LITMIR.BIZ

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atmosphere of the basement, the continual chanting of love songs—they had taken to singing in Russian, German, even Yiddish!—the mysterious confabs in Stasia’s rooms, the barefaced lies, the dreary talk of drugs, the wrestling matches. . . .

      Yes, now and then they would stage a wrestling match for my benefit. Were they wrestling matches? Hard to tell. Sometimes, just to vary the monotony, I would borrow brush and paints and do a caricature of Stasia.

      Always on the walls. She would answer in kind. One day I painted a skull and crossbones on her door. The next day I found a carving knife hanging over the skull and bones.

      One day she produced a pearl-handled revolver. “Just in case,” she said.

      They were accusing me now of sneaking into her room and going through her things.

      One evening, wandering by my lonesome through the Polish section of Manhattan, I stumbled into a poolroom where, to my great surprise, I found Curley and a friend of his shooting pool. He was a strange youngster, this friend, and only recently released from prison. Highly excitable and full of imagination. They insisted on returning to the house with me and having a gabfest.

      In the subway I gave Curley an earful about Stasia. He reacted as if the situation were thoroughly familiar to him.

      “Something’s got to be done,” he remarked laconically.

      His friend seemed to be of the same mind.

      They jumped when I turned on the lights.

      “She must be crazy!” said Curley.

      His friend pretended to be frightened by the paintings. He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

      “I’ve seen them before,” he said, meaning in the booby hatch.

      “Where does she sleep?” said Curley.

      I showed them her room. It was in a state of complete disorder—books, towels, panties, pieces of bread scattered over the bed and on the floor.

      “Nuts! Plain nuts!” said Curley’s friend.

      Curley meanwhile had begun to poke around. He busied himself opening one drawer after another, pulling the contents out, then shoving them back in.

      “What is it you’re looking for?” I asked.

      He looked at me and grinned. “You never know,” he said.

      Presently he fixed his eyes on the big trunk in the corner under the toilet box.

      “What’s in there?”

      I shrugged my shoulders.

      “Let’s find out,” he said. He unfastened the hasps, but the lid was locked. Turning to his friend, he said: “Where’s that jimmy of yours? Get busy! I’ve got a hunch we’re going to find something interesting.”

      In a moment his friend had pried open the lock. With a jerk they threw back the lid of the trunk. The first object that greeted our eyes was a little iron casket, a jewelry box, no doubt. It wouldn’t open. The friend again produced his jimmy. It was the work of a moment to unlock the casket.

      Amidst a heap of billets-doux—from friends unknown—we discovered the note which had supposedly been flushed down the toilet. It was in Mona’s handwriting, sure enough. It began thus: “Desperate, my lover. . . .”

      “Hold on to it,” said Curley, “you may need it later on.” He began stuffing the other letters back into the casket. Then he turned to his friend and advised him to make the lock look as it should. “See that the trunk lock works right too,” he added. “They mustn’t suspect anything.”

      Then, like a pair of stagehands, they proceeded to restore the room to its original state of disorder, even down to the distribution of the bread crumbs. They argued a few minutes as to whether a certain book had been lying on the floor open or unopened.

      As we were leaving the room the young man insisted that the door had been ajar, not closed.

      “Fuck it!” said Curley. “They wouldn’t remember that.”

      Intrigued by this observation, I said: “What makes you so sure?”

      “It’s just a hunch,” he replied. “You wouldn’t remember, would you, unless you had a reason for leaving the door partly open. What reason could she have had? None. It’s simple.”

      “It’s too simple,” I said. “One remembers trivial things without reason sometimes.”

      His answer was that anyone who lived in a state of filth and disorder couldn’t possibly have a good memory. “Take a thief,” he said, “he knows what he’s doing, even when he makes a mistake. He keeps track of things. He has to or he’d be shit out of luck. Ask this guy!”

      “He’s right,” said his friend. “The mistake I made was in being too careful.” He wanted to tell me his story, but I urged them to go. “Save it for next time,” I said.

      Sailing into the street, Curley turned to inform me that I could count on his aid any time. “We’ll fix her,” he said.

       5

      It was getting to be like sequences in a coke dream, what with the reading of entrails, the unraveling of lies, the bouts with Osiecki, the solo ramblings along the waterfront at night, the encounters with the “masters” at the public library, the wall paintings, the dialogues in the dark with my other self, and so on. Nothing could surprise me any more, not even the arrival of an ambulance. Someone, Curley most likely, had thought up that idea to rid me of Stasia. Fortunately I was alone when the ambulance pulled up. There was no crazy person at this address, I informed the driver. He seemed disappointed. Someone had telephoned to come and get her. A mistake, I said.

      Now and then the two Dutch sisters who owned the building would drop in to see if all was well. Never stayed but a minute or two. I never saw them except unkempt and bedraggled. The one sister wore blue stockings and the other pink and white striped stockings. The stripes ran spirally, like on a barber’s pole.

      But about The Captive . . . I went to see the play on my own, without letting them know. A week later they went to see it, returning with violets and full of song. This time it was—“Just a Kiss in the Dark.”

      Then one evening—how did it ever happen?—the three of us went to eat in a Greek restaurant. There they spilled the beans, about The Captive, what a wonderful play it was and how I ought to see it some time, maybe it would enlarge my ideas. “But I have seen it!” I said. “I saw it a week ago.” Whereupon a discussion began as to the merits of the play, capped by a battle royal because I failed to see eye to eye with them, because I interpreted everything in a prosaic, vulgar way. In the midst of the argument I produced the letter filched from the little casket. Far from being crestfallen or humiliated, they sailed into me with such venom, raised such a howl and stink, that soon the whole restaurant was in an uproar and we were asked, none too politely, to leave.

      As if to make amends, the following day Mona suggested that I take her out some night, without Stasia. I demurred at first but she kept insisting. I thought probably she had a reason of her own, one which would be disclosed at the proper time, and so I agreed. We were to do it the night after next.

      The evening came but, just as we were about to leave, she grew irresolute. True, I had been ragging her about her appearance—the lip rouge, the green eyelids, the white powdered cheeks, the cape that trailed the ground, the skirt that came just to her knees, and above all, the puppet, that leering, degenerate-looking Count Bruga, which she was hugging to her bosom and which she meant to take along.

      “No,” I said, “not that, by God!”

      “Why?”

      “Because . . . Goddamn it, no!”

      She handed the Count to Stasia, removed her cape, and sat down to think it over. Experience told me that that was

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