Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (49 page)

I looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What I am doing to
you…?”

“Yes,” he said. “You don’t realize perhaps what you’ve done.”

I made no reply. I was too curious to know what would
follow to feel even the least indignation.

“You invited me to come here, to make this my home for the rest of my days….
You said I did not need to work, that I could do anything I pleased. And you demanded nothing
in return. One can’t do that to a fellow-man. It’s unjust. It puts me in an unbearable
position.” It was undermining, he wanted to say.

He paused a moment. I was too flabbergasted to make reply immediately.

“Besides,” he continued, “this is no place for me. I am a man of the city; I
miss the pavement under my feet. If there were only a café I could walk to, or a library, or a
cinema. I’m a prisoner here.” He looked around him. “This is where I spend my days—and nights.
Alone. No one to talk to. Not even you. You’re too busy most of the time. Moreover, I feel
that you’re uninterested in what I am doing…. What am I to do, sit here until I die? You know
I am not a man to complain. I keep to myself as much as I can; I occupy myself with my work, I
take a walk now and then, I read … and I scratch myself continually. How long can I put up
with it? Some days I feel as if I will go mad. I don’t belong….”

“I think I understand you,” said I. “It’s too bad it worked out this way. I
meant only to do you a good turn.”

“Oui, je le sais, mon vieux!
It’s all my fault. Nevertheless….”

“What would you have me do? Send you back to Paris? That’s impossible—at least
right now.”

“I know that,” he said.

What he didn’t know was that I was still struggling to pay back what I had
borrowed to bring him to America.

“I was just wondering,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table top, “how a
city like San Francisco might be.”

“Very good for a while,” I said, “but how manage it? There’s nothing you could
work at, and I certainly couldn’t support you there.”

“Of course not,” he said, “I wouldn’t think of it. My
God, you’ve done plenty already. More than enough. I shall never be able to repay you.”

“Let’s not go into
that!
The point is that you’re unhappy here.
Nobody is to blame. How could either of us have foreseen such an issue? I’m glad you spoke
your mind. Perhaps if we put our heads together we can find a solution. It’s true that I
haven’t given you or your work much attention, but you see what my life is like. You know how
little time I have for my own work. You know, I too would like to walk the streets of Paris
once in a while, feel the pavement under my feet, as you say. I too would like to be able to
go to a café when I feel like it and meet a few congenial spirits. Of course, I’m in a
different position from you. I’m not miserable here. Never. No matter what happens. If I had
plenty of money I would get up and travel, I would invite my old friends to come and stay with
me…. “I’d do all sorts of things I don’t even dream of now. But one thing is certain in my
mind—that this is a paradise. If anything goes wrong, I most certainly will not attribute it
to the place…. It’s a beautiful day today, no? It will be beautiful tomorrow when it pours.
It’s beautiful too when the fog settles down over everything and blacks us out. It was
beautiful to
you
when you first saw it. It will be beautiful when you have gone …. Do
you know what’s wrong? (I tapped my skull.)
This up here!
A day like today I realize
what I’ve told you a hundred different times—that there’s nothing wrong with the world. What’s
wrong is our way of looking at it.”

He gave me a wan smile, as if to say, “Just like Miller to go off on such a
tangent. I say I’m suffering and he says everything is perfect.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “Believe me, I feel for you. But you
must try to do something for yourself. I did the best I could; if I made a mistake, then you
must help me. Legally I’m responsible for you; morally you are responsible only to yourself.
Nobody can help you but yourself. You think that I am
indifferent to your
suffering. You think I treat the itch too lightly. I don’t. All I say is, find out what itches
you. You can scratch and scratch, but unless you discover what’s itching you you will never
get relief.”

“C’est assez vrai,”
he said. “I’ve reached bottom.”

He hung his head a few moments, then looked up. An idea had flashed through
his mind.

“Yes,” he said, “I am that desperate that I am willing to try anything.”

I was wondering what exactly that might mean when he promptly added: “This
woman, Madame Wharton, what do you think of her?”

I smiled. It was a rather big question.

“I mean, does she really have healing powers?”

“Yes, she does,” said I.

“Do you think she could help
me?”

“That depends,” I replied. “Depends greatly on you, on whether you want to be
helped or not. You could cure yourself, I believe, if you had enough faith in yourself.”

He ignored this last. Began pumping me about her views, her methods of
operation, her background, and so on.

“I could tell you a great deal about her,” I said. “I could talk to you all
day, in fact. But what would it matter? If you wish to put yourself in someone else’s hands,
you must surrender completely. What she believes in is one thing; what she can do for you is
another. If I were in your boots, if I were as desperate as you pretend to be, I wouldn’t care
how the trick was accomplished. All I would care about would be to get well.”

He swallowed this as best he could, remarking that Moricand was not Miller and
vice versa. He added that he believed her to be highly intelligent, though he confessed he
could not always follow her thoughts. There was something of the mystic or the occult about
her, he suspected.

“You’re wrong there,” I said. “She has no use for mysticism
or
occultism. If she believes in magic, it’s everyday magic … such as Jesus
practiced.”

“I hope she doesn’t want to convert me first,” he sighed. “I have no patience
with that humbug, you know.”

“Maybe that’s what you need,” I said laughingly.

“Non!
Seriously,” he said, “do you think I could put myself in her
hands? My God, even if it’s Christianity she’s going to spout, I’m willing to listen. I’ll try
anything
. Anything to get rid of this horrible, horrible itch. I’ll
pray
,
if she wants me to.”

“I don’t think she’ll ask you to do anything you don’t want to do, my dear
Moricand. She’s not the sort to force her opinions on you. But I do think this. … If you
listen to her seriously, if you believe that she can do something for you, you may find that
you will think and act in different fashion than you now believe possible. Anyway, don’t think
one way and act another—not with
her!
She’ll see through you immediately. And, after
all, you wouldn’t be fooling
her
, only yourself.”

“Then she does have definite views …
religious
views, I mean?”

“Of course! That is, if you want to put it that way.”

“What do you mean by that?” He looked slightly alarmed.

“I mean, old chap, that she has no religious views whatever. She’s religious
through and through. She acts out her views or beliefs. She doesn’t think
about
, she
thinks. She thinks things through—and acts them out. What she thinks about life, God, and all
that, is very simple, so simple that you may not understand it at first. She’s not a thinker,
in
your
sense of the word. To her, Mind is all. What one thinks, one is. If there’s
something wrong with you, it’s because your thinking is wrong. Does that make sense?”

“C’est bien simple,”
he said, nodding his head dolorously. (Too
simple! is what he meant.) Obviously he would have been more excited had I made it sound
intricate, abstruse, difficult to follow. Anything simple and direct was suspect to him.
Besides, in his mind healing powers were magical powers, powers acquired through study,
discipline, training, powers based on mastery over
secret processes.
Furthest from his mind was the thought that anyone could enter into direct communication with
the source of all power.

“There’s a force in her,” he said, “a vitality which is physical and which I
know can be communicated. She may not know from where it derives, but she possesses it and
radiates it. Some times ignorant people have these powers.”

“She’s not ignorant, I can tell you that!” I said. “And if it
is
a
physical force you feel in her presence you will never capture it for yourself, unless….”

“Unless what?” he exclaimed eagerly.

“I won’t say now. I think we’ve talked enough about her. After all, no matter
what I tell you, the result depends on
you
, not her. Nobody has ever been cured of
anything who did not want to be cured. The converse is just as true, only it’s more difficult
to swallow. It’s always easier to take a negative view than a positive one. Anyway, whether
the itch stops or not, it will be an interesting experiment for you. But think about it before
you ask her aid. And you must ask her yourself,
compris?”

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “I’ll ask her. “I’ll ask her today, if I see her. I
don’t care what she orders me to do. I’ll get down on my knees and pray, if that’s what she
wants. Anything! I’m at my wit’s end.”

“Good!” said I.
“On verra.”

It was too wonderful a morning to surrender myself to the machine. I took
myself to the forest, alone, and when I had come to the usual halting place beside the pool, I
sat down on a log, put my head in my hands and began to laugh. I laughed at myself, then at
him, then at fate, then at the wild waves going up and down, because my head was full of
nothing but wild waves going up and down. All in all, it was a lucky break. Fortunately, we
were not married to one another; there were no children, no complications. Even if he wanted
to return to Paris, I believed I could manage it somehow. That is, with a little cooperation
on his part.

But what a lesson he had given me! Never, never again, would
I make the mistake of trying to solve someone’s problems for him. How deceptive to think
that by means of a little self-sacrifice one can help another overcome his difficulties! How
egotistical! And how right he was to say that I had undermined him! Right and yet wrong!
Because, making a reproach like that, he should have followed it up with—“I’m leaving. Leaving
tomorrow. And this time I won’t even take a toothbrush with me. I’ll strike out on my own,
come what may. The worst that can happen to me is to be deported. Even if they ship me back to
Hell it’s better than being a burden to someone. At least, I’ll be able to scratch myself in
peace!”

At this point I thought of a strange thing—that I too was suffering from the
itch, only it was an itch one couldn’t get at, an itch that didn’t manifest itself bodily. But
it was there just the same … there where every itch begins and ends. The unfortunate part
about my ailment was that nobody ever caught me scratching. Yet I was at it night and day,
feverishly, frantically, without let. Like Paul, I was constantly saying to myself: “Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?” What irony that people should be writing me from all
over the world, thanking me for the encouragement and inspiration my work had given them. No
doubt they looked upon me as an emancipated being. Yet every day of my life I was fighting a
corpse, a ghost, a cancer that had taken possession of my mind and that ravaged me more than
any bodily affliction possibly could. Every day I had to meet and battle anew with the person
I had chosen as a mate, chosen as one who would appreciate “the good life” and share it with
me. And from the very beginning it had been nothing but hell—hell and torment. To make it
worse, the neighbors regarded her as a model creature—so spry, so lively, so generous, so
warm. Such a good little mother, such an excellent housewife, such a perfect hostess! It’s not
easy to live with a man thirty years older, a writer to boot, and especially a writer like
Henry Miller. Everyone knew that. Everyone could see that she was doing her utmost. She had
courage, that girl!

And hadn’t I made a failure of it before? Several times, in fact?
Could any woman on earth possibly get along with a man like me? That’s how
most of our arguments ended, on that note. What to answer? There was no answer. Convicted,
sentenced, condemned to rehearse the situation over and over, until one or the other should
fall apart, dissolve like a rotting corpse.

Not a day of peace, not a day of happiness, unless on my own. The moment she
opened her mouth—
war!

It sounds so simple: break it up! get a divorce! separate! But what about the
child? Where would I stand, in court, claiming the right to keep my daughter?
“You?
A
man with
your
reputation?” I could just see the judge foaming at the mouth.

Even to do away with myself would not remedy matters. We had to go on. We had
to fight it out. No, that’s not the word. Iron things out. (With what? A flatiron?)
Compromise!
That’s better. It’s not either! Then surrender! Admit you’re licked.
Let her walk over you. Pretend you don’t feel, don’t hear, don’t see. Pretend you’re dead.

Or
—get yourself to believe that all is good, all is God, that there
is nothing but good, nothing but God who is all goodness, all light, all love.
Get
yourself to believe
…. Impossible! One has to just believe.
Punkt!
Nor is that
enough. You have to
know
. More than that…. You have to
know
that you
know.

And what if, despite everything, you find her standing before you, mocking,
jeering, deriding, denigrating, sneering, lying, falsifying, distorting, belittling, calling
black white, smiling disdainfully, hissing like a snake, nagging, backbiting, shooting out
quills like a porcupine…? What then?