Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (53 page)

This time the response was clear and definite. All mystery was ripped
away.

I give the gist of his letter…. Yes, he would consent to accept the passage
which had been proffered him, but on one condition, that I first put to his account in a Paris
bank the equivalent of a thousand dollars. It should be easy to understand the reason for such
a request. He had left Europe as a pauper and he had no intention of returning as one. It was
I who had induced him to come to America, and I had promised to take care of him. It was not
his wish to return to Paris, but mine. I wanted to get rid of him, renounce my sacred
obligation. As for the money I had spent thus far—he referred to it as if it were a
bagatelle—he begged to remind me that he had left with me as a gift an heirloom, his one and
only material possession, which was priceless. (He meant the
pendule
, of course.)

I was outraged. I wrote back at once that if he didn’t take the plane this
time, if he didn’t get the hell out of the country and leave me in peace, I would cut him off.
I said I didn’t give a shit what became of him. He could jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, for
all I cared. In a postscript I informed him that Lilik would be there to see him in a day or
two,
with the pendule
, which he could shove up his ass, or pawn and live on the
proceeds for the rest of his days.

Now the letters came thick and fast. He was in a panic. Cut him off? Leave him
destitute? Alone in a foreign land? A man who was ill, who was getting old, who had no right
to seek employment? No, I would never do that! Not the Miller he had known of old, the Miller
with a great, compassionate heart who gave to one and all, who had taken pity on him, a
miserable wretch, and sworn to provide for him as long as he lived!

“Yes,” I wrote back, “it is the same Miller. He is fed up. He is disgusted. He
wants nothing more to do with you.” I called him a worm, a leech, a dirty blackmailer.

He turned to my wife. Long, whining letters, full of
self-pity. Surely
she
understood his plight! The good Miller had taken leave of his
senses, he had made himself into stone.
Le pauvre
, he would regret it some day. And
so on and so on.

I urged my wife to ignore his pleas. I doubt that she heeded me. She felt
sorry for him. It was her belief that he would come to his senses at the last minute, take the
plane, forget his foolish demand. “Foolish!” she called it.

I thought of Ramakrishna’s words regarding the “bound” souls. “Those who are
thus caught in the net of the world are the
Baddha
, or bound souls. No one can awaken
them. They do not come to their senses, even after receiving blow upon blow of misery, sorrow
and indescribable suffering.”

I thought of many, many things during the hectic days which followed.
Particularly of the beggar’s life I had led, first at home, then abroad. I thought of the cold
refusals I had received at the hands of intimate friends, of so-called “buddies,” in fact. I
thought of the meals which were dished up to me, when I hung on like a shipwrecked sailor. And
the sermons that accompanied them. I thought of the times I had stood in front of restaurant
windows, watching people eat—people who didn’t need food, who had already eaten too much—and
how I vainly hoped they would recognize the look in my eye, invite me in, beg me to share
their repast, or offer me the remnants. I thought of the handouts I had received, the dimes
that were flung at me in passing, or perhaps a handful of pennies, and how like a whipped cur,
I had taken what was offered while cursing the bastards under my breath. No matter how many
refusals I received, and they were countless, no matter how many insults and humiliations were
flung at me, a crust of bread was always a crust of bread—and if I didn’t always thank the
giver graciously or humbly, I did thank my lucky star. I may have thought once upon a time
that something more than a crust of bread was my due, that the most worthless wretch, at least
in a civilized country, was entitled to a meal when he needed it. But it wasn’t long before I
learned to take a larger view of things. I
not only learned how to say
“Thank you, sir!” but how to stand on my hind legs and beg for it. It didn’t embitter me
hopelessly. In fact, I found it rather comical after a while. It’s an experience we all need
now and then, especially those of us who were born with silver spoons in our mouths.

But that bastard, Moricand! To twist things the way he did! To make it appear,
if only to himself, that in promising to take care of him I was obligated to keep him in a
hotel, dole out cash for drink, theatre, taxis. And, if that proved irksome, why just deposit
a thousand dollars to his account in Paris. Because he, Moricand, refused to be a pauper
again!

I’m on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street again. A chilly night, and the
rain beating in my face. Scanning the throng once again for a friendly face, for a fleeting
look that will assure me I won’t get a rebuff, won’t get a gob of spit instead of a handout.
Here’s a likely one! “Hey, mister,
please
, can you spare enough for a cup of coffee?”
He gives it without stopping, without even looking me in the face. A dime! A lovely, shining
little offering. A whole dime! How ducky it would be if one could only catch a generous soul
like that on the wing, grab his coattail, pull him gently around, and say with utter
conviction and the innocence of a dove:
“Mister
, what can I do with this? I haven’t
eaten since yesterday morning. I’m cold and wet through. My wife’s home waiting for me. She’s
hungry too. And ill. Couldn’t you give me a dollar, or maybe two dollars?
Mister
, we
need it bad, terribly bad.”

No, it’s not in the book, that kind of talk. One has to be grateful even for a
Canadian dime—or a stale crust of bread. Grateful that when it comes
your
time to be
hooked, you can say—and mean it with all your heart!—“Here, take this! Do what you like with
it!” And so saying, empty your pockets. So saying,
you
walk home in the rain,
you
go without a meal!

Have I ever done it? Of course I have. Many’s the time. And it felt marvelous
to do it. Almost too marvelous. It’s easy to
empty your pockets when you
see your other self standing there like a dog, begging, whimpering, cringing. It’s easy to go
without a meal when you know you can have one for the asking. Or that tomorrow’s another day.
Nothing to it. It’s you, Prince Bountiful, as gets the better of the deal. No wonder we hang
our heads in shame when we perform a simple act of charity.

I wonder sometimes why rich guys never understand this business, why they
never take the opportunity to give themselves a cheap puffing up? Think of Henry Miller, the
uncrowned emperor of California, coming out of the bank each morning with a pocket filled with
quarters, handing them out like King Solomon to the poor blokes lined up the sidewalk, each
and every one mumbling humbly, “Thank you, sir!” and raising his hat respectfully. What better
tonic could you give yourself, if you had a soul as mean as that, before tackling the day’s
work?

As for that phony bastard, Moricand, in his palmy days he had been quite a
giver too, from all I have heard. Nor had he ever refused to share what he had when he had
little or nothing. But he had never gone out into the street and begged for it! When he begged
it was on good stationery, in elegant script—grammar, syntax, punctuation always perfect.
Never had he sat down to pen a begging letter in trousers that had holes in the seat, or even
patches. The room may have been ice cold, his belly may have been empty, the butt in his mouth
may have been rescued from the waste basket, but. … I think it’s clear what I’m getting
at.

Anyway, he didn’t take the second plane either. And when he wrote, saying that
he was putting a curse on me, I didn’t doubt for a minute that he meant just what he said. To
avoid a repetition, I promptly informed his Satanic majesty that any subsequent letters from
him would be left unopened. And with that off my chest, I consigned him to his fate. Never
again would he see my handwriting, nor the color of my money.

This didn’t stop the flow of letters, to be sure. Letters continued
to arrive,
toujours plus espacées
, but they were never opened.
They are now in the library at U.C.L.A. Still sealed.

I recall of a sudden the way he worded his break with Cendrars, his old friend
of the Foreign Legion days. It was one of those evenings when he had been reviewing the good
old days, the wonderful friends he had made—Cendrars, Cocteau, Radiguet, Kisling, Modigliani,
Max Jacob,
et alii
—and how one by one they had disappeared, or else deserted him. All
but Max. Max had been faithful to the end. But Cendrars, whom he spoke of so warmly, whom he
still admired with all his heart—why had Cendrars also deserted him? Here is the way he put
it:

“One day—you know how he is!—he got angry with me. And that was the end. I
could never reach him again. I tried, but it was useless. The door was shut.”

I never revealed to him what Cendrars had said to me one day, in the year
1938, when I made the horrible mistake of telling him that I had become acquainted with his
old friend Moricand.

“Moricand?”
he said.
“Ce n’est pas un ami. C’est un cadavre
vivant.”
And the door went shut with a bang.

Well, the
pendule
. I had given it to Lilik to deliver to Moricand.
And Lilik had taken it into his head to find out just how valuable the damned thing was. So,
before delivering it, he takes it to the very watchmaker whose address Moricand had given me
in the event that it should need repair. Its value? According to this bird, who knew something
about timepieces, one would be lucky to get fifty dollars for it. An antique dealer might
offer a little more. Not much more, however.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, when he recounted the incident.

“That’s what I thought,” said Lilik. “So I took it to an antique dealer, and
then to a hock shop. Same story. No market for such junk. They all admired it, of course.
Wonderful mechanism. But who wants it?”

“I thought you’d like to know,” he added, “since the bugger always made such a
fuss about it.”

He then went on to tell me of his telephone conversation
with Moricand. (Seems the latter was too wrought up to receive him.) It was a conversation
that lasted almost a half hour. With Moricand doing all the talking.

“Too bad you weren’t there,” said Lilik. “He was in top form. I never knew
anyone could be so furious, so venomous, and talk so brilliantly at the same time. The things
he said about you … Jesus, it would burn you up! And the names he called you! You know, after
the first few minutes I began to enjoy it. Now and then I helped him along, just to see how
far he
would
go. Anyway, be on your guard! He’s going to do everything in his power
to make trouble for you. I really think he’s out of his mind.
Cuckoo
. Absolutely….
The last thing I remember him saying was that I would read about you in the French papers. He
was formulating a
plaidoyer
. Said he would give them, your admirers, the lowdown on
their beloved Henry Miller, author of the
Tropics
, sage of the mountain top …
‘Quel farceur!’
That was his parting shot.”

“Didn’t he say-
‘Je l’aurai’?”

“Yeah, that’s right. He did too.”

“I thought as much.
Le couillon!”

The first intimation I had of Moricand’s maneuvers was a letter from the Swiss
Consulate in San Francisco. It was a polite, formal letter, informing me of Moricand’s visit
to their office, his desperate plight, and ended with a desire to have my view of the matter.
I replied at some length, offering to send copies of Moricand’s letters, and repeating what I
had told Moricand, that I was through and that nothing would make me change my mind. To this I
received a reply reminding me that, no matter what had taken place, I was, from an official
standpoint, Moricand’s sponsor. Would I mind sending the letters I had spoken of?

I sent photostat copies of the letters. Then I waited for the next move.

I could well imagine what must have ensued at this point. One couldn’t
repudiate what was written in one’s own hand.

The next letter was to the effect that Moricand’s was
indeed a knotty case, that the poor fellow was obviously not all there. It went on to say that
the Consulate would be only too glad to ship him back home had they funds for such a purpose.
(They never do, of course.) Perhaps if he, the Vice-Consul, were to come down and talk it over
with me, some suitable compromise might be arranged. Meanwhile they would look after Moricand
as best they could.

Well, he came, and we had a long talk. Fortunately, my wife was there to
corroborate my statements. Finally, after a snack, he brought forth a camera and took some
snapshots of us and the surroundings. The place enchanted him. He asked if he could come
again, as a friend.

“And that idiot couldn’t stand it here!” he said, shaking his head. “Why, it’s
a Paradise.”

“Paradise lost!” I countered.

“What will you do with him?” I ventured to ask, as he was leaving. He shrugged
his shoulders.

“What
can
one do?” he said, “with a creature like that?”

Thanking me warmly for all I had done in behalf of a compatriot, expressing
his regret for any annoyance he had caused me, he then said: “You must be a man of great
patience.”

I never had another word from him. Nor did I ever learn what happened to
Moricand—until I received a copy of
Le Goéland
, the issue for July-August-September,
1954, announcing the news of his death. It was from the editor of
Le Goéland
,
Théophile Briant—Moricand’s last and only friend—that I recently received a few facts relating
to the interval between our leave-taking in Monterey, hardly three months after his arrival in
Big Sur, and his pitiful end.