Plexus (68 page)

Dr. Vizetelly is standing before me. A live, genial man, full of sparkle and verve. Puts me at ease immediately. Urges me to unburden myself. Draws up a comfortable
chair for himself, listens attentively, then begins.…

For a full hour or more this kind, gracious soul, to whom I shall always feel indebted, delivers himself of all that he thinks may serve me. He speaks so rapidly and fully that I haven't the chance to make a single note. My head is spinning. How will I remember even a fraction of all this exciting information? It's as though I had put my head under a fountain.

Dr. Vizetelly, conscious of my dilemma, comes to the rescue. He orders a page to bring me folders and pamphlets. Urges me to look them over at my leisure. “I'm certain you'll write an excellent article,” he says, beaming at me like a godfather. Then he asks if I will be good enough to show him what I've written before submitting it to the magazine.

Without warning he now puts me a few direct questions about myself: how long have I been writing? what else have I done? what books do I read? what languages do I know? One after another—tic, tac, toe. I feel like less than nobody, or as they say in Hebrew—
efesefasim
. What indeed
have
I done. What indeed
do
I know? Smoked out at last, what is there to do but humbly confess my sins and omissions. I do so, exactly as I would to a priest, were I a Catholic and not the miserable spawn of Calvin and Luther.

What a virile, magnetic individual, this man! Who would ever dream, meeting him in the street, that he was the editor of a dictionary? The first erudite to inspire me with confidence and admiration.
This is a man
. I say it over and over to myself. A man with a pair of balls as well as a think-tank. Not a mere fount of wisdom but a living, rushing, roaring cataract. Every particle of his being vibrates with an electric ardor. He not only knows every word in the English language (including those in “cold storage,” as he put it) but he knows wines, horses, women, food, birds, trees; he knows how to wear clothes, knows how to breathe, knows how to relax. And he also knows
enough to take a drink once in a while, Knowing all, he loves all.
Now we touch him!
A man rushing forward—on all fours, I almost said—to greet life. A man with a song on his lips. Thank you, Dr. Vizetelly! Thank you for being alive!

In parting he said to me—how can I ever forget his words?—“Son, you have all the makings of a writer, I'm sure of it. Go along now and do what you can. Call on me if you need me.” He placed one hand on my shoulder affectionately and with the other gave me a warm handclasp. It was the benediction. Amen!

No longer falls the soft white snow. It is raining, raining deep inside me. Down my face the tears stream—tears of joy and gratitude. I have beheld at last the face of my true father. I know now what it means—the Paraclete. Goodbye, Father Vizetelly, for I shall never see you again. May thy name be hallowed forever more!

The rain ceases. Just a thin drizzle now—down there under the heart—as if a cesspool were being strained through fine gauze. The whole thoracic region is saturated with the finest particles of this substance called H
₂
O which, when it falls on the tongue, tastes salty. Microscopic tears, more precious than fat pearls. Sifting slowly into the great cavity ruled over by the tear ducts. Dry eyes, dry palms. The face absolutely relaxed, open as the great plains, and ripening with joy.

(“Is it snowing again, Mr. Conroy?”)

It's wonderful to speak one's own idiom, to have it rebound in your face, become again the universal language. Of the 450,000 words locked up in the unabridged dictionary, Dr. Vizetelly had assured me I must know at least 50,000. Even the shit pumper has a vocabulary of at least 5,000 words. To prove it, all one had to do was to go home, sit down, and look around. Door, knob, chair, handle, wood, iron, curtain, window, sill, button, legs, bowl.… In any room there were hundreds of things with names, not to mention the adjectives, the adverbs, the
prepositions, the verbs and participles that accompanied them. And Shakespeare had a vocabulary hardly bigger than a moron's of today!

So what does it add up to? What will we do with more words?

(“And haven't you your own language to keep in touch with?”)

Aye, the own language!
Langue d'oc
. Or—
huic, huic, huic
. In Hebrew one says “How are you?” in at least ten different ways, according to whether one is addressing a man, a woman, men, women, or men and women, and so on. To a cow or a goat nobody in his right senses says “How are you?”

Wending homeward, toward the street of early sorrows. Brooklyn, city of the dead. Return of the native.…

(“And haven't you your own land to visit?”)

Aye, dismal Brooklyn I have, and the neighboring terrain—the swamps, the dumps, the stinking canals, the ever vacant lots, the cemeteries.… Native heath.

And I am neither fish nor fowl.…

The drizzle ceases. The innards are lined with wet lard. The cold drifts down from the north. Ah, but it's snowing again!

And now it comes to me, fresh from the grave, that passage which Ulric could recite like a born Dubliner.… “It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he
heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

In this snowy realm, with language chanting its own sweet litany, I sped homeward, ever homeward. Between the covers of the giant lexicon, amid ablatives and gerundives, I curled up and fell fast asleep. Between Adam and Eve I lay, surrounded by a thousand reindeer. My warm breath, cooled by living waters, enveloped me in a refulgent mist. In
la belle langue d'oc
, I was out to the world. The caul was about my neck, strangling me, but ever so gently. And the name of the caul was Nemesh.…

It took me a solid month or more to write the article for my namesake, Gerald Miller. When I finished I found that I had written fifteen thousand words instead of five. I squeezed out half and brought it to the editorial offices. A week later I had my check. The article, by the way, was never published. “Too good,” was the verdict. Nor did the editorial job ever materialize. I never found out why. Probably because I was “too good.”

However, with the 250 we were able to resume life together once more. We picked ourselves a furnished room on Hancock Street, Brooklyn, city of the dead, the near dead, and the deader than the dead. A quiet, respectable street: row after row of the same nondescript frame houses, all adorned with high stoops, awnings, grass plots and iron railings. The rent was modest; we were permitted to cook over gas burners tucked away in an alcove next to an old-fashioned sink. Mrs. Henniker, the landlady, occupied the ground floor; the rest of the house was let out to roomers.

Mrs. Henniker was a widow whose husband had grown rich in the saloon business. She had a mixture of Dutch, Swiss, German, Norwegian and Danish blood. Full of
vitality, idle curiosity, suspicion, greed and malice. Could pass for a whorehouse keeper. Always telling risqué stories and giggling over them like a schoolgirl. Very strict with her roomers. No monkey business! No noise! No beer parties! No visitors! Pay on the dot or you go!

It took this old geezer some time to get used to the idea that I was a writer. What stupefied her was the way the keys clicked. She had never believed anyone could write at such speed. But above all she was worried, worried for fear that, being a writer, I would forget to pay the rent after a few weeks. To allay her fears we decided to give her a few weeks' rent in advance. Incredible how a little move like that can solidify one's position!

At frequent intervals she would knock at the door, offer some flimsy excuse for interrupting me, then stand at the threshold for an hour or more pumping me. Obviously it excited her to think that anyone could pass the whole day at the machine, writing, writing, writing. What
could
I be writing? Stories? What kind of stories? Would I permit her to read one some day? Would I this and would I that? It was inconceivable the questions the woman could ask.

After a time she began dropping in on me in order, as she said, to give me ideas for my stories: fragments out of her life in Hamburg, Dresden, Bremen, Darmstadt. Innocent little doings which to her were daring, shocking, so much so that sometimes her voice dropped to a whisper. If I were to make use of these incidents I was to be sure to change the locale. And of course give her a different name. I led her on for a while, glad to receive her little offerings—cheese cake, sausage meat, a leftover stew, a bag of nuts. I wheedled her into making us cinnamon cake, streusel küchen, applecake—all in approved German style. She was ready to do most anything if only she might have the pleasure of reading about herself some day in a magazine.

One day she asked me point-blank if my stories really sold. Apparently she had been reading all the current magazines she could lay hands on and had not found my
name in one of them. I patiently explained to her that sometimes one had to wait several months before a story was accepted, and after that another few months before one got paid. I at once added that we were now living on the proceeds of several stories which I had sold the year before—at a handsome figure. Whereupon, as though my words had no effect whatever upon her, she said flatly: “If you get hungry you can always eat with me. I get lonely sometimes.” Then, heaving a deep sigh: “It's no fun to be a writer, is it?”

It sure wasn't. Whether she suspected it or not, we were always hungry as wolves. No matter how much money came in, it always melted like snow. We were always trotting about, looking up old friends with whom we could eat, borrow carfare, or persuade to take us to a show. At night we rigged up a wash line which we stretched across the bed.

Mrs. Henniker, always overfed, could sense that we were in a perpetual state of hunger. Every so often she repeated her invitation to dine with her—“if you're ever hungry.” She never said: “Won't you have dinner with me this evening, I have a lovely rabbit stew which I made expressly for you.” No, she took a perverse pleasure in trying to force us to admit that we were ravenous. We never did admit it of course. For one thing, to give in meant that I would have to write the sort of stories Mrs. Henniker wanted. Besides, even a hack writer has to keep up a front.

Somehow we always managed to borrow the rent money in time. Dr. Kronski sometimes came to the rescue, and so did Curley. But it was a tussle. When we were really desperate we would walk to my parents' house—a good hour's walk—and stay until we had filled our bellies. Often Mona fell asleep on the couch immediately after dinner. I would do my utmost to keep up a running conversation, praying to God that Mona wouldn't go on sleeping until the last horn.

These postprandial conversations were sheer agony. I
tried desperately to talk of everything but my work. Inevitably, however, there would come the moment when either my father or my mother would ask—“How is the writing going? Have you sold anything more since we saw you last?” And I would lie shamefacedly: “Why yes, I sold two more recently. It's going fine, really.” Then would come a look of joy and astonishment and they would ask simultaneously: “To which magazines did you sell them?” And I would give the names at random. “We'll be watching for them, Henry. When do you think they will appear?” (Nine months later they would remind me that they were still on the lookout for those stories I said I had sold to this and that magazine.)

Towards the end of the evening, my mother, as if to say “Let's get down to earth!” would ask me solemnly if I didn't think it would be wiser to drop the writing and look for a job. “That was such a wonderful position you had with.… How could you ever have given it up? It takes years to become a good writer—and maybe you will never succeed at it.” And so on and so forth. I used to weep for her. The old man, on the other hand, always pretended to believe that I would come through with flying colors. He fervently hoped so, that I was certain of. “Give him time, give him time!” he would say. To which my mother would reply—“But how will they live in the meantime?” Then it was
my
cue. “Don't worry, mother, I know how to get along. I've got brains, you know that. You don't think we're going to starve, do you?” Just the same, my mother thought, and she would repeat it over and over, as if to herself, that it would really be wiser to take a job and do the writing on the side. “Well, they don't look as though they were starving, do they?” This was the old man's way of telling me that, if we really were starving, all I had to do was call on him at the tailor shop and he'd lend me what he could. I understood and he understood. I would thank him silently and he would acknowledge my thanks silently. Of course I never called on him. Not for money. Now and
then, out of a clear sky, I would drop in on him just to cheer him up. Even when he knew I was lying—I told him outrageous cock-and-bull stories—he never let on. “Glad to hear it, son,” he'd say. “Great! You'll be a best seller yet, I'm sure of it.” Sometimes, on leaving him, I would be in tears. I wanted so much to help him. There he sat in the back of the shop, a sort of collapsed wreck, his business shot to hell, no hopes whatever, and still acting cheerful, still talking optimistically. Perhaps he hadn't seen a customer for several months, but still “a boss tailor.” The frightful irony of it! “Yes,” I would say to myself, walking down the street, “the first story I sell I'm going to hand him a few greenbacks.” Whereupon I myself would wax optimistic, persuaded by some crazy logic that some editor would take a fancy to me and write out a check, in advance, for five hundred or a thousand dollars. By the time I reached home, however, I'd be willing to settle for a five-spot. I'd settle for anything, in fact, that meant another meal, or more postage stamps, or just shoelaces.