Plexus (76 page)

I nodded my head affirmatively. I was a little dazed.

“You understand,” said Claude, “but the reality of it escapes you. Understanding is nothing. The eyes must be kept open, constantly. To open your eyes you must relax, not strain. Don't be afraid of falling backwards into a bottomless pit. There is nothing to fall into. You're in it and of it, and one day, if you persist,
you will be it
. I don't say you will
have
it, please notice, because there's nothing to possess. Neither are you to be possessed, remember that! You are to liberate yourself. There are no exercises, physical or spiritual, to practice. All such things are like incense—they awaken a feeling of holiness. We must be holy without holiness. We must be whole … complete. That's being holy. Any other kind of holiness is false, a snare and a delusion.…”

“Excuse me for talking to you this way,” said Claude, hastily swallowing another mouthful of coffee, “but I have the feeling that time is short. The next time we meet it will most likely be in some remote part of the world. Your restlessness may lead you to the most unexpected places.
My
movements are more determined; I know the pattern set down for me.” He paused to take another tack. “Since I've gone thus far let me add a few more words.” He leaned forward, and his face took on a most earnest expression. “Right now, Henry Miller, nobody in this country knows anything about you. Nobody—and I mean it literally—knows your true identity. At this moment I know more about you than I shall probably ever know again. What I know, however, is only of importance for
me
. This is what I wanted to tell you—that you should think of me when you are in distress. Not that I can help you, don't think that! Nobody can. Nobody will, probably. You—(and here he spaced his words)—you will have to solve your own problems. But at least you will know, when thinking of me, that there is one person in this world who knows you and believes in you. That always helps. The secret, however, lies in not caring whether anyone, not even the Almighty, has confidence in you. You must come to realize, and you will undoubtedly, that you need no protection. Nor should you hunger after salvation, for salvation is only a myth.
What
is there to be saved? Ask yourself that! And if saved, saved from
what?
Have you thought of these things? Do! There is no need for redemption, because what men call sin and guilt have no ultimate meaning.
The quick and the dead!
—just remember that! When you reach to the quick of things you will find neither acceleration nor retardation, neither birth nor death.
There is
and
you are
—that's it in a nutshell. Don't break your skull over it, because to the mind it makes no sense. Accept it and forget it—or it will drive you mad.…”

When I walked away I was floating in the clouds. I had my brief case with me, as usual, but all thought of calling on
prospects was gone. I got into the subway automatically and out again automatically—at Times Square. Whenever I had no set destination I would get out automatically at Times Square. There I always came upon the
rambla
, the Nevsky Prospekt, the souks and bazaars of the damned.

The thoughts and emotions which possessed me were almost frighteningly familiar. They were the same which I had experienced when I first heard my old friend Roy Hamilton talk, when first I listened to Benjamin Fay Mills, the Evangelist, when first I glanced at that strange book,
Esoteric Buddhism
, when I read at one gulp the
Tao Tê Ching
, or—whenever I picked up
The Possessed, The Idiot
, or
The Brothers Karamazov
. The cowbells which I carried under my ribs began clanking wildly; in the belfry above it was as if all the stars in the heavens had come together to make a celestial bonfire. There was no weight to my body, none whatever. I was at the “six extremes” simultaneously.

There was a language which never failed to set me off—and it was always the same language. Boiled to the size of a lentil, its whole scope and purport could be expressed in two words:
Know thyself!
Alone with myself, and not only alone but disconnected, discalibrated, I ran up and down the harmonica, talking the one and only language, breathing only the pure ineffable spirit, looking upon everything with new eyes and in an absolutely new way.
No birth, no death?
Of course not! What more, what else, could there be than was at this moment? Who said that everything was fucked up? Where? When? On the seventh day God rested from his labors. And He saw that all was good.
D'accord
. How could it have been otherwise? Why should it be otherwise? According to reason, that fat wingless slug, humanity was slowly, slowly evolving from the primordial slime. A million years hence we would begin faintly to resemble the angels. What rot! Is the mind encysted, then, in the asshole of creation? When Roy Hamilton spoke, though he possessed not a shred of learning,
he spoke with the sweet authority of the angels. He was all instantaneity. The wheel flashed and you were immediately at the hub, in the center of that empty space without which not even the constellations can wheel and flash their secret codes. Ditto for Benjamin Fay Mills, who was not an Evangelist but a hero who had abandoned Christianity in order to be a Christ. And Nirvana? Not tomorrow but now, forever and eternally
now
.…

This language was ever bright and clear to me. The language of reason, which is not even the language of common sense, spelled gibberish. When God lets go the arm that holds the pen the author no longer knows what he is writing. Jacob Boehme used a language all his own, a language direct from the Maker. Scholars read it one way, men of God another. The poet speaks only to the poet. Spirit answereth spirit. The rest is hogwash.

A hundred voices are speaking at once. I am still on the Nevsky Prospekt, still toting the brief case. I could as well be in limbo. I am most assuredly “there,” wherever that may be, and nothing can derail me. Possessed, yes. But by the great Manitou this time.

Now I've gotten below the
rambla
. I'm approaching the old Haymarket. Suddenly a name juts out from a billboard, cuts my eyeball just as clean as a razor blade. I have just passed a theater which I thought had been torn down long ago. Nothing remains in the retina but a name, her name, an utterly new name: MIMI AGUGLIA. This is the important thing, her name. Not that she is Italian, not that the play is an immortal tragedy. Just her name: MIMI AGUGLIA. Though I keep walking steadily ahead, and then round and about, though I keep scudding through the clouds like a three-quarter moon, her name will draw me back punctually at 2:15
P.M.

From the celestial realm I slide to a comfortable seat in the third row orchestra. I am about to witness the greatest performance I shall probably ever witness. And in a language of which I know not a word.

The theater is packed—and with Italians exclusively. An awesome hush precedes the rising of the curtain. The stage is semidark. For a full minute not a word is spoken. Then a voice is heard: the voice of Mimi Aguglia.

Only a few moments ago my head was seething with thought; now all is still, the great swarm gathered in a honeycomb at the base of the skull. Not even a buzz issues from the hive. My senses, sharpened to a diamond point, are fully concentrated on the strange creature with the oracular voice. Even were she to speak a language I know, I doubt that I could follow her. It is the sounds she makes, the immense gamut of sound, which enthralls me. Her throat is like an ancient lyre. So very, very ancient. It has the ring of man before he ate of the tree of knowledge. Her gestures and movements are mere accompaniments to the voice. The features, monolithic in repose, express the most subtle modulations with her ceaseless changes of mood. When she throws her head back, the oracular music from her throat plays over her features like lightning playing over a bed of mica. She seems to express with ease emotions which we can only simulate in dream. All is primordial, effulgent, annihilating. A moment ago she was sitting in a chair. It is no longer a chair; it has become a thing, an animated thing. Wherever she moves, whatever she touches, things become altered. Now she stands before a tall mirror, ostensibly to catch her own reflection. Illusion! She is standing before a gap in the cosmos, answering the Titan's yawn with an inhuman shriek. Her heart, suspended in a crevice of ice, suddenly glows—until her whole being shoots forth flames of ruby and sapphire. Another instant and the monolithic head turns to jade. The serpent confronting chaos. Marble returning in horror to the void. Nothingness.…

She is pacing back and forth, back and forth, and in her wake a phosphorescent glow. The very atmosphere thickens, impregnated by the impending horror. She is unveiling now, but as if in warm oil, as if still drugged by the fumes
of the sacrificial altar. A phrase gurgles from her tortured lips, a strangled phrase which causes the man beside me to groan. Blood oozes from a burst vein in her temple. Petrified, I am unable to make a sound, though I am screaming at the top of my lungs. It is no longer theater, it is the nightmare. The walls close in, twisting and twining like the dread labyrinth. The Minotaur is breathing upon us with hot and evil breath. At precisely this moment, and as if a thousand chandeliers had been shattered at once, her mad, fiendish laugh splits the ear. She is no longer recognizable. One sees only a human wreck, a tangle of arms and limbs, a mass of twisted hair, a gory mouth, and this, this
thing
, gropes, staggers, grapples blindly, suddenly, towards the wings.…

Hysteria sweeps the audience. Men with jaws locked are hanging limp in their seats. Women scream, faint, or tear their hair convulsively. The whole auditorium has become like the bottom of the sea—and pandemonium struggling like a crazed gorilla to remove the heavy liquid stone of fright. The ushers gesticulate like puppets, their shouts smothered in the screeching roar which gradually swells like a typhoon. And all this in total darkness, because something has gone wrong with the lights. Finally from the pit comes the sound of music, a blare and a blast, which is met by an angry roar of protest. The music fades out, silenced as if by a hammer. The curtain rises slowly to reveal a stage still in darkness. Suddenly she comes forth from the wings, a lighted taper in her hand, bowing, bowing, bowing. She is mute, absolutely mute. From the boxes, from the balconies, from the pit itself flowers rain down upon the stage. She is standing in a sea of flowers, the taper burning brightly. Suddenly the theater is flooded with light. The crowd is screaming her name—MIMI … MIMI… MIMI AGUGLIA. In the midst of the uproar she calmly blows the taper out and walks swiftly back to the wings.…

With the brief case still under my arm I start ploughing
through the
rambla
again. I feel as if I had come down from Mt. Sinai by parachute. All about me are my brothers,
humanity
, as they say, still marching on all fours. I have an overpowering desire to kick out in all directions, speed the poor buggers into Paradise. Just at this “precise chronological moment” when I'm fizzing like champagne, a man tugs at my sleeve and shoves a dirty post card under my nose. I keep walking straight ahead with him clinging to me, and as we move on, trancelike, he keeps changing the cards and muttering under his breath: “A honey, what! Dirt cheap. Take the whole pack—for two bits.” Suddenly I stop dead in my tracks; I begin to laugh, a frightening laugh which grows louder and louder. I let the cards slide from my fingers, like snow cakes. A crowd begins to gather, the peddler takes to his heels. People are beginning to pick up the cards; they keep crowding in on me, closer and closer, curious to know what made me laugh so. In the distance I spy a cop approaching. Pivoting round abruptly, I yell: “He's gone in there.
Get him!”
Pointing to a shop near the corner I push forward eagerly with the crowd; as they press forward and ahead of me I turn quickly and walk as fast as my legs will carry me in the opposite direction. At the corner I swing round, moving like a kangaroo now, until I come to a gin mill.

At the bar two men are in the midst of a violent dispute. I order a beer and make myself as inconspicuous as possible.

“I tell you he's off his nut!”

“You'd be too if you had had your balls cut out.”

“He'll make you look like a horse's ass.”

“The Pope's ass he will!”

“Look
, who made the world? Who made the stars, the sun, the raindrops? Answer me that!”

“You
answer it, since you're so bloody learned.
You
tell me who made the world, the rainbows, the pisspots and all the other cocksucking devices.”

“You'd like to know, lad? Well, let me say this—it
wasn't made in a cheese factory. And it wasn't evolution made it either.”

“Oh no? What was it then?”

“It was the Almighty Jehovah himself, Lord of Creation, Begetter of the Blessed Mary, and Redeemer of lost souls. That's a fair answer for you. Now what have you to say?”

“I still say he's nuts.”

“You're a dirty infidel, that's what. You're a pagan.”

“I'm not neither. I'm Irish through and through. And what's more, I'm a Mason… yeah, a bloody Mason. Like George Abraham Washington and the Marquis of Queensbury.…”

“And Oliver Cromwell and Bloody Bonesapart. Sure, I know your breed. It was a black snake that horned you and it's his black venom you've been spreading ever since.”

“We'll never take orders from the Pope. Put that in your pipe and light it!”

“And
this
for you! You've made a Bible out of Darwin's crazy preachings. You make a monkey of yourself and you call it evolution.”

“I still say he's nuts.”

“Can I ask you a simple question?
Can I now?”

“That you can. Fire away! I'll answer anything that has sense to it.”