LITMIR.BIZ

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I should say. Sure enough, the lights were on and the pianola softly giving out morceaux choisis de Dohnanyi.

      “Hail to you, sweet lice,” I thought, and passed on. A mist was rising over toward Gowanus Canal. Probably a glacier melting.

      Arriving home I found her creaming her face.

      “Where in God’s name have you been?” she demands, almost accusingly.

      “Are you back long?” I counter.

      “Hours ago.”

      “Strange. I could have sworn that I left here only twenty minutes ago. Maybe I’ve been walking in my sleep. It’s funny but I had a notion I saw you and Jim Driscoll walking arm in arm. . . .”

      “Val, you must be ill.”

      “No, just inebriated. I mean . . . hallucinated.”

      She puts a cold hand on my brow, feels my pulse. Everything normal, apparently. It baffles her. Why do I invent such stories? Just to torment her? Isn’t there enough to worry about, with Stasia in the asylum and the rent overdue? I ought to have more consideration.

      I walk over to the alarm clock and point to the hands. Six o’clock.

      “I know,” she says.

      “So it wasn’t you I saw just a few minutes ago?”

      She looks at me as if I were on the verge of dementia.

      “Nothing to worry about, dearie,” I chirp. “I’ve been drinking champagne all night. I’m sure now it wasn’t you I saw—it was your astral body.” Pause. “Anyway, Stasia’s O.K. I just had a long talk with one of the interns. . . .”

      “You . . .?”

      “Yes, for want of anything better to do I thought I’d run over and see how she was getting along. I brought her some Charlotte Russe.”

      “You should get to bed, Val, you’re exhausted.” Pause. “If you want to know why I’m so late I’ll tell you. I just left Stasia. I got her about three hours ago.” She began to chuckle—or was it to cackle? “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. It’s a long story.”

      To her amazement I replied: “Don’t bother, I heard all about it a little while ago.”

      We switched out the lights and crawled into bed. I could hear her laughing to herself.

      As a good night fillip I whispered: “Bertha Filigree of Lake Titicaca.”

      Often, after a session with Spengler or Elie Faure, I would throw myself on the bed fully clothed and, instead of musing about ancient cultures, I would find myself groping through a labyrinthian world of fabrications. Neither of them seems capable of telling the truth, even about such a simple matter as going to the toilet. Stasia, an essentially truthful soul, acquired the habit in order to please Mona. Even in that fanciful tale about being a Romanoff bastard there was a grain of truth. With her it’s never a lie out of the whole cloth, as with Mona. Moreover, should one confront her with the truth, she does not throw an hysterical fit or stalk out of the room on stilts. No, she simply breaks into a broad grin which gradually softens into the pleasing smile of an angelic child. There are moments when I believe I can get somewhere with Stasia. But just when I sense that the time is ripe, like an animal protecting her cub, Mona whisks her off.

      One of the strangest blanks in our intimate conversations, for now and then we have the most prolonged, seemingly sincere talkfests. one of these unaccountable gaps, I say, has to do with childhood. How they played, where, with whom, remains a complete mystery. From the cradle, apparently, they sprang into womanhood. Never is there mention of a childhood friend or of a wonderful lark they enjoyed; never do they talk of a street they loved or a park they played in or a game they enjoyed. I’ve asked them point blank: “Do you know how to skate? Can you swim? Did you ever play jacks?” Yes indeed, they can do all these things and more. Why not? Yet they never permit themselves to slip back into the past. Never do they suddenly, as happens in animated conversation, recall some strange or wonderful experience connected with childhood. Now and then one or the other will mention that she once broke an arm or sprained an ankle, but where, when? Again and again I endeavor to lead them back, gently, coaxingly, as one might lead a horse to the stable, but in vain. Details bore them. What matter, they ask, when it happened or where? Very well, then, about face! I switch the talk to Russia or Roumania, hoping to detect a glint or a gleam of recognition. I do it skillfully too, beginning by way of Tasmania or Patagonia and only gradually and obliquely working my way toward Russia, Roumania, Vienna and the flatlands of Brooklyn. As if they hadn’t the slightest suspicion of my game, they too will suddenly begin talking about strange places, Russia and Roumania included, but as though they were recounting something which had been related to them by a stranger or picked up in a travel book. Stasia, a little more artful, may even pretend to give me a clue. She may take it into her head, for example, to relate some spurious incident out of Dostoevski, trusting that I have a weak memory or that, even if it be a good one, I cannot possibly remember the thousands of incidents which crowd Dostoevski’s voluminous works. And how can I myself be certain that she is not giving me the genuine Dostoevski? Because I have an excellent memory for the aura of things read. It is impossible for me not to recognize a false Dostoevskian touch. However, to draw her out, I pretend to recall the incident she is relating; I nod my head in agreement, laugh, clap my hands, anything she wishes, but I never let on that I know she is falsifying. Now and then, however, I will remind her, in the same spirit of play, of a trifle she has glossed over or a distortion she has created; I will even argue about it at length if she pretends that she has related the incident faithfully. And all the while Mona sits there, listening attentively, aware neither of truth nor falsity, but happy as a bird because we are talking about her idol, her god, Dostoevski.

      What a charming, what a delightful world it can be, this world of lies and of falsification, when there is nothing better to do, nothing at stake. Aren’t we wonderful, we jolly, bloody liars? “A pity Dostoevski himself isn’t with us!” Mona will sometimes exclaim. As if he invented all those mad people, all those crazy scenes which flood his novels. I mean, invented them for his own pleasure, or because he was a natural born fool and liar. Never once does it dawn on them that they may be the “mad” characters in a book which life is writing with invisible ink.

      Not strange therefore that nearly every one, male or female, whom Mona admires is ‘ mad,” or that everyone she detests is a “fool.” Yet, when she chooses to pay me a compliment she will always call me a fool. “You’re such a dear fool, Val.” Meaning that I am great enough, complex enough, in her estimation at least, to belong to the world of Dostoevski. At times, when she gets to raving about my unwritten books, she will even go so far as to say that I am another Dostoevski. A pity I can’t throw an epileptic fit now and then. That would really give me the necessary standing. What happens, unfortunately, what breaks the spell, is that I all too quickly degenerate into a “bourgeois.” In other words I become too inquisitive, too picayune, too intolerant. Dostoevski, according to Mona, never displayed the least interest in “facts.” (One of those near truths which make one wince sometimes.) No, to believe her, Dostoevski was always in the clouds—or else buried in the depths. He never bothered to swim on the surface. He took no thought of gloves or muffs or overcoats. Nor did he pry into women’s purses in search of names and addresses. He lived only in the imagination.

      Stasia, now, had her own opinion about Dostoevski, his way of life, his method of working. Despite her vagaries, she was, after all, a little closer to reality. She knew that puppets are made of wood or papier-mâché, not just “imagination.” And she was not too certain but that Dostoevski too might have had his “bourgeois” side. What she relished particularly in Dostoevski was the diabolical element. To her the Devil was real. Evil was real. Mona, on the other hand, seemed unaffected by the evil in Dostoevski. To her it was just another element of his “imagination.” Nothing in books frightened her. Almost nothing in life frightened her either, for that matter. Which is why, perhaps, she walked through fire unharmed. But for Stasia, when visited by a strange mood, even to partake of breakfast could be an ordeal. She had a nose for evil, she could

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