LITMIR.BIZ

      Copyright © 1960 by Les Editions du Chêne, Paris

      Copyright © 1965 by Grove Press, Inc.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

       Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in the United States of America

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Miller, Henry, 1891-1980

      Nexus.

      (The Rosy crucifixion; bk. 3)

      Sequel to: Plexus

      I. Title. II. Series: Miller, Henry, 1891-

      Rosy crucifixion (New York, N.Y.); bk. 3

      PS3525.I5454N4 1987 813’.52 87-16

      ISBN-10: 0-8021-5178-7

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-5178-0

      Grove Press

      an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

      841 Broadway

      New York, NY 10003

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

       www.groveatlantic.com

      09 10 11 12 13 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

       THE ROSY CRUCIFIXION

       1

      Woof! Woof woof! Woof! Woof!

      Barking in the night. Barking, barking. I shriek but no one answers. I scream but there’s not even an echo.

       “Which do you want—the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ?”

      Alone—with eczema of the brain.

      Alone at last. How marvelous! Only it is not what I expected it to be. If only I were alone with God!

       Woof! Woof woof!

      Eyes closed, I summon her image. There it is, floating in the dark, a mask emerging from the spindrift: the Tilla Durieux bouche, like a bow; white, even teeth; eyes dark with mascara, the lids a viscous, glistening blue; hair streaming wild, black as ebony. The actress from the Carpathians and the rooftops of Vienna. Risen like Venus from the flatlands of Brooklyn.

      Woof! Woof woof! Woof! Woof!

      I shout, but it sounds for all the world like a whisper.

      My name is Isaac Dust. I am in Dante’s fifth heaven. Like Strindberg in his delirium, I repeat: “What does it matter? Whether one is the only one, or whether one has a rival, what does it matter?”

      Why do these bizarre names suddenly come to mind? All classmates from the dear old Alma Mater: Morton Schnadig, William Marvin, Israel Siegel, Bernard Pistner, Louis Schneider, Clarence Donohue, William Overend, John Kurtz, Pat McCaffrey, William Korb, Arthur Convissar, Sally Liebowitz, Frances Glanty. . . . Not one of them has ever raised his head. Stricken from the ledger. Scotched like vipers.

       Are you there, comrades?

      No answer.

      Is that you, dear August, raising your head in the gloom? Yes, it is Strindberg, the Strindberg with two horns protruding from his forehead. Le cocu magnifique.

      In some happy time—when? how distant? what planet?—I used to move from wall to wall greeting this one and that, all old friends: Leon Bakst, Whistler, Lovis Corinth, Breughel the Elder, Botticelli, Bosch, Giotto, Cimabue, Piero della Francesca, Grunewald, Holbein, Lucas Cranach, Van Gogh, Utrillo, Gauguin, Piranesi, Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige—and the Wailing Wall. Goya too, and Turner. Each one had something precious to impart. But particularly Tilla Durieux, she with the eloquent, sensual lips dark as rose petals.

      The walls are bare now. Even if they were crowded with masterpieces I would recognize nothing. Darkness had closed in. Like Balzac, I live with imaginary paintings. Even the frames are imaginary.

      Isaac Dust, born of the dust and returning to dust. Dust to dust. Add a codicil for old times’ sake.

      Anastasia, alias Hegoroboru, alias Bertha Filigree of Lake Tahoe-Titicaca and the Imperial Court of the Czars, is temporarily in the Observation Ward. She went there of her own accord, to find out if she were in her right mind or not. Saul barks in his delirium, believing he is Isaac Dust. We are snowbound in a hall bedroom with a private sink and twin beds. Lightning flashes intermittently. Count Bruga, that darling of a puppet, reposes on the bureau surrounded by Javanese and Tibetan idols. He has the leer of a madman quaffing a bowl of sterno. His wig, made of purple strings, is surmounted by a miniature hat, à la Bohème, imported from la Galerie Dufayel. His back rests against a few choics volumes deposited with us by Stasia before taking off for the asylum. From left to right they read—

      The Imperial Orgy—The Vatican Swindle—A Season in Hell—Death in Venice—Anathema—A Hero for our Time—The Tragic Sense of Life—The Devil’s Dictionary—November Boughs—Beyond the Pleasure Principle—Lysistrata—Marius the Epicurean—The Golden Ass—Jude the Obscure—The Mysterious Stranger—Peter Whiffle—The Little Flower—Virginibus Puerisque—Queen Mab—The Great God Pan—The Travels of Marco Polo—Songs of Bilitis—The Unknown Life of Jesus—Tristram Shandy—The Crock of Gold—Black Bryony—The Root and the Flower.

      Only a single lacuna: Rozanov’s Metaphysics of Sex.

      In her own handwriting (on a slip of butcher’s paper) I find the following, a quotation obviously, from one of the volumes: “That strange thinker, N. Federov, a Russian of the Russians, will found his own original form of anarchism, one hostile to the State.”

      Were I to show this to Kronski he would run immediately to the bughouse and offer it as proof. Proof of what? Proof that Stasia is in her right mind.

      Yesterday was it? Yes, yesterday, about four in the morning, while walking to the subway station to look for Mona, who should I spy sauntering leisurely through the drifting snow but Mona and her wrestler friend Jim Driscoll. You would think, to see them, that they were looking for violets in a golden meadow. No thought of snow or ice, no concern for the polar blasts from the river, no fear of God or man. Just strolling along, laughing, talking, humming. Free as meadow larks.

       Hark, hark the lark at heaven’s gate sings!

      I

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