The Rosy Crucifixion 3 - Nexus (35 page)

The theatre was his pet subject evidently. He had been, an actor years ago, first in Rummeldumvitza or some hole like that, then at the Thalia on the Bowery. It was there he met Ben Ami. And somewhere else Blanche Yurka. He had also known Vesta Tilly, odd thing. And David Warfield. He thought Androcles and the Lion was a gem, but didn’t care much for Shaw’s other plays. He was very fond of Ben Jonson and Marlowe, and of Hasenclever and von Hoffmansthal.

Beautiful women rarely make good actresses, he was saying. There should always be a defect of some kind—a longish nose or the eyes a little mis-focused. The best is to have an unusual voice. People always remember the voice. Pauline Lord’s, for example. He turned to Mona. You have a good voice too. It has brown sugar in it and cloves and nutmeg. The worst is the American voice—no soul in it. Jacob Ben Ami had a marvelous voice … like good soup … never turned rancid. But he dragged it around like a tortoise. A woman should cultivate the voice above everything. She should also think more, about what the play means … not about her exquisite postillion … I mean posterior. Jewish actresses have too much flesh usually; when they walk across the stage they shake like jelly. But they have sorrow in their voices.’.. Sorge. They don’t have to imagine that a devil is pulling a breast off with hot pincers. Yes, sin and sorrow are the best ingredients. And a bit of phantasmus. Like in Webster or Marlowe. A shoemaker who talks to the Devil every time he goes to the water closet. Or falls in love with a beanstalk, as in Moldavia. The Irish plays are full of lunatics and drunkards, and the nonsense they talk is holy nonsense. The Irish are poets always, especially when they know nothing. They have been tortured too, maybe not as much as the Jews, but enough. No one likes to eat potatoes three times a day or use a pitchfork for a toothpick. Great actors, the Irish. Born chimpanzees. The British are too refined, too mentalized. A masculine race, but castrated…

A commotion was going on at the door. It was Sid Essen returning from his walk with a couple of mangy looking cats he had rescued. His wife was trying to shoo them out.

Elfenbein! he shouted, waving his cap. Greetings! How did you get here?

How should I get here? By my two feet, no? He took a step forward. Let me smell your breath! Go way, go way! When have you seen me drunk? When you are too happy—or not so happy. A great pal, Elfenbein, said Reb, slinging an arm around his shoulder affectionately. The Yiddish King Lear, that’s what he is … What’s the matter, the glasses are empty.

Like your mind, said Elfenbein. Drink of the spirit. Like Moses. From the rock gushes water, from the bottle only foolishness. Shame on you, son of Zweifel, to be so thirsty.

The conversation became scattered. Mrs. Essen had got rid of the cats, cleaned up the mess they had made in the hallway, and was once again smoothing her hair back from her brow. A lady, every inch of her. No rancor, no recriminations. Gelid, in that super-refined, ethical-culturish way. She took a seat by the window, hoping no doubt that the conversation would take a more rational turn. She was fond of Mr. Elfenbein, but he distressed her with his Old World talk, his crazy grimaces, his stale jokes.

The Yiddish King Lear was now beyond all bridling. He had launched into a lengthy monologue on the Zend Avestas, with occasional sideswipes at the Book of Etiquette, Jewish presumably, though from the references he made to it it might as well have been Chinese. He had just finished saying that, according to Zoroaster, man had been chosen to continue the work of creation. Then he added: Man is nothing unless he is a collaborator.

God is not kept alive by prayers and injections. The Jew has forgotten all this—and the Gentile is a spiritual cripple.

A confused discussion followed these statements, much to Elfenbein’s amusement. In the midst of it he began singing at the top of his lungs—Rumeinie, Rumeinie, Rumeinie … a mameligele … a pastramele … a karnatsele … un a gleizele wine, Aha!

You see, he said, when the hubbub had subsided, even in a liberal household it’s dangerous to introduce ideas. Time was when such talk was music to one’s ears. The Rabbi would take a hair and with a knife like a razor he would split it into a thousand hairs. Nobody had to agree with him; it was an exercise. It sharpened the mind and made us forget the terror. If the music played you needed no partner; you danced with Zov, Toft, Giml. Now when we argue we put bandages over our eyes. We go to see Tomashevsky and we weep like pigs. We don’t know any more who is Pechorin or Aksakov. If on the stage a Jew visits a bordel—perhaps he lost his way!—every one blushes for the author. But a good Jew can sit in the slaughter-house and think only of Jehovah. Once in Bucuresti I saw a holy man finish a bottle of vodka all by himself, and then he talked for three hours without stopping. He talked of Satan. He made him so repulsive that I could smell him. When I left the cafe everything looked Satanic to me. I had to go to a public house, excuse me, to get rid of the sulphur. It glowed like a furnace in there; the women looked like pink angels. Even the Madame, who was really a vulture. Such a time I had that night! All because the Tzaddik had taken too much vodka.

Yes, it’s good to sin once in a while, but not to make a pig of yourself. Sin with eyes open. Drown yourself in the pleasures of the flesh, but hang on by a hair. The Bible is full of patriarchs who indulged the flesh but never lost sight of the one God. Our forefathers were men of spirit, but they had meat on their bones. One could take a concubine and still have respect for one’s wife. After all, it was at the door of the temple that the harlot learned her trade. Yes, sin was real then, and Satan too. Now we have ethics, and our children become garment manufacturers, gangsters, concert performers. Soon they will be making trapeze artists of them and hockey players…

Yes, said Reb from the depths of his arm-chair, now we are less than nothing. Once we had pride…

Elfenbein cut in. Now we have the Jew who talks like the Gentile, who says nothing matters but success. The Jew who sends his boy to a military academy so that he can learn how to kill his fellow Jew. The daughter he sends to Hollywood, to make a name for herself, as a Hungarian or Roumanian by showing her nakedness. Instead of great rabbis we have heavy-weight prize-fighters. We even have homosexuals now, weh is mir. Soon we will have Jewish Cossacks.

Like a refrain, Reb sighed: The God of Abraham is no more.

Let them show their nakedness, said Elfenbein, but not pretend that they are heathen. Let them remember their fathers who were peddlers and scholars and who fell like chaff under the heels of the hooligans.

On and on he went, leaping from subject to subject like a chamois in thin air. Names like Mordecai and Ahasuerus dropped from his lips, together with Lady Windermere’s Fan and Sodom and Gomorrah. In one breath he expatiated on The Shoemaker’s Holiday and the lost tribes of Israel. And always, like a summer complaint, he came back to the sickness of the Gentiles, which he likened unto eine Arschkrankheit. Egypt all over again, but without grandeur, without miracles. And this sickness was now in the brain. Maggots and poppy seed. Even the Jews were looking forward to the day of resurrection. For them, he said, it would be like war without dum dum bullets.

He was swept along by his own words now. And drinking only Seltzer water. The word bliss, which he had let fall, seemed to cause an explosion in his head. What was bliss? A long sleep in the Fallopian tubes. Or—Huns Without Schrecklichkeit. The Danube always blue, as in a Strauss waltz. Yes, he admitted, in the Pentateuch there was much nonsense written, but it had a logic. The Book of Numbers was not all horse radish. It had teleological excitement. As for circumcision, one might just as well talk about chopped spinach, for all the importance it had. The synagogues smelled of chemicals and roach powder. The Amalekites were the spiritual cockroaches of their time, like the Anabaptists of today. No wonder, he exclaimed, giving us a frightening wink, that everything is in a state of ‘chassos’. How true were the words of the Tzaddik who said: ‘Apart from Him there is nothing that is really clear.’

Oof! He was getting winded, but there was more to come. He made a phosphorescent leap now from the depths of his trampoline. There were a few great souls whose names he had to mention: they belonged to another order. Barbusse, Tagore, Romain Rolland, Peguy, for example. The friends of humanity. Heroic souls, all of them. Even America was capable of producing a humanitarian soul, witness Eugene V. Debs. There are mice, he said, who wear the uniforms of field marshals and gods who move in our midst like beggars. The Bible swarmed with moral and spiritual giants. Who could compare to King David? Who was so magnificent, yet wise, as Solomon? The lion of Judah was still alive and snorting. No anaesthetic could put this lion permanently to sleep. We are coming, said he, to a time when even the heaviest artillery will be caught with spiders’ webs and armies melt like snow. Ideas are crumbling, like old walls. The world shrinks, like the skin of a lichee nut, and men press together like wet sacks mildewed with fear. When the prophets give out the stones must speak. The patriarchs needed no megaphones. They stood still and waited for the Lord to appear unto them. Now we hop about like frogs, from one cesspool to another, and talk gibberish. Satan has stretched his net over the world and we leap out like fish ready for the frying pan. Man was set down in the midst of a garden, naked and dreamless. To each creature was given his place, his condition. Know thy place! was the commandment. Not Know thyself! The worm becomes a butterfly only when it becomes intoxicated with the splendor and magnificence of life.

We have surrendered to despair. Ecstasy has given way to drunkenness. A man who is intoxicated with life sees visions, not snakes. He has no hangovers. Nowadays we have a blue bird in every home—corked and bottled. Sometimes it’s called Old Kentucky, sometimes it’s a license number—Vat 69. All poisonous, even when diluted.

He paused to squirt some Seltzer water in his glass. Reb was sound asleep. He wore a look of absolute bliss, as if he had seen Mt. Sinai.

There now, said Elfenbein, raising his glass, let us drink to the wonders of the Western World. May they soon be no more! It’s getting late and I have monopolized the floor. Next time we will discuss more ecumenical subjects. Maybe I will tell you about my Carmen Sylva days. I mean the cafe, not the Queen. Though I can say that I once slept in her palace … in the stable, that is. Remind me to tell you more about Jacob Ben Ami. He was much more than a voice…

As we were taking leave he asked if he could see us to our door. With pleasure, I said.

Walking down the street he stopped to give vent to an inspiration. May I suggest, he said, that if you have not yet fixed on a title for your book that you call it This Gentile World! It would be most appropriate even if it makes no sense. Use a nom de plume like Boguslavsky—that will confuse the reader still more.

I am not always so voluble, he added, but you, the two of you, are the Grenze type, and for a derelict from Transylvania that is like an aperitif. I always wanted to write novels, foolish ones, like Dickens. The Mr. Pickwick kind. Instead I became a playboy. Well, I will say goodnight now. Elfenbein is my pseudonym; the real name would astonish you. Look up Deuteronomy, Chapter i3. ‘If there arise among you a—. He was seized with a violent fit of sneezing. The Seltzer water! he exclaimed. Maybe I should go to a Turkish Bath. It’s time for another influenza epidemic. Good night now! Onward as to war! Don’t forget the lion of Judah! You can see him in the movies, when the music starts up. He imitated the growl. Thai, he said, is to show that he is still awake.

16.

Why should we always go out of our way to describe the wretchedness and the imperfections of our life, and to unearth characters from wild and remote corners of our country?

Thus Gogol begins Part n of his unfinished novel.

I was now well into the novel—my own—but still I had no clear idea where it was leading me, nor did it matter, since Pop was pleased with all that had been shown him thus far, the money was always forthcoming, we ate and drank well, the birds were scarcer now but still they sang. Thanksgiving had come and gone, and my chess game had improved somewhat. Moreover, no one had discovered our whereabouts, none of our pestilential cronies, I mean. Thus I was able to explore the streets at will, which I did with a vengeance because the air was sharp and biting, the wind whistled, and my brain ever in a whirl drove me on face forward, forced me to ferret out streets, memories, buildings, odors (of rotting vegetables), abandoned ferry slips, storekeepers long dead, saloons converted into dime stores, cemeteries still redolent with the punk of mourners.

The wild and remote corners of the earth were all about me, only a stone’s throw from the boundary which marked off our aristocratic precinct. I had only to cross the line, the Grenze, and I was in the familiar world of childhood, the land of the poor and happily demented, the junk yard where all that was dilapidated, useless and germ ridden was salvaged by the rats who refused to desert the ship.

As I roamed about gazing into shop windows, peering into alleyways, and never anything but drear desolation, I thought of the Negroes whom we visited regularly and of how uncontaminated they appeared to be. The sickness of the Gentiles had not destroyed their laughter, their gift of speech, their easy-going ways. They had all our diseases to combat and our prejudices as well, yet they remained impervious.

The one who owned the collection of erotica had grown very fond of me; I had to be on guard lest he drive me into a corner and pinch my ass. Never did I dream that one day he would be seizing my books too and adding them to his astounding collection. He was a wonderful pianist, I should add. He had that dry pedal technique I relished so much in Count Basie and Fats Waller. They could all play some instrument, these lovable souls. And if there were no instrument they made music with fingers and palms—on table tops, barrels or anything to hand.

I had introduced no unearthed characters as yet in the novel. I was still timid. More in love with words than with psychopathic devaginations. I could spend hours at a stretch with Walter Pater, or even Henry James, in the hope of lifting a beautifully turned phrase. Or I might sit and gaze at a Japanese print, say The Fickle Type of Utamaro, in the effort to force a bridge between a vague, dreamy fugue of an image and a living colored wood-block. I was ever frantically climbing ladders to pluck a ripe fig from some exotic overhanging garden of the past. The illustrated pages of a magazine like the Geographic could hold me spell-bound for hours. How work in a cryptic reference to some remote region of Asia Minor, some little known site, for example, where a Hittite monster of a monarch had left colossal statues to commemorate his flea-blown ego? Or I might dig up an old history book—one of Mommsen’s, let us say—in order to fetch up with a brilliant analogy between the skyscrapered canyons of Wall Street and the congested districts of Rome under the Emperors. Or I might become interested in sewers, the great sewers of Paris, or some other metropolis, whereupon it would occur to me that Hugo or some other French writer had made use of such a theme, and I would take up the life of this novelist merely to find out what had impelled him to take such an interest in sewers.