Sexus (10 page)

And now it's Saturday afternoon, the sun's out bright and strong, and I'm sipping some pale Chinese tea in Dr. Wuchee Hachee Tao's garden. He's just handed me a long poem about Mother written on firecracker paper. He looks like a superior type of man—not very communicable either. I'd like to ask him something about the original Tao but it so happens that at this point in time, retrogressively speaking, I haven't yet read the
Tao Tê Ching.
If I had read it I wouldn't need to ask him any questions—nor in all probability would I be sitting in his garden waiting for a woman named Mara. Had I been intelligent enough to have read that most illustrious and most elliptical piece of ancient wisdom I would have been spared a great many woes that befell me and which I am now about to relate.

As I sit in the garden,
B.C
. 17, I have utterly different thoughts than these. To be quite honest, I can't recall a single one at this moment. I vaguely remember that I didn't like the poem about Mother—it struck me as being sheer crap. And what's more, I didn't like the Chink who wrote it—I remember that very distinctly. I know too that I was getting furious because it was beginning to look like another stand-up. (Had I imbibed a bit of Tao I would not have lost my temper. I would have sat there as contented as a cow, thankful that the sun was out and grateful to be alive.) Today as I write this there is no sun and no Mara and, though I have not yet become a contented cow, I feel very much alive and at peace with the world.

I hear the telephone ringing inside. A slat-faced Chink, probably a professor of philosophy, tells me in chopstick language that a lady wishes to speak to me on the telephone. It's Mara, and to believe her she's only just getting out of bed. Has a hangover, she informs me. So has Florrie. The two of them are sleeping it off in a hotel nearby.
What hotel?
She doesn't want to say. Just wait a half-hour and she'll doll herself up. I don't feel like waiting another half-hour. I'm in a bad mood. First it's the split and then it's a hangover. And who else is in bed with her, I want to know. Couldn't possibly be a man whose name begins with a
C,
no? She doesn't like that. She doesn't allow anybody to talk to her that way. Well, I'm talking that way, do you hear? Tell me where you are and I'll be up to see you in a jiffy. If you don't want to say then to hell with you. I'm sick of . . .
Hello, hello! Mara!

No answer. Well, that must have touched her to the quick. Florrie, that's the little bitch who's responsible for it. Florrie and her itchy fur-lined muff. What are you to think when all you ever hear about a girl is that she can't find a prick big enough to suit her? To look at her you'd think a good fuck would knock the slats out of her. About 103 in her stocking feet. A hundred and three pounds of insatiable flesh. A booze artist to boot. An Irish slut. A sluttee, if you ask me. Putting on a stage accent as if to pretend that she'd once been a Ziegfeld Follies girl.

A week rolls by and no word from Mara. Then out of the blue a telephone call. She sounds depressed. Could I meet her for dinner somewhere, she wants to talk to me about something very important. There's a gravity in her voice which I haven't detected before.

In the Village, as I'm hurrying to keep the appointment, who should I run into but Kronski. I try to wave him off but it's no go.

“What's the great hurry?” he asks with that bland, sardonic grin he always summons at the wrong moment.

I explain to him that I have a date.

“Are you going to eat?”

“Yes, I'm going to eat, but alone,” I say pointedly.

“Oh no you're not, Mister Miller. You need company, I
can see that. You're not in such fine fettle today. . . . You look worried. It's not a woman, I hope?”

“Listen, Kronski, I'm going to meet somebody and I don't want you around.”

“Now,
Mister
Miller, how can you talk that way to an old friend? I insist on accompanying you. I'm going to buy the meal—you can't resist that, can you?”

I laughed in spite of myself. “All right, shit, tag along then. Maybe I'll need your help. You're no good to me except in a pinch. Listen, don't start any funny work. I'm going to introduce you to the woman I'm in love with. She probably won't like your looks, but I want you to meet her anyway. Someday I'll marry her and, since I can't seem to get rid of you, she might as well begin to tolerate you now as later. I have a hunch you won't like her.”

“This sounds very serious,
Mister
Miller. I'll have to take steps to protect you.”

“If you start meddling I'll crown you,” I answered, laughing savagely. “About this person I'm in dead earnest. You never saw me that way before, did you? You can't believe it, eh? Well, just watch me. Tell you how earnest I am . . . if you get in my way I'll murder you in cold blood.”

To my surprise Mara was already at the restaurant. She had chosen a lonely table in a dark corner. “Mara,” I said, “this is an old friend, Dr. Kronski. He insisted on coming along. I hope you don't mind.” To my astonishment she greeted him cordially. As for Kronski, the moment he laid eyes on her he dropped his leer and banter. Even more impressive was his silence. Usually, when I presented him to a female, he became garrulous and made a sort of fluttering noise with his invisible wings.

Mara too was unusually calm; her voice sounded soothing and hypnotic.

We had scarcely given the order and exchanged a few polite words when Kronski, looking at Mara steadily and appealingly, said: “Something has happened, something tragic, it seems to me. If you'd rather have me go I'll leave right now. To tell the truth, I'd prefer to stay. Perhaps I can be of
help. I'm a friend of this guy and I'd like to be a friend of yours. I mean it sincerely.”

Rather touching, this. Mara, visibly moved, responded warmly.

“By all means stay,” she said, extending her hand cross the table in token of trust and confidence. “You make it easier for me to talk being here. I've heard a lot about you, but I don't think your friend did you justice,” and she looked up at me reprovingly, then smiled warmly.

“No,” said I quickly, “it's true I never do give an honest picture of him.” I turned to him. “You know, Kronski, you have about the most unlovely character imaginable and yet. . .”

“Come, come,” he said, making a wry grimace, “don't begin that Dostoevski line with me. I'm your evil genius, you were going to say. Yes, I do have some queer diabolical influence over you, but I'm not confused about you as you are about me. I sincerely like you. I'd do anything you asked if I thought you meant it—even if it brought harm to someone I dearly loved. I put you above everyone I know,
why
I can't say, because you certainly don't deserve it. Right now I'll confess I feel sad. I see that you love each other and I think you're meant for each other, but. . .”

“You're thinking that it won't be so hot for Mara, that's it, eh?”

“I can't say yet,” he said, with alarming seriousness. “I see only this, that you've both met your match.”

“So you think I'd really be worthy of him?” said Mara very humbly.

I looked at her in amazement. I never suspected that she could say a thing like that to a stranger.

Her words fired Kronski. “Worthy of
him?”
he sneered. “Is he worthy of
you?
that's the question. What has he ever done to make a woman feel worthy of him? He hasn't begun to function yet—he's in a torpor. If I were you I wouldn't put an ounce of faith in him. He isn't even a good friend, let alone a lover or a husband. Poor Mara, don't worry your head about such things. Make him do something for you, spur him on, drive him nuts if you have to, but make him
open up! If I were to give you an honest piece of advice, knowing him and loving him as I do, it would be this: lacerate him, punish him, goad him to the last ditch! Otherwise you're lost—he'll devour you. Not that he's a bad sort, not because he means harm . . . oh no! he does it out of kindness. He almost makes you believe that he has your own interest at heart when he sinks his hooks into you. He can tear you apart with a smile and tell you that he's doing it for your own good.
He's
the diabolical one, not me. I pretend, but he means everything he does. He's the cruelest bastard that ever walked on two legs—and what's queer about it is this, that you love him because he is cruel, or perhaps because he's honest about it. He warns you in advance when he's going to strike. He tells you it smilingly. And when it's over he picks you up and brushes you off tenderly, asks you did he hurt you very much and so on—like an angel.
The bastard!”

“Of course I don't know him as well as you do,” said Mara quietly, “but I must confess he's never revealed that side of his nature to me—not yet, at any rate. I only know him to be gentle and good. I hope to act so that he'll always be that way with me. I not only love him, I believe in him as a person. I would sacrifice everything to make him happy . . .”

“But you're not very happy right now, are you?” said Kronski, as though ignoring her words. “Tell me, what has he done to make you———?”

“He hasn't done anything,” she said spiritedly. “He doesn't know what's bothering me.”

“Well, can you tell
me?”
said Kronski, altering his voice and moistening his eyes so that he resembled a piteous, friendly little whelp.

“Don't press her,” I said. “She'll tell us in due time.” I was looking at Kronski as I spoke. His expression suddenly changed. He turned his head away. I looked at Mara and there were tears in her eyes; they began to flow copiously. In a moment she excused herself and went to the washroom. Kronski looked at me with a wan dead smile, the look of the sick clam expiring in moonlight.

“Don't take it so tragically,” I said. “She's a brave sort, she'll pull out of it.”

“That's what
you
say! You don't suffer. You get emotional and you call it suffering. That girl's in trouble, can't you see? She wants you to do something for her—not just wait till it passes. If
you
don't pump her
I
will. This time you've got a real woman. And a real woman, Mister Miller, expects something of a man—not just words and gestures. If she wants you to run away with her, to leave your wife, your child, your job, I'd say do it. Listen to her and not to your own selfish promptings!” He slumped back in his seat and picked his teeth. After a pause—“And you met her in a dance hall? Well, I must congratulate you for having the sense to recognize the genuine article. That girl can make something of you, if you'll let her. If it's not too late, I mean. You're pretty far gone, you know. Another year with that wife of yours and you're finished.” He spat on the floor in disgust. “You have luck. You get things without working for them. I work like a son of a bitch and the moment I turn my back everything crumbles.”

“That's because I'm a Goy,” I said jestingly.

“You're no Goy. You're a black Jew. You're one of those fascinating Gentiles that every Jew wants to shine up to. You're . . . Oh, good you mentioned that. Mara is a Jewess, of course? Come now, don't pretend you don't know. Hasn't she told you yet?”

That Mara should be a Jewess sounded so highly preposterous I simply laughed in his face.

“You want me to prove it to you, is that it?”

“I don't care what she is,” I said, “but I'm sure she's not Jewish.”

“What is she then? You don't call that a pure Aryan, I hope?”

“I never asked her,” I replied. “You ask her if you like.”

“I won't ask her,” said Kronski, “because she might lie to me in front of you—but I'll tell you whether I'm right or not the next time I see you. I guess I can tell a Jew when I see one.”

“You thought I was a Jew when you first met me.”

He laughed outright at this.
“So you really believed that?
Haw haw! Well, that's pretty good. You poor sap, I told you
that just to flatter you. If you had a drop of Jewish blood in you I'd lynch you, out of respect for my people.
You a Jew?
. . . Well, well . . .” He rolled his head from side to side with tears in his eyes. “First of all a Jew is smart,” he began again, “and you, you're certainly not smart. And a Jew is
honest
—get that! Are
you
honest? Have you got an ounce of truth in you? And a Jew
feels.
A Jew is always humble, even when he's arrogant. . . . Here comes Mara now. Let's drop the subject.”

“You were talking about me, weren't you?” said Mara, as she sat down. “Why don't you go on. I don't mind.”

“You're wrong,” said Kronski. “We weren't talking about you at all. . .”

“He's a liar,” I broke in. “We
were
talking about you, only we didn't get very far. I wish, Mara, you'd tell him about your family—the things you told me, I mean.”

Her face clouded up. “Why should you be concerned about my family?” she said, with an ill-disguised show of irritation. “My family is thoroughly uninteresting.”

“I don't believe it,” said Kronski blankly. “I think you're concealing something.”

The look that passed between them gave me a jolt. It was as if she had given him the signal to proceed cautiously. They understood one another in some subterranean fashion, in a way which excluded me. The image of the woman in the backyard of her home came vividly to my mind. That woman was no neighbor, as she had tried to insinuate. Could it have been her step-mother? I tried to recall what she had told me about her real mother but immediately became lost in the complicated maze she had woven about this obviously painful subject.