"It's just like that guy," he says, "to tell me he put it to her six or seven times. I know that's a lot of shit and I don't mind that so much, but when he tells me that she hired a carriage and drove him out to the Bois and that they used the husband's fur-coat for a blanket, that's too much. I suppose he told you about the chauffeur waiting respectfully ... and listen, did he tell you how the engine purred all the time? Jesus, he built that up wonderfully. It's just like him to think of a detail like that ... it's one of those little details which makes a thing psychologically real ... you can't get it out of your head afterwards. And he tells it to me so smoothly, so naturally ... I wonder, did he think it up in advance or did it just pop out of his head like that, spontaneously? He's such a cute little liar you can't walk away from him ... it's like he's writing you a letter, one of those flower-pots that he makes overnight. I don't understand how a guy can write such letters ... I don't get the mentality behind it ... it's a form a masturbation ... what do you think?"
But before I have an opportunity to venture an opinion, or even to laugh in his face, Van Norden goes on with his monologue.
"Listen, I suppose he told you everything ... did he tell you how he stood on the balcony in the moonlight and kissed her? That sounds banal when you repeat it, but the way that guy describes it ... I can just see the little prick standing there with the woman in his arms and already he's writing another letter to her, another flower-pot about the roof-tops and all that crap he steals from his French authors. That guy never says a thing that's original, I found that out. You have to get a clue like ... find out whom he's been reading lately ... and it's hard to do that because he's so damned secretive. Listen, if I didn't know that you went there with him, I wouldn't believe that the woman existed. A guy like that could write letters to himself. And yet he's lucky ... he's so damned tiny, so frail, so romantic-looking, that women fall for him now and then ... they sort of adopt him ... they feel sorry for him, I guess. And some cunts like to receive flower-pots ... it makes them feel important ... But this woman's an intelligent woman, so he says. You ought to know, you've seen her letters. What do you suppose a woman like that saw in him? I can understand her falling for the letters ... but how do you suppose she felt when she saw him?
"But listen, all that's beside the point. What I'm getting at is the way he tells it to me. You know how he embroiders things ... well, after that scene on the balcony--he gives me that like an hors d'oeuvre, you know--after that, so he says, they went inside and he unbuttoned her pajamas. What are you smiling for? Was he shifting me about that?"
"No, no! You're giving it to me exactly as he told me. Go ahead ..."
"After that"--here Van Norden has to smile himself-- "after that, mind you, he tells me how she sat in the chair with her legs up ... not a stitch on ... and he's sitting on the floor looking up at her, telling her how beautiful she looks ... did he tell you that she looked like a Matisse ...
Wait a minute ... I'd like to remember exactly what he said. He had some cute little phrase there about an odalisque ... what the hell's an odalisque anyway? He said it in French, that's why it's hard to remember the fucking thing ... but it sounded good. It sounded just like the sort of thing he might say. And she probably thought it was original with him ... I suppose she thinks he's a poet or something. But listen, all this is nothing ... I make allowance for his imagination. It's what happened after that that drives me crazy. All night long I've been tossing about, playing with these images he left in my mind. I can't get it out of my head. It sounds so real to me that if it didn't happen I could strangle the bastard. A guy has no right to invent things like that. Or else he's diseased ...
"What I'm getting at is that moment when, he says, he got down on his knees and with those two skinny fingers of his he spread her cunt open. You remember that? He says she was sitting there with her legs dangling over the arms of the chair and suddenly, he says, he got an inspiration. This was after he had given her a couple of lays already ... after he had made that little spiel about Matisse. He gets down on his knees-- get this!-- and with his two fingers ... just the tips of them, mind you ... he opens the little petals ... squish-squish ... just like that. A sticky little sound ... almost inaudible. Squish-squish! Jesus, I've been hearing it all night long! And then he says--as if that weren't enough for me--then he tells me he buried his head in her muff. And when he did that, so help me Christ, if she didn't swing her legs around his neck and lock him there.
That finished me! Imagine it! Imagine a fine, sensitive woman like that swinging her legs around his neck! There's something poisonous about it. It's so fantastic that it sounds convincing. If he had only told me about the champagne and the ride in the Bois and even that scene on the balcony I could have dismissed it. But this thing is so incredible that it doesn't sound like a lie, any more. I can't believe that he ever read anything like that anywhere, and I can't see what could have put the idea into his head unless there was some truth in it. With a little prick like that, you know, anything can happen. He may not have fucked her at all, but she may have let him diddle her ... you never know with these rich cunts what they might expect you to do ..."
When he finally pulls himself out of bed and starts to shave the afternoon is already well advanced. I've finally succeeded in switching his mind to other things, to the moving principally. The maid comes in to see if he's ready--he's supposed to have vacated the room by noon. He's just in the act of slipping into his trousers. I'm a little surprised that he doesn't excuse himself, or turn away. Seeing him standing there nonchalantly buttoning his fly as he gives her orders I begin to titter. "Don't mind her," he says, throwing her a look of supreme contempt, "she's just a big sow. Give her a pinch in the ass, if you like. She won't say anything." And then addressing her, in English, he says: "Come here, you bitch, put your hand on this!" At this I can't restrain myself any longer. I burst out laughing, a fit of hysterical laughter which infects the maid also, though she doesn't know what it's all about.
The maid commences to take down the pictures and photographs, mostly of himself, which line the walls. "You," he says, jerking his thumb, "come here! Here's something to remember me by"--ripping a photograph off the wall--"when I go you can wipe your ass with it. See," he says, turning to me, "she's a dumb bitch. She wouldn't look any more intelligent if I said it in French." The maid stands there with her mouth open; she is evidently convinced that he is cracked. "Hey!" he yells at her as if she were hard of healing. "Hey, you! Yes, you! Like this ... !" and he takes the photograph, his own photograph, and wipes his ass with it. "Comme ca! Savvy? You've got to draw pictures for her," he says, thrusting his lower lip forward in absolute disgust.
He watches her helplessly as she throws his things into the big valises.
"Here, put these in too," he says, handing her a tooth-brush and the douche-bag. Half of his belongings are lying on the floor. The valises are crammed full and there is nowhere to put the paintings and the books and the bottles that are half empty. "Sit down a minute," he says. "We've got plenty of time. We've got to think this thing out. If you hadn't come around I'd never have gotten out of here. You see how helpless I am. Don't let me forget to take the bulbs out ... they belong to me. That waste-basket belongs to me too. They expect you to live like pigs, these bastards." The maid has gone downstairs to get some twine ... "Wait till you see ... she'll charge me for the twine even if it's only three sous. They wouldn't sew a button on your pants here without charging for it. The lousy, dirty scroungers!" He takes a bottle of Calvados from the mantelpiece and nods to me to grab the other. "No use carrying these to the new place. Let's finish them off now. But don't give her a drink! That bastard, I wouldn't leave her a piece of toilet-paper. I'd like to ruin the joint before I go.
Listen ... piss on the floor, if you like. I wish I could take a crap in the bureau drawer." He feels so utterly disgusted with himself and everything else that he doesn't know what to do by way of venting his feelings. He walks over to the bed with the bottle in his hand and pulling back the covers he sprinkles Calvados over the mattress. Not content with that he digs his heel into the mattress. Unfortunately there's no mud on his heels. Finally he takes the sheet and cleans his shoes with it.
"That'll give them something to do," he mutters vengefully. Then, taking a good swig, he throws his head back and gargles his throat, and after he's gargled it good and proper he spits it out on the mirror. "There, you cheap bastards! Wipe that off when I go!" He walks back and forth mumbling to himself. Seeing his torn socks lying on the floor he picks them up and tears them to bits. The paintings enrage him too. He picks one up--a portrait of himself done by some Lesbian he knew and he puts his foot through it. "That bitch! You know what she had the nerve to ask me? She asked me to turn over my cunts to her after I was through with them. She never gave me a sou for writing her up. She thought I honestly admired her work. I wouldn't have gotten that painting out of her if I hadn't promised to fix her up with that cunt from Minnesota. She was nuts about her ... used to follow us around like a dog in heat ... we couldn't get rid of the bitch! She bothered the life out of me. I got so that I was almost afraid to bring a cunt up here for fear that she'd bust in on me. I used to creep up here like a burglar and lock the door behind me as soon as I got inside ... She and that Georgia cunt--they drive me nuts. The one is always in heat and the other is always hungry. I hate fucking a woman who's hungry. It's like you push a feed inside her and then you push it out again ... Jesus, that reminds me of something ... where did I put that blue ointment? That's important. Did you ever have those things? It's worse than having a dose. And I don't know where I got them from either. I've had so many women up here in the last week or so I've lost track of them. Funny too, because they all smelled so fresh. But you know how it is ..."
The maid has piled his things up on the sidewalk. The patron looks on with a surly air. When everything has been loaded into the taxi there is only room for one of us inside. As soon as we commence to roll Van Norden gets out a newspaper and starts bundling up his pots and pans; in the new place all cooking is strictly forbidden. By the time we reach our destination all his luggage has come undone; it wouldn't be quite so embarrassing if the madame had not stuck her head out of the doorway just as we rolled up. "My God!" she exclaims, "what in the devil is all this? What does it mean?" Van Norden is so intimidated that he can think of nothing more to say than "C'est moi ... c'est moi, madame!" And turning to me he mumbles savagely: "That cluck! Did you notice her face? She's going to make it hard for me."
The hotel lies back of a dingy passage and forms a rectangle very much on the order of a modem penitentiary. The bureau is large and gloomy, despite the brilliant reflections from the tile walls. There are bird cages hanging in the windows and little enamel signs everywhere begging the guests in an obsolete language not to do this and not to forget that. It is almost immaculately clean but absolutely poverty-stricken, threadbare, woe-begone.
The upholstered chairs are held together with wired thongs; they remind one unpleasantly of the electric chair. The room he is going to occupy is on the fifth floor. As we climb the stairs Van Norden informs me that Maupassant once lived here. And in the same breath he remarks that there is a peculiar odor in the hall. On the fifth floor a few window-panes are missing; we stand a moment gazing at the tenants across the court. It is getting toward dinner-time and people are straggling back to their rooms with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly.
Most of the windows are wide open: the dingy rooms have the appearance of so many yawning mouths. The occupants of the rooms are yawning too, or else scratching themselves. They move about listlessly and apparently without much purpose; they might just as well be lunatics.
As we turn down the corridor towards room 57, a door suddenly opens in front of us and an old hag with matted hair and the eyes of a maniac peers out.
She startles us so that we stand transfixed. For a full minute the three of us stand there powerless to move or even to make an intelligent gesture.
Back of the old hag I can see a kitchen table and on it lies a baby all undressed, a puny little brat no bigger than a plucked chicken. Finally the old one picks up a slop-pail by her side and makes a move forward. We stand aside to let her pass and as the door closes behind her the baby lets out a piercing scream. It is room number 56, and between 56 and 57 is the toilet where the old hag is emptying her slops.
Ever since we have mounted the stairs Van Norden has kept silence. But his looks are eloquent. When he opens the door of 57 I have for a fleeting moment the sensation of going mad. A huge mirror covered with green gauze and tipped at an angle of 45 degrees hangs directly opposite the entrance over a baby-carriage which is filled with books. Van Norden doesn't even crack a smile; instead he walks nonchalantly over to the baby-carriage and picking up a book begins to skim it through, much as a man would enter the public library and go unthinkingly to the rack nearest to hand. And perhaps this would not seem so ludicrous to me if I had not espied at the same time a pair of handle-bars resting in the corner. They look so absolutely peaceful and contented, as if they had been dozing there for years, that suddenly it seems to me as if we had been standing in this room, in exactly this position, for an incalculably long time, that it was a pose we had struck in a dream from which we never emerged, a dream which the least gesture, the wink of an eye even, will shatter. But more remarkable still is the remembrance that suddenly floats up of an actual dream which occurred only the other night, a dream in which I saw Van Norden in just such a comer as is occupied now by the handle-bars, only instead of the handle-bars there was a woman crouching with her legs drawn up. I see him standing over the woman with that alert, eager look in his eye, which comes when he wants something badly. The street in which this is going on is blurred--only the angle made by two walls is clear, and the cowering figure of the woman. I can see him going at her in that quick, animal way of his, reckless of what's going on about him, determined only to have his way. And a look in his eye as though to say--"you can kill me afterwards, but just let me get it in ... I've got to get it in!" And there he is, bent over her, their heads knocking against the wall, he has such a tremendous erection that it's simply impossible to get it in her. Suddenly, with that disgusted air which he knows so well how to summon, he picks himself up and adjusts his clothes.
He is about to walk away when suddenly he notices that his penis is lying on the sidewalk. It is about the size of a sawed-off broom-stick. He picks it up nonchalantly and slings it under his arm. As he walks off I notice two huge bulbs, like tulip bulbs, dangling from the end of the broom-stick, and I can hear him muttering to himself "flower-pots ... flower-pots."
The garcon arrives panting and sweating. Van Norden looks at him uncomprehendingly. The madame now marches in and walking straight up to Van Norden she takes the book out of his hand, thrusts it in the baby-carriage, and without saying a word, wheels the baby-carriage into the hallway.
"This is a bug-house," says Van Norden, smiling distressedly. It is such a faint, indescribable smile that for a moment the dream feeling comes back and it seems to me that we are standing at the end of a long corridor at the end of which is a corrugated mirror. And down this corridor, swinging his distress like a dingy lantern. Van Norden staggers, staggers in and out as here and there a door opens and a hand yanks him in or a hoof pushes him out. And the further off he wanders the more lugubrious is his distress; he wears it like a lantern which the cyclists hold between their teeth on a night when the pavement is wet and slippery. In and out of the dingy rooms he wanders, and when he sits down the chair collapses, when he opens his valise there is only a tooth-brush inside. In every room there is a mirror before which he stands attentively and chews his rage, and from the constant chewing, from the grumbling and mumbling and the muttering and cursing his jaws have gotten unhinged and they sag badly and, when he rubs his beard, pieces of his jaw crumble away and he's so disgusted with himself that he stamps on his own jaw, grinds it to bits with his big heels.
Meanwhile the luggage is being hauled in. And things begin to look crazier even than before--particularly when he attaches his exerciser to the bedstead and begins his Sandow exercises. "I like this place," he says, smiling at the garcon. He takes his coat and vest off. The gacfon is watching him with a puzzled air; he has a valise in one hand and the douche-bag in the other. I'm standing apart in the ante-chamber holding the mirror with the green gauze. Not a single object seems to possess a practical use. The ante-chamber itself seems useless, a sort of vestibule to a barn.
It is exactly the same sort of sensation which I get when I enter the Comedie Francaise or the Palais Royal Theatre; it is a world of bric-a-brac, of trapdoors, of arms and busts and waxed floors, of candelabras and men in armor, of statues without eyes and love letters lying in glass cases.
Something is going on, but it makes no sense; it's like finishing the half-empty bottle of Calvados because there's no room in the valise.
Climbing up the stairs, as I said a moment ago, he had mentioned the fact that Maupassant used to live here. The coincidence seems to have made an impression upon him. He would like to believe that it was in this very room that Maupassant gave birth to some of those gruesome tales on which his reputation rests. "They lived like pigs, those poor bastards," he says. We are sitting at the round table in a pair of comfortable old arm-chairs that have been trussed up with thongs and braces; the bed is right beside as, so close indeed that we can put our feet on it. The armoire stands in a comer behind us, also conveniently within reach. Van Norden has emptied his dirty wash on the table; we sit here with our feet buried in his dirty socks and shirts, and smoke contentedly. The sordidness of the place seems to have worked a spell on him: he is content here. When I get up to switch on the light he suggests that we play a game of cards before going out to eat. And so we sit there by the window, with the dirty wash strewn over the floor and the Sandow exerciser hanging from the chandelier, and we play a few rounds of two-handed pinochle. Van Norden has put away his pipe and packed a wad of snuff on the under side of his lower lip. Now and then he spits out of the window, big healthy gobs of brown juice which resound with a smack on the pavement below. He seems content now.
"In America," he says, "you wouldn't dream of living in a joint like this.
Even when I was on the bum I slept in better rooms than this. But here it seems natural--it's like the books you read. If I ever go back there I'll forget all about this life, just like you forget a bad dream. I'll probably take up the old life again just where I left off... if I ever get back.
Sometimes I lie in bed dreaming about the past and it's so vivid to me that I have to shake myself in order to realize where I am. Especially when I have a woman beside me; a woman can set me off better than anything. That's all I want of them--to forget myself. Sometimes I get so lost in my reveries that I can't remember the name of the cunt or where I picked her up. That's funny, eh?
It's good to have a fresh warm body beside you when you wake up in the morning. It gives you a clean feeling. You get spiritual like ... until they start pulling that mushy crap about love et cetera. Why do all these cunts talk about love so much, can you tell me that? A good lay isn't enough for them apparently ... they want your soul too ..."
Now this word soul, which pops up frequently in Van Norden's soliloquies, used to have a droll effect upon me at first. Whenever I heard the word soul from his lips I would get hysterical; somehow it seemed like a false coin, more particularly because it was usually accompanied by a gob of brown juice which left a trickle down the comer of his mouth. And as I never hesitated to laugh in his face it happened invariably that when this little word bobbed up Van Norden would pause just long enough for me to burst into a cackle and then, as if nothing had happened, he would resume his monologue, repeating the word more and more frequently and each time with a more caressing emphasis. It was the soul of him that women were trying to possess--that he made clear to me. He had explained it over and over again, but he comes back to it afresh each time like a paranoiac to his obsession.
In a sense Van Norden is mad, of that I'm convinced. His one fear is to be left alone, and this fear is so deep and so persistent that even when he is on top of a woman, even when he has welded himself to her, he cannot escape the prison which he has created for himself. "I try all sorts of things," he explains to me. "I even count sometimes, or I begin to think of a problem in philosophy, but it doesn't work. It's like I'm two people, and one of them is watching me all the time. I get so god-damned mad at myself that I could kill myself ... and in a way, that's what I do every time I have an orgasm.
For one second like I obliterate myself. There's not even one me then ... there's nothing ... not even the cunt. It's like receiving communion.
Honest, I mean that. For a few seconds afterwards I have a fine spiritual glow ... and maybe it would continue that way indefinitely--how can you tell?--if it weren't for the fact that there's a woman beside you and then the douche-bag and the water running ... all those little details that make you desperately self-conscious, desperately lonely. And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap ... it drives me nuts sometimes ... I want to kick them out immediately ... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women ... they're all masochists at heart."
"But what is it you want of a woman, then?" I demand.
He begins to mould his hands; his lower lip droops. He looks completely frustrated. When eventually he succeeds in stammering out a few broken phrases it's with the conviction that behind his words lies an overwhelming futility. "I want to be able to surrender myself to a woman," he blurts out. "I want her to take me out of myself. But to do that, she's got to be better than I am; she's got to have a mind, not just a cunt. She's got to make me believe that I need her, that I can't live without her. Find me a cunt like that, will you? If you could do that I'd give you my job. I wouldn't care then what happened to me:
I wouldn't need a job or friends or books or anything. If she could only make me believe that there was something more important on earth than myself. Jesus, I hate myself! But I hate these bastardly cunts even more--because they're none of them any good.
"You think I like myself," he continues. "That shows how little you know about me. I know I'm a great guy ... I wouldn't have these problems if there weren't something to me. But what eats me up is that I can't express myself. People think I'm a cunt-chaser. That's how shallow they are, these high-brows who sit on the terrasse all day chewing the psychologic cud ... That's not so bad, eh--psychologic cud? Write it down for me. I'll use it in my column next week ... By the way, did you ever read Stekel? Is he any good? It looks like nothing but case histories to me. I wish to Christ I could get up enough nerve to visit an analyst... a good one, I mean. I don't want to see these little shysters with goatees and frock coats, like your friend Boris. How do you manage to tolerate those guys? Don't they bore you stiff?
You talk to anybody, I notice. You don't give a god-damn. Maybe you're right. I wish I weren't so damned critical. But these dirty little Jews who hang around the Dome, Jesus, they give me the creeps. They sound just like textbooks. If I could talk to you every day maybe I could get things off my chest. You're a good listener. I know you don't give a damn about me, but you're patient. And you don't have any theories to exploit. I suppose you put it all down afterwards in that notebook of yours. Listen, I don't mind what you say about me, but don't make me out to be a cunt-chaser--it's too simple. Some day I'll write a book about myself, about my thoughts. I don't mean just a piece of introspective analysis ... I mean that I'll lay myself down on the operating table and I'll expose my whole guts ... every god-damned thing. Has anybody ever done that before?--What the hell are you smiling at? Does it sound naif?"
I'm smiling because whenever we touch on the subject of this book which he is going to write some day things assume an incongruous aspect. He has only to say "my book" and immediately the world shrinks to the private dimensions of Van Norden and Co. The book must be absolutely original, absolutely perfect. That is why, among other things, it is impossible for him to get started on it. As soon as he gets an idea he begins to question it. He remembers that Dostoievski used it, or Hamsun, or somebody else. "I'm not saying that I want to be better than them, but I want to be different," he explains. And so, instead of tackling his book, he reads one author after another in order to make absolutely certain that he is not going to tread on their private property. And the more he reads the more disdainful he becomes. None of them are satisfying; none of them arrive at that degree of perfection which he has imposed on himself. And forgetting completely that he has not written as much as a chapter he talks about them condescendingly, quite as though there existed a shelf of books bearing his name, books which everyone is familiar with and the titles of which it is therefore superfluous to mention. Though he has never overtly lied about this fact, nevertheless it is obvious that the people whom he buttonholes in order to air his private philosophy, his criticism, and his grievances, take it for granted that behind his loose remarks there stands a solid body of work. Especially the young and foolish virgins whom he lures to his room on the pretext of reading to them his poems, or on the still better pretext of asking their advice. Without the least feeling of guilt or self-consciousness he will hand them a piece of soiled paper on which he has scribbled a few lines--the basis of a new poem, as he puts it--and with absolute seriousness demand of them an honest expression of opinion. As they usually have nothing to give by way of comment, wholly bewildered as they are by the utter senselessness of the lines. Van Norden seizes the occasion to expound to them his view of art, a view, needless to say, which is spontaneously created to suit the event. So expert has he become in this role that the transition from Ezra Pound's cantos to the bed is made as simply and naturally as a modulation from one key to another; in fact, if it were not made there would be a discord, which is what happens now and then when he makes a mistake as regards those nit-wits whom he refers to as "push-overs." Naturally, constituted as he is, it is with reluctance that he refers to these fatal errors of judgment. But when he does bring himself to confess to an error of this kind it is with absolute frankness; in fact, he seems to derive a perverse pleasure in dwelling upon his inaptitude. There is one woman, for example, whom he has been trying to make for almost ten years now--first in America, and finally here in Paris.
It is the only person of the opposite sex with whom he has a cordial, friendly relationship. They seem not only to like each other, but to understand each other. At first it seemed to me that if he could really make this creature his problem might be solved. All the elements for a successful union were there--except the fundamental one. Bessie was almost as unusual in her way as himself. She had as little concern about giving herself to a man as she has about the dessert which follows the meal.
Usually she singled out the object of her choice and made the proposition herself. She was not bad-looking, nor could one say that she was good-looking either. She had a fine body, that was the chief thing--and she liked it, as they say.
They were so chummy, these two, that sometimes, in order to gratify her curiosity (and also in the vain hope of inspiring her by his prowess). Van Norden would arrange to hide her in his closet during one of his seances.
After it was over Bessie would emerge from her hiding-place and they would discuss the matter casually, that is to say, with an almost total indifference to everything except "technique." Technique was one of her favorite terms, at least in those discussions which I was privileged to enjoy. "What's wrong with my technique?" he would say. And Bessie would answer: "You're too crude. If you ever expect to make me you've got to become more subtle."
There was such a perfect understanding between them, as I say, that often when I called for Van Norden at one-thirty, I would find Bessie sitting on the bed, the covers thrown back and Van Norden inviting her to stroke his penis ... "just a few silken strokes," he would say, "so as I'll have the courage to get up." Or else he would urge her to blow on it, or failing that, he would grab hold of himself and shake it like a dinner-bell, the two of them laughing fit to die. "I'll never make this bitch," he would say.