I could have sworn that I left here only twenty minutes ago. “Where in God’s name have you been?” she demands, almost accusingly. Probably a glacier melting.Īrriving home I found her creaming her face. A mist was rising over toward Gowanus Canal. “Hail to you, sweet lice,” I thought, and passed on. Sure enough, the lights were on and the pianola softly giving out morceaux choisis de Dohnanyi. Suddenly I took an oblique left turn in the direction of Osiecki’s flat. I followed them a distance, almost infected myself by their utter nonchalance. Hark, hark the lark at heaven’s gate sings! Just strolling along, laughing, talking, humming. No thought of snow or ice, no concern for the polar blasts from the river, no fear of God or man. You would think, to see them, that they were looking for violets in a golden meadow. 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. Proof of what? Proof that Stasia is in her right mind. Were I to show this to Kronski he would run immediately to the bughouse and offer it as proof. Federov, a Russian of the Russians, will found his own original form of anarchism, one hostile to the State.” 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. Only a single lacuna: Rozanov’s Metaphysics of Sex. 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. His back rests against a few choics volumes deposited with us by Stasia before taking off for the asylum. His wig, made of purple strings, is surmounted by a miniature hat, á la Bohéme, imported from la Galerie Dufayel. He has the leer of a madman quaffing a bowl of sterno. Count Bruga, that darling of a puppet, reposes on the bureau surrounded by Javanese and Tibetan idols. We are snowbound in a hall bedroom with a private sink and twin beds. Saul barks in his delirium, believing he is Isaac Dust. She went there of her own accord, to find out if she were in her right mind or not. Add a codicil for old times’ sake.Īnastasia, alias Hegoroboru, alias Bertha Filigree of Lake Tahoe-Titicaca and the Imperial Court of the Czars, is temporarily in the Observation Ward. Isaac Dust, born of the dust and returning to dust. Like Balzac, I live with imaginary paintings. Even if they were crowded with masterpieces I would recognize nothing. But particularly Tilla Durieux, she with the eloquent, sensual lips dark as rose petals. Each one had something precious to impart. 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. Is that you, dear August, raising your head in the gloom? Yes, it is Strindberg, the Strindberg with two horns protruding from his forehead. Not one of them has ever raised his head. 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. 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?”
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