards the blossoming trees in the garden, I allow myself the liberty of using the epithet “enchanting,” and of the owner, the person, that is to say, who was entitled to claim, with regard to all the beauty I have described, “You are mine,” it will be desirable to mention, with a sort of horrified dismay in the voice with which I say it, the fact that he was a pimp, whom the most substantial connections seemingly contrived to make undetectable.