‘An ax? How is that possible?’
‘I don’t know. But here was what the letter said: Woefully sorry to report your Hans Warm killed self with ax on 15th May. Possessions forthcoming.’
‘Perhaps he was murdered.’
‘No, I don’t think so. If there was ever anyone who could find a way to kill himself with an ax, it was Father. They never did forward his things. I have often wondered what it was he held on to, there at the end.’
‘And after he left you, then what happened?’
‘I was alone for two weeks in our cabin when my mother arrived, standing in the doorway, twenty-eight years old, pretty as a picture. She had heard I’d been abandoned and came to fetch me back to Worcester, where she had been living all the while. She was awfully sorry to have left me, she said, but she had been deathly afraid of my father, who would drink too much and menace her with knives and forks and things. It was very much a forced or one-sided romance, was my understanding. She could not discuss their time together without revulsion. But that was past, and we were the both of us well pleased to be reunited. The whole first month in Worcester she simply held me and cried. This was the sum total of our relationship at the beginning. I wondered if it would ever stop.’
‘She sounds like a kind woman.’
‘Indeed she was. There were five years of blissful relations where our life was a kind of perfection. She had been given a legacy by her family in New York, and so I always had enough to eat, and my clothes were clean, and she encouraged me in my pursuit of knowledge, for even at that tender age, curiosity in most everything was strong in me, from mechanical engineering to botany to chemistry—yes, clearly that! Unfortunately this contented existence was not to last, for with my transformation to manhood it became clear to her that I was my father’s son, both in looks and temperament. I became obsessive with my studies, hardly ever leaving my room. When she tried to guide me toward healthier pastimes I was consumed by an anger that frightened the both of us. I took to drinking, not too terribly much at the start, but enough that I would become abusive and belittling, just as my father had. Having been through all this before, my mother understandably found my behavior repellent, and she removed her affections in wretched stages until there was nothing left between us, nothing but for me to go, which is what I did, taking my small sack of money and heading to St. Louis, or should I say my sack ran out in St. Louis, which forced me to cease traveling. It was wintertime, and I feared I would perish from cold or sadness or both. I sold my horse and married a fat woman I did not love, or even like, named Eunice.’
‘Why would you marry someone you didn’t like?’
‘She had an enormous potbellied stove in her cabin that emanated heat like the coals of hell. And by the looks of her she held a stockpile of food that might feed the both of us through to the spring. You’re smiling, but I assure you these were my lone motivations: Warmth and nourishment. I so longed for any manner of comfort, I would have married an alligator if only it would share its bed. And I might as well have married an alligator, for all the kindness Eunice showed me. She had no grace or charm whatsoever. She had noncharm, or anticharm. A bottomless well of antagonism and hostility. And she was terrifically ugly. And she smelled like rotten leaves. A brute, to put it briefly. When the money from my horse sale ran out, and when she understood I had no plans to copulate with her, she pushed me from the bed and onto the floor, where the heat from the stove burned my topside, while the draft coming up through the boards froze my bottom. Also, my hopes for a bountiful dinner table were soon dashed. Eunice was as protective as a mama bear about her biscuits. She gave me the occasional bowl of watery stew, so let’s say she wasn’t all bad, but the good was there in such measly quantities you had to keep a sharp watch lest you miss it entirely. But as I said, it was miserably cold, and I had made the decision to dig in my heels and pass the winter in that cabin, one way or the other. After the weather broke I would rob her and run away into the sunshine—I would have my last laugh. She recognized my plan, however, and got me one better before I could see it through. I came home from the saloon and found a large and angry-looking man sitting at the dinner table. He had a plateful of biscuits before him. I understood right away. I wished them good luck and left.’
‘That was sporting.’
‘I returned an hour later and tried to set the cabin alight. The man caught me huddled over my matchbox and kicked me so hard in the backside it lifted me from the earth. Eunice saw it all from the window. That was the only time I saw her laugh. She laughed a long time, too. Anyway, I am embarrassed to say it, but after this hurtful episode I became disenchanted, and turned for a time to common thievery. I could not get my mind around my misfortune, was the thing. Only months earlier I was alone with my books, clean and sheltered and well fed, happy as could be. And now, through no fault of my own, I found myself sneaking into barns at night and burrowing under manure-matted hay so as not to freeze to death. I said to myself, Hermann, the world has raised up its fist and struck you down! I resolved to strike back.’
‘What did you steal?’
‘At the start I was after the bare necessities. A loaf of bread here, a blanket there, a pair of wool socks—small things that no man should be denied. But with every passing crime I became more stealthy and cocksure and also greedy; after a time I began to take away anything I could get my hands on, just for the malicious pleasure I derived from it. I stole items I could never conceivably use. A pair of women’s boots. A crib. At one point I found myself running from an abattoir with a severed cow’s head in my arms. What for? What functional purpose might it serve? When it became too heavy I dropped the thing into a river. It bobbed along, then caromed off a rock and sank out of sight. Stealing became like a sickness. I think I saw it as a way to extract revenge against everyone who was not shivering and famished and alone. It was around this point my drinking began to take hold of me, body and spirit. You talk about your slippery roads.’
‘My father was a drinker. And Charlie is, also.’
‘It is something that plagues me still, and perhaps will always plague me. Of course it would be best to cork the bottle forever. I have recognized the problem. I know it doesn’t agree with me. Why not stop? Why not put an end to it? No, that would make too much sense. That would be entirely too reasonable. Oh, it’s a slippery road, all right, make no mistake about that. Well, days and months passed me by and I became dirtier and more depraved all the while, inside and out. You will meet some down-on-their-luck types who take pride in their pared and scrubbed nails, men who will boast of their once-per-week baths, financial hardships be damned. They attend church services regularly and sit patiently in the pews, awaiting their change in fate without a trace of bitterness, beards combed down just so. Let me say that I was not one of these. In fact I was the far opposite. I became increasingly drawn to filth. More and more I desired to lay and grovel in it, to actually live within in. My teeth fell out, and this pleased me. My hair dropped away in patches and I was glad. I was the raving and maniacal village idiot, in short, only the village was not a humble, thatched-roof township, but the United States of America. Finally I was seized by an unshakable preoccupation, namely the belief that I was actually composed of human waste.’
‘What?’
‘A living mold of waste, was my notion. Excrement. My bones were hardened excrement. My blood—was liquid excrement. Do not ask me to elucidate. It is something I will never be able to explain. I was suffering, if I’m not mistaken, from scurvy, which added together with the drinking and mental agitation brought about this queer idea.’