LITMIR.BIZ

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life” had faded away. All that was left me was the machine . . . the mind-machine. Like the soldier who finally gets what he’s been praying for, I was dispatched to the rear. “Aux autres de faire la guerre!”

      Unfortunatelv no particular destination had been pinned to my carcass. Back, back, I moved, often with the speed of a cannon ball.

      Familiar though everything appeared to be, there was never a point of entry. When I spoke my voice sounded like a tape played backward. My whole being was out of focus.

      ET HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE IUVABIT

      I was sufficiently clairvoyant at the time to inscribe this unforgettable line from the Aeneid on the toilet box which was suspended above Stasia’s cot.

      Perhaps I have already described the place. No matter. A thousand descriptions could never render the reality of this atmosphere in which we lived and moved. For here, like the prisoner of Chillon, like the divine Marquis, like the mad Strindberg, I lived out my madness. A dead moon which had ceased struggling to present its true face.

      It was usually dark, that is what I remember most. The chill dark of the grave. Taking possession during a snowfall, I had the impression that the whole world outside our door would remain forever carpeted with a soft white felt. The sounds which penetrated to my addled brain were always muffled by the everlasting blanket of snow. It was a Siberia of the mind I inhabited, no doubt about it. For companions I had wolves and jackals, their piteous howling interrupted only by the tinkling of sleigh bells or the rumble of a milk truck destined for the land of motherless babes.

      Toward the wee hours of the morning I could usually count on the two of them appearing arm in arm, fresh as daisies, their cheeks glistening with frost and the excitement of an eventful day. Between whiles a bill collector would appear, rap loud and long, then melt into the snow. Or the madman, Osiecki, who always tapped softly at the windowpane. And always the snow kept falling, sometimes in huge wet flakes, like melting stars, or in whirling gusts choked with stinging hypodermic needles.

      While waiting I tightened my belt. I had the patience not of a saint nor even of a tortoise, but rather the cold, calculating patience of a criminal.

      Kill time! Kill thought! Kill the pangs of hunger! One long, continuous killing. . . . Sublime!

      If, peering through the faded curtain, I recognized the silhouette of a friend I might open the door, more to get a breath of fresh air than to admit a kindred soul.

      The opening dialogue was always the same. I became so accustomed to it that I used to play it back to myself when they were gone. Always a Ruy Lopez opening.

      “What are you doing with yourself?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Me? You’re crazy!”

      “But what do you do all day?”

      “Nothing.”

      Followed the inevitable grubbing of a few cigarettes and a bit of loose change, then a dash for a cheese cake or a bag of doughnuts. Sometimes I’d propose a game of chess.

      Soon the cigarettes would give out, then the candles, then the conversation.

      Alone again I would be invaded by the most delicious, the most extraordinary recollections—of persons, places, conversations. Voices, grimaces, gestures, pillars, copings, cornices, meadows, brooks, mountains . . . they would sweep over me in waves, always desynchronized, disjected . . . like clots of blood dripping from a clear sky. There they were in extenso, my mad bedfellows: the most forlorn, whimsical, bizarre collection any man could gather. All displaced, all visitors from weird realms. Auslanders, each and all. Yet how tender and lovable! Like angels temporarily ostracized, their wings discreetly concealed beneath their tattered dominoes.

      Often it was in the dark, while rounding a bend, the streets utterly deserted, the wind whistling like mad, that I would happen upon one of these nobodies. He may have hailed me to ask for a light or to bum a dime. How come that instantly we locked arms, instantly we fell into that jargon which only derelicts, angels and outcasts employ?

      Often it was a simple, straightforward admission on the stranger’s part which set the wheels in motion. (Murder, theft, rape, desertion—they were dropped like calling cards.)

      “You understand, I had to. . . .”

      “Of course!”

      “The ax was lying there, the war was on, the old man always drunk, my sister on the bum. . . . Besides, I always wanted to write. . . . You understand?”

      “Of course!”

      “And then the stars . . . Autumn stars. And strange, new horizons. A world so new and yet so old. Walking, hiding, foraging. Seeking, searching, playing . . . shedding one skin after another. Every day a new name, a new calling. Always fleeing from myself. Understand?”

      “Of course!”

      “Above the Equator, under the Equator . . . no rest, no surcease. Never nothing nowhere. Worlds so bright, so full, so rich, but linked with concrete and barbed wire. Always the next place, and the next. Always the hand stretched forth, begging, imploring, beseeching. Deaf, the world. Stone deaf. Rifles cracking, cannons booming, and men, women and children everywhere lying stiff in their own dark blood. Now and then a flower. A violet, perhaps, and a million rotting corpses to fertilize it. You follow me?”

      “Of course!”

      “I went mad, mad, mad.”

      “Naturally!”

      So he takes the ax, so sharp, so bright, and he takes to chopping . . . here a head, there an arm or leg, then fingers and toes. Chop, chop, chop. Like chopping spinach. And of course they’re looking for him. And when they find him they’ll run the juice through him. Justice will be served. For every million slaughtered like pigs one lone wretched monster is executed humanly.

      Do I understand? Perfectly.

      What is a writer but a fellow criminal, a judge, an executioner? Was I not versed in the art of deception since childhood? Am I not riddled with traumas and complexes? Have I not been stained with all the guilt and sin of the medieval monk?

      What more natural, more understandable, more human and forgivable than these monstrous rampages of the isolated poet? As inexplicably as they entered my sphere they left, these nomads.

      Wandering the streets on an empty belly puts one on the qui vive. One knows instinctively which way to turn, what to look for: one never fails to recognize a fellow traveler.

      When all is lost the soul steps forth. . . .

      I referred to them as angels in disguise. So they were, but I usually awoke to the fact only after they had departed. Seldom does the angel appear trailing clouds of glory. Now and then, however, the drooling simpleton one stops to gaze at suddenly fits the door like a key. And the door opens.

      It was the door called Death which always swung open, and I saw that there was no death, nor were there any judges or executioners save in our imagining. How desperately I strove then to make restitution! And I did make restitution. Full and complete. The rajah stripping himself naked. Only an ego left, but an ego puffed and swollen like a hideous toad. And then the utter insanity of it would overwhelm me. Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is —in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet. We move with eyes shut and ears stopped: we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.

      One day it will be pleasant to remember these things.

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