The Rosy Crucifixion 3 - Nexus (39 page)

He looked up at the wall again. He pointed to a drawing of Hokusai’s—from Life in the Eastern Capital.

You see all those figures, he said. Ordinary people doing ordinary everyday things. That’s what I’d like—to be one of them, to be doing something ordinary. A barrel-maker or a tinsmith—what difference? To be part of the procession, that’s the thing. Not sit in an empty store all day killing time. Damn it, I’m still good for something. What would you. do in my place?

Reb, I said, I was in exactly your position once upon a time. Yes, I used to sit all day in my father’s shop, doing nothing. I thought I’d go crazy. I loathed the place. But I didn’t know how to break loose.

How did you then?

Fate pushed me out, I guess. But I must tell you this … while I was eating my heart out I was praying too. Every day I prayed that some one—God perhaps—would show me the way. I was also thinking of writing, even that far back. But it was more a dream than a possibility. It took me years, even after I had left the tailor shop, to write a line. One should never despair…

But you were only a kid then. I’m getting to be an old man.

Even so. The years that are left you are yours. If there’s something you really want to do there’s still time.

Miller, he said, almost woefully, there’s no creative urge in me. All I ask is to get out the trap. I want to live again. I want to get back into the current. That’s all.

What’s stopping you?

Don’t say that! Please don’t say that! What’s stopping me? Everything. My wife, my kids, my obligations. Myself, most of all. I’ve got too poor an opinion of myself.

I couldn’t help smiling. Then, as if to myself, I replied:

Only we humans seem to have a low opinion of ourselves. Take a worm, for example—do you suppose a worm looks down on itself?

It’s terrible to feel guilty, he said. And for what? What have I done?

It’s what you haven’t done, isn’t it?

Yes, yes, of course.

Do you know what’s more important than doing something?

No, said Reb.

Being yourself.

But if you’re nothing?

Then be nothing. But be it absolutely.

That sounds crazy.

It is. That’s why it’s so sound.

Go on, he said, you make me feel good.

In wisdom is death, you’ve heard that, haven’t you? Isn’t it better to be a little meshuggah? Who worries about you? Only you. When you can’t sit in the store any more, why don’t you get up and take a walk? Or go to the movies? Close the shop, lock the door. A customer more or less won’t make any difference in your life, will it? Enjoy yourself! Go fishing once in a while, even if you don’t know how to fish. Or take your car and drive out into the country. Anywhere. Listen to the birds, bring home some flowers, or some, fresh oysters.

He was leaning forward, all ears, a broad smile stretched across his face.

Tell me more, he said. It sounds wonderful.

Well, remember this … the store won’t run away from you. Business won’t get any better. Nobody asks you to lock yourself in all day. You’re a free man. If by becoming more careless and negligent you grow happier, who will blame you? I’ll make a further suggestion. Instead of going off by yourself, take one of your Negro tenants with you. Show him a good time. Give him some clothing from your store. Ask him if you can lend him some money. Buy his wife a little, gift for him to take home. See what I mean?

He began to laugh. Do I see? It sounds great. That’s just what I’m going to do.

Don’t make too big a splurge all at once, I cautioned. Take it slow and easy. Follow your instincts. For instance, maybe one day you’ll feel like getting yourself a piece of tail. Don’t have a bad conscience about it. Try a piece of dark meat now and then. It’s tastier, and it costs less. Anything to make you relax, remember that. Always treat yourself well. If you feel like a worm, grovel; if you feel like a bird, fly. Don’t worry about what the neighbors may think. Don’t worry about your kids, they’ll take care of themselves. As for your wife, maybe when she sees you happy she’ll change her tune. She’s a good woman, your wife. Too conscientious, that’s all. Needs to laugh once in a while. Did you ever try a limerick on her? Here’s one for you…

There was a young girl from Peru,

Who dreamt she was raped by a Jew,

She awoke in the night,

With a scream of delight,

To find it was perfectly true!

Good, good! he exclaimed. Do you know any more?

Yes, I said, but I’ve got to get back to work now. Feel better now, don’t you? Tomorrow we visit the darkies, eh? Maybe some day next week I’ll ride out to Bluepoint with you. How’s that?

Would you? Oh, that would be dandy, just dandy. By the way, how is the book coming along? Are you nearly finished with it? I’m dying to read it, you know. So is Mrs. Essen.

Reb, you won’t like the book at all. I must tell you that straight off.

How can you say that? He was fairly shouting.

Because it’s no good.

He looked at me as if I were out of my mind. For a moment he didn’t know what to say. Then he blurted out—Miller, you’re crazy! You couldn’t write a bad book. It’s impossible. I know you too well.

You know only a part of me, I said. You’ve never seen the other side of the moon, have you? That’s me. Terra incognita. Take it from me, I’m just a novice. Maybe ten years from now I’ll have something to show you.

But you’ve been writing for years.

Practising, you mean. Practising the scales.

You’re joking, he said. You’re over modest.

That’s where you’re mistaken, I said. I’m anything but modest. I’m a rank egotist, that’s what I am. But I’m also a realist, at least with myself.

You underrate yourself, said Reb. I’m going to hand you back your own words—don’t look down on your-self!

O.K. You win.

He was heading for the door. Suddenly I had an impulse to unburden myself.

Wait a moment, I said. There’s something I want to tell you.

He trotted back to the table and stood there, like a messenger boy. All attention. Respectful attention. I wondered what he thought I was about to tell him.

When you came in a few minutes ago, I began, I was in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a long paragraph. Would you like to hear it? I leaned over the machine and reeled it off for him. It was one of those crazy passages which I myself couldn’t make head nor tail of. I wanted a reaction, and not from Pop or Mona.

I got it too, immediately.

Miller! he shouted. Miller, that’s just marvelous! You sound like a Russian. I don’t know what it means but it makes music.

You think so? Honestly?

Of course I do. I wouldn’t lie to you.

That’s fine. Then I’ll go ahead. I’ll finish the paragraph.

Is the whole book like that?

No, damn it! That’s the trouble. The parts I like nobody else will like. At least, not the publishers.

To hell with them! said Reb. If they won’t take it I’ll publish it for you, with my own money.

I wouldn’t recommend that, I replied. Remember, you’re not to throw your money away all at once.

Miller, if it took my last cent, I’d do it. I’d do it because I believe in you.

Don’t give it another thought, I said. I can think of better ways to spend your money.

Not me! I’d feel proud and happy to launch you. So would my wife and children. They think very highly of you. You’re like one of the family to them.

That’s good to hear, Reb. I hope I merit such confidence. Tomorrow, then, eh? Let’s bring something good for the darkies, what?

When he had gone I began pacing up and down, quietly, containedly, pausing now and then to gaze at a woodblock, or a colored reproduction (Giotto, della Francesca, Uccello, Bosch, Breughel, Carpaccio), then pacing again, becoming more and more pregnant, standing still, staring into space, letting my mind go, letting it rest where it willed, becoming more and more serene, more and more charged with the gravid beauty of the past, pleased with myself to be part of this past (and of the future too), felicitating myself on living this womb or tomb sort of existence … Yes, it was indeed a lovely room, a lovely place, and everything in it, everything we had contributed to make it habitable, reflected the inner loveliness of life, the life of the soul.

You sit there with your thoughts and you’re king of the world. This innocent remark of Reb’s had lodged in my brain, given me such equanimity that for a spell I felt factually knew what it meant—to be king of the world. King! That is, one capable of rendering homage to high and low; one so sentient, so perceptive, so illumined with love that nothing escaped his attention nor his understanding. The poetic intercessor, in short. Not ruling the world but worshiping it with every breath.

Standing again before the everyday world of Hokusai … Why had this great master of the brush taken the pains to reproduce the all too common elements of his world? To reveal his skill? Nonsense. To express his love, to indicate that it extended far and wide, that it included the staves of a barrel, a blade of grass, the rippling muscles of a wrestler, the slant of rain in a wind, the teeth of a wave, the backbone of a fish … In short, everything. An almost impossible task, were it not for the joy involved.

Fond of Oriental art, he had said. As I repeated Reb’s words to myself suddenly the whole continent of India rose up before me. There, amidst that swarming beehive of humanity, were the palpitating relics of a world which was and will ever remain truly stupefying. Reb had taken no notice, or had said nothing if he did, of the colored pages torn from art books which also adorned the walls: reproductions of temples and stupas from the Deccan, of sculptured caves and grottoes, of wall paintings and frescoes depicting the overwhelming myths and legends of a people drunk with form and movement, with passion and growth, with idea, with consciousness itself. A mere glance at a cluster of ancient temples rising from the heat and vegetation of the Indian soil always gave me the sensation of gazing at thought itself, thought struggling to free itself, thought becoming plastic, concrete, more suggestive and evocative, more awe-inspiring, thus deployed in brick or stone, than ever words could be.

As often as I had read his words, I was never able to commit them to memory. I was hungry now for that flood of torrential images, those great swollen phrases, sentences, paragraphs—the words of the man who had opened my, eyes to this stupefying creation of India: Elie Faure. I reached for the volume I had thumbed through so often—Vol. II of the History of Art—and I turned to the passage beginning—For the Indians, all nature is divine … What does not die, in India, is faith … Then followed the lines which, when I first encountered them, made my brain reel.

In India there came to pass this thing: that, driven forth by an invasion, a famine, or a migration of wild beasts, thousands of human beings moved to the north or to the south. There at the shore of the sea, at the base of a mountain, they encountered a great wall of granite. Then they all entered the granite; in its shadows they lived, loved worked, died, were born, and, three or four centuries afterward, they came out again, leagues away, having traversed the mountain. Behind them they left the emptied rock, its galleries hollowed out in every direction, its sculptured, chiseled walls, its natural or artificial pillars turned into a deep lacework with ten thousand horrible or charming figures, gods without number and without name, men, women, beasts—a tide of animal life moving in the gloom. Sometimes when they found no clearing in their path, they hollowed out an abyss in the center of the mass of rock to shelter a little black stone. It is in these monolithic temples, on their dark walls, or on their sunburnt facade, that the true genius of India expends all its terrific force. Here the confused speech of confused multitudes makes itself heard. Here man confesses unresistingly his strength and his nothingness…

I read on, intoxicated as always. The words were no longer words but living images, images fresh from the mould, shimmering, palpitating, undulating, choking me by their very excrescence.

…the elements themselves will not mingle all these lives with the confusion of the earth more successfully than the sculptor has done. Sometimes, in India, one finds mushrooms of stone in the depths of the forests, shining in the green shadow like poisonous plants. Sometimes one finds heavy elephants, quite alone, as mossy and as rough skinned as if alive; they mingle with the tangled Vines, the grasses reach their bellies, flowers and leaves cover them, and even when their debris shall have returned to the earth they will be no more completely absorbed by the intoxication of the forest.

What a thought, this last! Even when they have returned to the earth … Ah, and now the passage…

…Man is no longer at the center of life. He is no longer that flower of the whole world, which has slowly set itself to form and mature him. He is mingled with all things, he is on the same plane with all things, he is a particle of the infinite, neither more nor less important than the other particles of the infinite. The earth passes into the trees, the trees into the fruits, the fruits into man or the animal, man and the animal into the earth; the circulation of life sweeps along and propagates a confused universe wherein forms arise for a second, only to be engulfed and then to reappear, overlapping one another, palpitating, penetrating one another as they surge like the waves. Man does not know whether yesterday he was not the very tool with which he himself will force matter to release the form that he may have to-morrow. Everything is merely an appearance, and under the diversity of appearances, Brahma, the spirit of the world, is a unity … Lost as he is in the ocean of mingled forms and energies, does he know whether he is still a form or a spirit? Is that thing before us a thinking being, a living being even, a planet, or a being cut in stone? Germination and putrefaction are engendered unceasingly. Everything has its heavy movement, expanded matter beats like a heart. Does not wisdom consist in submerging oneself in it, in order to taste the intoxication of the unconscious as one gains possession of the force that stirs in matter?