pposing I intercepted one of them and just asked him a simple question. Supposing I just said to him suddenly: "Why do you go on living the way you do?" He would probably call a cop. I ask myself - does any one ever talk to himself the way I do? I ask myself if there isn't something wrong with me. The only conclusion I can come to is that I am different. And that's a very grave matter, view it how you will. Henry, I say to myself, rising slowly from the stoop, stretching myself, brushing my trousers and spitting out the gum. Henry, I say to myself, you are young yet, you are just a spring chicken and if you let them get you by the balls you're an idiot because you're a better man than any of them only you need to get rid of your false notions about humanity. You have to realize Henry me boy, that you're dealing with cut-throats, with cannibals, only they're dressed-up, shaved, perfumed, but that's all they are - cut-throats, cannibals. The best thing for you to do now. Henry, is to go and get yourself a frosted chocolate and when you sit at the soda fountain keep your eyes peeled and forget about the destiny of man because you might still find yourself a nice lay and a good dean lay will dean your ballbearing out and leave a good taste in your mouth whereas this only brings on dyspepsia, dandruff, halitosis, encephalitis. And while I'm soothing myself thus a guy comes up to me to bum a dime and I hand him a quarter for good measure thinking to myself that if I had had a little more sense I'd have had a juicy pork chop with that instead of the lousy meat balls but what the difference now it's all food and food makes energy and energy is what makes the world go round. Instead of the frosted chocolate I keep walking and soon I'm exactly where I intended to be all the time, which is front of the ticket window of the Roseland. And now. Henry, says I to myself, if you're lucky your old pal MacGregor will be here and first hell bawl the shit out of you for running away and then he'll lend you a five-spot, and if you just hold your breath while climbing the stairs maybe you'll see the nymphomaniac too and you'll get a dry fuck. Enter very calmly. Henry, and keep your eyes peeled! And I enter as per instructions on velvet toes, checking my hat and urinating a little as a matter of course, then slowly redescending the stairs and sizing up the taxi girls all diaphanously gowned, powdered, perfumed, looking fresh and alert but probably bored as hell and leg weary. Into each and every one of them, as I shuffle about, I throw an imaginary fuck. The place is just plastered with cunt and fuck and that's why I'm reasonably sure to find my old friend MacGregor here. The way I no longer think about the condition of the world is marvellous. I mention it because for a moment, just while I was studying a juicy ass, I had a relapse. I almost went into a trance again. I was thinking, Christ help me, that maybe I ought to beat it and go home and begin the book. A terrifying thought! Once I spent a whole evening sitting in a chair and saw nothing and heard nothing. I must have written a good sized book before I woke up. Better not to sit down. Better to keep circulating. Henry, what you ought to do is to come here some time with a lot of dough and just see how far it'll take you. I mean a hundred or two hundred bucks, and spend it like water and say yes to everything. The haughty looking one with the statuesque figure, I bet she'd squirm like an eel if her palm were well greased. Supposing she said - twenty bucks! and you could say Sure! Supposing you could say - Listen, I've got a car downstairs ... let's run down to Atlantic City for a few days. Henry, there ain't no car and there ain't no twenty bucks. Don't sit down ... keep moving. At the rail which fences off the floor I stand and watch them sailing around. This is no harmless recreation... this is serious business. At each end of the floor there is a sign reading "No Improper Dancing Allowed". Well and good. No harm in placing a sign at each end of the floor. In Pompei they probably hung a phallus up. This is the American way. It means the same thing. I mustn't think about Pompei or I'll be sitting down and writing a book again. Keep moving Henry. Keep your mind on the music. I keep struggling to imagine what a lovely time I would have had if I had the price of a string of tickets, but the more I struggle the more I slip back. Finally I'm standing knee-deep in the lava beds and the gas is choking me. It wasn't the lava that killed the Pompeians, it was the poison gas that predpitated the eruption. That's how the lava caught them in such queer poses, with their pants down, as it were. If suddenly all New York were caught that way - what a museum it would make! My friend MacGregor standing at the sink scrubbing his cock... the abortionists on the East Side caught red-handed ... the nuns laying in bed and masturbating one another ... the auctioneer with an alarm in his hand ... the telephone girls at the switchboard ... J. P. Morganana sitting on the toilet bowl placidly wiping his ass ... the dicks with rubber hoses giving the third degree ... strippers giving the last strip and tease... Standing knee-deep in the lava beds and my eyes choked with sperm; J. P. Morganana is placidly wiping his ass while the telephone girls plug the switchboards, while dicks with rubber hoses practice the third degree, while my old friend MacGregor scrubs the germs out of his cock and sweetens it and examines it under the microscope. Everybody is caught with his pants down, including the strip teasers who wear no pants, no beards, no moustaches, just a little patch to cover their twinkling little cunts. Sister Antolina lying in the convent bed, her guts trussed up, her arms akimbo and waiting for the Resurrection, waiting, waiting for life without hernia, without intercourse, without sin, without evil, meanwhile nibbling a few animal crackers, a pimento, some fancy olives, a little head cheese. The Jew-boys on the East Side, in Harlem, the Bronx, Carnarsie, Bronville, opening and dosing the trapdoors, pulling out arms and legs, turning the sausage machine, dogging up the drains, working like fury for cash down and if you let a peep out of you out you go. With eleven hundred tickets in my pocket and a Rolls Royce waiting for me downstairs I could have the most excruciatingly marvellous time, throwing a fuck into each and everyone respectively regardless of age, sex, race, religion, nationality, birth or breeding. There is no solution for a man like myself, I being what I am and the world being what it is. The world is divided into three parts of which two parts are meat balls and spaghetti and the other part a huge syphilitic chancre. The haughty one with the statuesque figure is probably a cold turkey fuck, a sort of con anonyme plastered with gold leaf and tin foil. Beyond despair and disillusionment there is always the absence of worse things and the emoluments of ennui. Nothing is lousier and emptier than the midst of bright gaiety clicked by the mechanical eye of the mechanical epoch, life maturating in a black box, a negative tickled with add and yielding a momentaneous simulacrum of nothingness. At the outermost limit of this momentaneous nothingness my friend MacGregor arrives and is standing by my side and with him is the one he was talking about, the nymphomaniac called Paula. She has the loose, jaunty swing and perch of the double-barrelled sex, all her movements radiating from the groin, always in equilibrium, always ready to flow, to wind and twist, and clutch, the eyes going tic-toc, the toes twitching and twinkling, the flesh rippling like a lake furrowed by a breeze. This is the incarnation of the hallucination of sex, the sea nymph squirming in the maniac's arms. I watch the two of them as they move spasmodically inch by inch around the floor; they move like an octopus working up a rut. Between the dangling tentacles the music shimmers and flashes, now breaks in a cascade of sperm and rose water, forms again into an oily spout, a column standing erect without feet, collapses again like chalk, leaving the upper part of the leg phosphorescent, a zebra standing in a pool of golden marshmallow, one leg striped, the other molten. A gold marshmallow octopus with rubber hinges and molten hooves, its sex undone and twisted into a knot. On the sea floor the oysters are doing the St. Vitus dance, some with lockjaw, some with double-jointed knees. The music is sprinkled with rat poison, with the rattlesnake's venom, with the fetid breath of the gardenia, the spittle of the sacred yak, the bolloxed sweat of the musk-rat, the leper's sugar-coated nostalgia. The music is a diarrhoea, a lake of gasolene, stagnant with cockroaches and stale horse piss. The drooling notes are the foam and dribble of the epileptic, the night sweat of the fornicating nigger frigged by the Jew. All America is in the trombone's smear, that frazzled brokendown whinny of the gangrened sea cows stationed off Point Loma, Pawtucket, Cape Hatteras, Labrador, Camarsie and intermediate points. The octopus is dancing like a rubber dick - the rhumba of Spuyten Duyvil inedit. Laura the nympho is doing the rhumba, her sex exfoliated and twisted like a cow's tail. In the belly of the trombone lies the American soul farting its contented heart out. Nothing goes to waste - not the least spit of a fart. In the golden marshmallow dream of happiness, in the dance of sodden piss and gasolene, the great soul of the American continent gallops like an octopus, all the sails unfurled, the hatches down, the engine whirring like a dynamo. The great dynamic soul caught in the click of the camera's eye, in the heat of rut, bloodless as a fish, slippery as mucus, the soul of the people miscegenating on the sea floor, pop-eyed with longing, harrowed with lust. The dance of Saturday night, of cantaloupes rotting in the garbage pail, of fresh green snot and slimy unguents for the tender parts. The dance of the slot-machine and the monsters who invent them. The dance of the gat and the slugs who use them. The dance of the blackjack and the pricks who batter brains to a polypous pulp. The dance of the magneto world, the spark that unsparks, the soft purr of the perfect mechanism, the velocity race on a turntable, the dollar at par and the forests dead and mutilated. The Saturday night of the soul's hollow dance, each jumping jigger a functional unit in the St. Vitus' dance of the ringworm's dream. Laura the nympho brandishing her cunt, her sweet rose-petal lips toothed with ballbearing clutches, her ass balled and socketed. Inch by inch, millimetre by .millimetre they shove the copulating corpse around. And then crash! Like pulling a switch the music suddenly stops and with the stoppage the dancers come apart, arms and legs intact, like tea leaves dropping to the bottom of the cup. Now the air is blue with words, a slow sizzle as of fish on the griddle. The chaff of the empty soul rising like monkey chatter in the topmost branches of the trees. The air blue with words passing out through the ventilators, coming back again in sleep through corrugated funnels and smokestacks, winged like the antelope, striped like the zebra, now lying quiet as the mollusc, now spitting flame. Laura the nympho cold as a statue, her parts eaten away, her hair musically enraptured. On the brink of sleep Laura stands with muted lips, her words falling like pollen through a fog. The Laura of Petrarque seated in a taxi, each word ringing through the cash register, then sterilized, then cauterized. Laura the basilisk made entirely of asbestos, walking to the fiery stake with a mouth full of gum. Hunkydory is the word on her lips. The heavy fluted Ups of the sea-shell. Laura's lips, the lips of lost Uranian love. All floating shadow-ward through the slanting fog. Last murmuring dregs of shell-like lips slipping off the Labrador coast, oozing eastward with the mud tides, easing starward in the iodine drift. Lost Laura, last of the Petrarques, slowly fading on the brink of sleep. Not grey the world, but lustlack, the light bamboo sleep of spoon-backed innocence. And tins in the black frenzied nothingness of the hollow of absence leaves a gloomy feeling of saturated despondency not unlike the topmost tip of desperation which is only the gay juvenile maggot of death's exquisite rupture with life. From this inverted cone of ecstasy life will rise again into prosaic skyscraper eminence, dragging me by the hair and teeth, lousy with howling empty joy, the animated foetus of the unborn death maggot lying in wait for rot and putrefaction. Sunday morning the telephone wakes me up. It's my friend Maxie Schnadig announcing the death of our friend Luke Ralston. Maxie has assumed a truly sorrowful tone of voice which rubs me the wrong way. He says Luke was such a swell guy. That too sounds the wrong note for me because while Luke was all right, he was only so-so, not precisely what you might call a swell guy. Luke was an ingrown fairy and finally, when I got to know him intimately, a big pain in the ass. I told Maxie that over the telephone: I could tell from the way he answered me that he didn't like it very much. He said Luke had always been a friend to me. It was true enough, but it wasn't enough. The truth was that I was really glad Luke had kicked off at the opportune moment: it meant that I could forget about the hundred and fifty dollars which I owed him In fact, as I hung up the receiver I really felt joyous. It was a tremendous relief not to have to pay that debt. As for Luke's demise, that didn't disturb me in the least. On the contrary, it would enable me to pay a visit to his sister, Lottie, whom I always wanted to lay but never could for one reason or another. Now I could see myself going up there in the middle of the day and offering her my condolences. Her husband would be at the office and there would be nothing to interfere. I saw myself putting my arms around her and comforting her; nothing like tackling a woman when she is in sorrow. I could see her opening her eyes wide -she had beautiful, large grey eyes - as I moved her towards the couch. She was the sort of woman who would give you a fuck while pretending to be talking music or some such thing. She didn't like the naked reality, the bare facts, so to speak. At the same time she'd have enough presence of mind to slip a towel under her so as not to stain the couch. I knew her inside out. I knew that the best time to get her was now, now while she was running up a little fever of emotion over dear dead Luke -whom she didn't think much of, by the way. Unfortunately it was Sunday and the husband would be sure to be home. I went back to bed and I lay there thinking first about Luke and all that he had done for me and then about her, Lottie. Lottie Somers was her name - it always seemed a beautiful name to me. It matched her perfectly. Luke was stiff as a poker, with a sort of skull and bones face, and impeccable and just beyond words. She was just the opposite - soft, round, spoke with a drawl, caressed her words, moved languidly, used her eyes effectively. One would never take them for brother and sister. I got so worked up thinking about her that I tried to tackle the wife. But that poor bastard, with her Puritanical complex, pretended to be horrified. She liked Luke. She wouldn't say that he was a swell guy, because that wasn't like her, but she insisted that he was genuine, loyal, a true friend, etc. I had so many loyal, genuine, true friends that that was all horse shit to me. Finally we got into such an argument over Luke that she got an hysterical attack and began to weep and sob - in bed, mind you. That made me hungry. The idea of weeping before breakfast seemed monstrous to me. I went downstairs and I fixed myself a wonderful breakfast, and as I put it away I was laughing to myself, about Luke, about the hundred and fifty bucks that his sudden death had wiped off the slate, about Lottie and the way she would look at me when the moment came . . . and finally, the most absurd of all, I thought of Maxie, Maxie Schnadig, the faithful friend of Luke, standing at the grave with a big wreath and perhaps throwing a handful of earth on the coffin just as they were lowering it. Somehow that seemed just too stupid for words. I don't know why it should seem so ridiculous, but it did. Maxie was a simpleton. I tolerated him only because he was good for a touch now and then. And then too there was his sister Rita. I used to let him invite me to his home occasionally, pretending that I was interested in his brother who was deranged. It was always a good meal and the halfwitted brother was real entertainment. He looked like a chimpanzee and he talked like one too. Maxie was too simple to suspect that I was merely enjoying myself; he thought I took a genuine interest in his brother. It was a beautiful Sunday and I had as usual about a quarter in my pocket. I walked along wondering where to go to make a touch. Not that it was difficult to scrape up a little dough, no, but the thing was to get the dough and beat it without being bored stiff. I could think of a dozen guys right in the neighbourhood, guys who would fork it out without a murmur, but it would mean a long conversation afterwards - about art, religion, politics. Another thing I could do, which I had done over and over again in a pinch, was to visit the telegraph offices, pretending to pay a friendly visit of inspection and then, at the last minute, suggesting that they rifle the till for a buck or so until the morrow. That would involve time and even worse conversation. Thinking it over coldly and calculatingly I decided that the best bet was my little friend Curley up in Harlem. If Curley didn't have the money he would filch it from his mother's purse. I knew I could rely on him. He would want to accompany me, of course, but I could always find a way of ditching him before the evening was over. He was only a kid and I didn't have to be too delicate with him. What I liked about Curley was, that although only a kid of seventeen, he had absolutely no moral sense, no scruples, no shame. He had come to me as a boy of fourteen looking for a job as messenger. His parents, who were then in South America, had shipped him to New York in care of an aunt who seduced him almost immediately. He had never been to school because the parents were always travelling; they were carnival people who worked "the griffs and the grinds", as he put it. The father had been in prison several times. He was not his real father, by the way. Anyway, Curley came to me as a mere lad who was in need of help, in need of a friend more than anything. At first I thought I could do something for him. Everybody took a liking to hira immediately, especially the women. He became the pet of the office. Before long, however, I realized that he was incomgible, that at the best he had the makings of a clever criminal. I liked him, however, and I continued to do things for him, but I never trusted him out of my sight. I think I liked him particularly because he had absolutely no sense of honour. He would do anything in the world for me and at the same time betray me. I couldn't reproach him for it... It was amusing to me. The more so because he was frank about it. He just couldn't help it. His Aunt Sophie, for instance. He said she had seduced him. True enough, but the curious thing was that he let himself be seduced while they were reading the Bible together. Young as he was he seemed to realize that his Aunt Sophie had need of him in that way. So he let himself be seduced, as he said, and then, after I had known him a little while he offered to put me next to his Aunt Sophie. He even went so far as to blackmail her. When he needed money badly he would go to the aunt and wheedle it out of her - with sly threats of exposure. With an innocent face, to be sure. He looked amazingly like an angel, with big liquid eyes that seemed so frank and sincere. So ready to do things for you - almost like a faithful dog. And then cunning enough, once he had gained your favour, to make you humour his little whims. Withal extremely intelligent. The sly intelligence of a fox and - the utter heartlessness of a jackal. It wasn't at all surprising to me, consequently, to learn that afternoon that he had been tinkering with Valeska. After Valeska he tackled the cousin who had already been deflowered and who was in need of some male whom she could rely upon. And from her finally to the midget who had made herself a pretty little nest at Valeska's. The midget interested him because she had a perfectly normal cant. He hadn't intended to do anything with her because, as he said, she was a repulsive little Lesbian, but one day he happened to walk in on her as she was taking a bath, and that started things off. It was getting to be too much for him, he confessed, because the three of them were hot on bis trail. He liked the cousin best because she had some dough and she wasn't reluctant to part with it. Valeska was too cagey, and besides she smelled a little too strong. In fact, he was getting sick of women. He said it was his Aunt Sophie's fault. She gave him a bad start. While relating this he busies himself going through the bureau drawers. The father is a mean son of a bitch who ought to be hanged, he says, not finding anything immediately. He showed me a revolver with a pearl handle... what would it fetch? A gun was too good to use on the old man ... he'd like to dynamite him. Trying to find out why he hated the old man so it developed that the kid was really stuck on his mother. He couldn't bear the thought of the old man going to bed with her. You don't mean to say that you're jealous of your old man, I ask. Yes, he's jealous. If I wanted to know the truth it's that he wouldn't mind sleeping with his mother. Why not? That's why he had permitted his Aunt Sophie to seduce him... he was thinking of his mother all the time. But don't you feel bad when you go through her pocketbook, I asked. He laughed. It's not her money he said, it's his. And what have they done for me? They were always farming me out. The first thing they taught me was how to cheat people. That's a hell of a way to raise a kid... There's not a red cent in the house. Curley's idea of a way out is to go with me to the office where he works and while I engage the manager in conversation go through the wardrobe and dean out all the loose change. Or, if I'm not afraid of taking a chance, he will go through the cash drawer. They'll never suspect us, he says. Had he ever done that before, I ask. Of course ... a dozen or more times, right under the manager's nose. And wasn't there any stink about it? To be sure ... they had fired a few clerks. Why don't you borrow something from your Aunt Sophie, I suggest. That's easy enough, only it means a quick diddle and he doesn't want to diddle her any more. She stinks. Aunt Sophie. What do you mean, she stinks? Just that ... she doesn't wash herself regularly. Why, what's the matter with her? Nothing, just religious. And getting fat and greasy at die same time. But she likes to be diddled just the same? Does she? She's crazier than ever about it. It's disgusting. It's like going to bed with a sow. What does your mother think about her? Her? She's as sore as hell at her. She thinks Sophie's trying to seduce the old man. Well, maybe she is! No, the old man's got something else. I caught him red-handed one night, in the movies, mushing it up with a young girl. She's a manicurist from the Astor Hotel. He's probably trying to squeeze a little dough out of her. That's the only reason he ever makes a woman. He's a dirty, mean son of a bitch and I'd like to see him get the chair some day! You'll get the chair yourself some day if you don't watch out. Who, me ? Not me ! I'm too clever. You're clever enough but you've got a loose tongue. I'd be a little more tight-lipped if I were you. You know, I added, to give him an extra jolt, O'Rourke is wise to you; if you ever fall out with O'Rourke it's all up with you . . . Well, why doesn't he say something if he's so wise? I don't believe you. I explain to him at some length that O'Rourke is one of those people, and there are damned few in the world, who prefer not to make trouble for another person if they can help it. O'Rourke, I say, has the detective's instinct only in that he likes to know what's going on around him: people's characters are plotted out in his head, and filed there permanently, just as the enemy's terrain is fixed in the minds of army leaders. People think that O'Rourke goes around snooping and spying, that he derives a special pleasure in performing this dirty work for the company. Not so. O'Rourke is a born student of human nature. He picks things up without effort, due, to be sure, to his peculiar way of looking at the world. Now about you ... I have no doubt that he knows everything about you. I never asked him, I admit, but I imagine so from the questions he poses now and then. Perhaps he's just giving you plenty of rope. Some night he'll run into you accidentally and perhaps he'll ask you to stop off somewhere and have a bite to eat with him. And out of a dear sky he'll suddenly say - you remember, Curley, when you were working up in SA office, the time that little Jewish clerk was fired for tapping the till? I think you were working overtime that night, weren't you? An interesting case, that. You know, they never discovered whether the clerk stole the money or not. They had to fire him, of course, for negligence, but we can't say for certain that he really stole the money. I've been thinking about that little affair now for quite some time. I have a hunch as to who took that money, but I'm not absolutely sure . . . And then he'll probably give you a beady eye and abruptly change the conversation to something else. He'll probably tell you a little story about a crook he knew who thought he was very smart and getting away with it. He'll draw that story out for you until you feel as though you were sitting on hot coals. By that time you'll be wanting to beat it, but just when you're ready to go he'll suddenly be reminded of another very interesting little case and he'll ask you to wait just a little longer while he orders another dessert. And he'll go on like that for three or four hours at a stretch, never making the least overt insinuation, but studying you closely all the time, and finally, when you think you're free, just when you're shaking hands with him and breathing a sigh of relief, he'll step in front of you and, planting his big square feet between your legs, he'll grab you by the lapel and, looking straight through you, he'll say in a soft winsome voice - now look here, my lad, don't you think you had better come clean? And if you think he's only trying to browbeat you and that you can pretend innocence and walk away, you're mistaken. Because at that point, when he asks you to come clean, he means business and nothing on earth is going to stop him. When it gets to that point I'd recommend you to make a clean sweep of it, down to the last penny. He won't ask me to fire you and he won't threaten you with jail - he'll just quietly suggest that you put aside a little bit each week and turn it over to him. Nobody will be the wiser. He probably won't even tell me. No, he's very delicate about these things, you see." "And supposing," says Curley suddenly, "that I tell him I stole the money in order to help you out? What then?" He began to laugh hysterically. "I don't think O'Rourke would believe that," I said calmly. "You can try it, of course, if you think it will help you to dear your own skirts. But I rather think it will have a bad effect. O'Rourke knows me ... he knows I wouldn't let you do a thing like that." "But you did let me do it!" "I didn't tell you to do it. You did it without my knowledge. That's quite different. Besides, can you prove that I accepted money from you? Won't it seem a little ridiculous to accuse me, the one who befriended you, of putting you up to a job like that? Who's going to believe you? Not O'Rourke. Besides, he hasn't trapped you yet. Why worry about it in advance? Maybe you could begin to return the money little by little before he gets after you. Do it anonymously." By this time Curley was quite used up. There was a little schnapps in the cupboard which his old man kept in reserve and I suggested that we take a little to brace us up. As we were drinking the schnapps it suddenly occurred to me that Maxie had said he would be at Luke's house to pay his respects. It was just the moment to get Maxie. He would be full of slobbering sentiments and I could give him any old kind of cock-and-bull story. I could say that the reason I had assumed such a hard-boiled air on the phone was because I was harassed, because I didn't know where to turn for the ten dollars which I needed so badly. At the same time I might be able to make a date with Lottie. I began to smile thinking about it. If Luke could only see what a friend he had in me! The most difficult thing would be to go up to the bier and take a sorrowful look at Luke. Not to.laugh! I explained the idea to Curley. He laughed so heartily that the tears were rolling down his face. Which convinced me, by the way, that it would be safer to leave Curley downstairs while I made the touch. Anyway, it was decided on. They were just sitting down to dinner when I walked in, looking as sad as I could possibly make myself look. Maxie was there and almost shocked by my sudden appearance. Lottie had gone already. That helped me to keep up the sad look. I asked to be alone with Luke a few minutes, but Maxie insisted on accompanying me. The others were relieved, I imagine, as they had been conducting the mourners to the bier all afternoon. And like the good Germans they were they didn't like having their dinner interrupted. As I was looking at Luke, still with that sorrowful expression I had mustered, I became aware of Maxie's eyes fixed on me inquisitively. I looked up and smiled at him in my usual way. He seemed absolutely nonplussed at this. "Listen, Maxie," I said, "are you sure they won't hear us?" He looked still more puzzled and grieved, but nodded reassuringly. "It's like this, Maxie... I came up here purposely to see you ... to borrow a few bucks. I know it seems lousy but you can imagine how desperate I must be to do a thing like this." He was shaking his head solemnly as I spit this out, his mouth forming a big 0 as if he were trying to frighten the spirits away. "Listen, Maxie," I went on rapidly and trying to keep my voice down sad and low, "this is no time to give me a sermon. If you want to do something for me lend me ten bucks now, right away . .. slip it to me right here while I look at Luke. You know, I really liked Luke. I didn't mean all that over the telephone. You got me at a bad moment. The wife was tearing her hair out. We're in a mess, Maxie, and I'm counting on you to do something. Come out with me if you can and I'll tell you more about it.. .*' Maxie, as I had expected, couldn't come out with me. He wouldn't think of deserting them at such a moment..." Well, give it to me now," I said, almost savagely. "I'll explain the whole thing to you tomorrow. I'll have lunch with you downtown." "Listen, Henry," says Maxie, fishing around in his pocket, embarrassed at the idea of being caught with a wad in his hand at that moment, "listen," he said, "I don't mind giving you the money, but couldn't you have found another way of reaching me? It isn't because of Luke... it's..." He began to hem and haw, not knowing really what he wanted to say. "For Christ's sake," I muttered, bending over Luke more closely so that if any one walked in on us they would never suspect what I was up to ... "for Christ's sake, don't argue about it now... hand it over and be done with it... I'm desperate, do you hear me?" Maxie was so confused and flustered that he couldn't disengage a bill without pulling the wad out of his pocket. Leaning over the coffin reverendy I peeled off the topmost bill from the wad which was peeping out of his pocket. I couldn't tell whether it was a single or a ten-spot. I didn't stop to examine it but tucked it away as rapidly as possible and I08 straightened myself up. Then I took Maxie by the arm and returned to the kitchen where the family were eating solemnly but heartily. They wanted me to stay for a bite, and it was awkward to refuse, but I refused as best I could and beat it, my face twitching now with hysterical laughter. At the comer, by the lamp post, Curley was waiting for me. By this time I couldn't restrain myself any longer. I grabbed Curley by the arm and rushing him down the street I began to laugh, to laugh as I have seldom laughed in my life. I thought it would never stop. Every time I opened my mouth to start explaining the incident I had an attack. Finally I got frightened. I thought maybe I might laugh myself to death. After I had managed to quiet down a bit, in the midst of a long silence. Cur-ley suddenly says: "Did you get it?" That precipitated another attack, even more violent than before. I had to lean against a rail and hold my guts. I had a terrific pain in the guts but a pleasurable pain. What relieved me more than anything was the sight of the bill I had filched from Maxie's wad. It was a twenty dollar bill! That sobered me up at once. And at the same time it enraged me a bit. It enraged me to think that in the pocket of that idiot, Maxie, there were still more bills, probably more twenties, more tens, more fives. If he had come out with me, as I suggested, and if I had taken a good look at that wad I would have felt no remorse in blackjacking him. I don't know why it should have made me feel so, but it enraged me. The most immediate thought was to get rid of Curley as quickly as possible - a five-spot would fix him up - and then go on a little spree. What I particularly wanted was to meet some low-down, filthy cunt who hadn't a spark of decency in her. Where to meet one like that. . . just like that? Well, get rid of Curley first. Curley, of course, is hurt. He had expected to stick with me. He pretends not to want the five bucks, but when be sees that I'm willing to take it back, he quickly stows it away. Again the night, the incalculably barren, cold, mechanical night of New York in which there is no peace, no refuge, no intimacy. The immense, frozen solitude of the million-footed mob, the cold, waste fire of the electrical display, the over- whelming meaningless of the perfection of the female who through perfection has crossed the frontier of sex and gone into the minus sign, gone into the red, like the electricity, like the neutral energy of the males, like planets without aspect, like peace programmes, like love over the radio. To have money in the pocket in the midst of white, neutral energy, to walk meaningless and unfecundated through the bright glitter of the calcimined streets, to think aloud in full solitude on the edge of madness, to be of a city, a great city, to be of the last moment of time in the greatest city in the world and feel no part of it, is to become oneself a city, a world of dead stone, of waste light, of unintelligible motion, of imponderables and incalculables, of the secret perfection of all that is minus. To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money ? Again the dance hall, the money rhythm, the love that comes over the radio, the impersonal, wingless touch of the crowd. A despair that reaches down to the very soles of the boots, an ennui, a desperation. In the midst of the highest mechanical perfection to dance without joy, to be so desperately alone, to be almost inhuman because you are human. If there were life on the moon what more nearly perfect, joyless evidence of it could there be than this. If to travel away from the sun is to reach the chill idiocy of the moon, then we have arrived at our goal and life is but the cold, lunar incandescence of the sun. This is the dance of ice-cold life in the hollow of an atom, and the more we dance the colder it gets. So we dance, to an ice-cold frenzied rhythm, to short waves and long waves, a dance on the inside of the cup of nothingness, each centimetre of lust running to dollars and cents. We taxi from one perfect female to another seeking the vulnerable defect, but they are flawless and impermeable in the impeccable lunar consistency. This is the icy white maidenhead of love's logic, the web of the ebbed tide, the fringe of absolute vacuity. And on this fringe of the virginal logic of perfection I am dancing the soul dance of white desperation, the last white man pulling the trigger on the last emotion, the gorilla of despair beating his breast with immaculate gloved paws. I am the gorilla who feels his wings growing, a giddy gorilla in the centre of a satin-like emptiness; the night too grows like an electrical plant, shooting white-hot buds into velvet black space. I am the black space of the night in which the buds break with anguish, a starfish swimming on the frozen dew of the moon. I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul. I am dancing the very sane and lovely dance of the angelic gorilla. These are my brothers and sisters who are insane and unangelic. We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of one flesh, but separated like stars. In the moment all is dear to me, dear that in this logic there is no redemption, the city itself being the highest form of madness and each and every part, organic or inorganic, an expression of this same madness. I feel absurdly and humbly great, not as megalomaniac, but as human spore, as the dead sponge of life swollen to saturation. I no longer look into the eyes of the woman I hold in my arms but I swim through, head and arms and legs, and I see that behind the sockets of the eyes there is a region unexplored, the world of futurity, and here there is no logic whatever, just the still germination of events unbroken by night and day, by yesterday and tomorrow. The eye, accustomed to concentration on points in space, now concentrates on points in time; the eye sees forward and backward at will. The eye which was the I of the self no longer exists; this selfless eye neither reveals nor illuminates. It travels along the line of the horizon, a ceaseless, uninformed voyager. Trying to retain the lost body I grew in logic as the city, a point digit in the anatomy of perfection. I grew beyond my own death, spiritually bright and hard. I