the transfiguration of the world and the coming of the Kingdom of God, and this is the eschatological hope. . . .”
Speaking for myself, I must say that had I ever had any hopes eschatological or otherwise, it was Dostoevski who annihilated them. Or perhaps I should modify this by saying that he “rendered nugatory” those cultural aspirations engendered by my Western upbringing. The Asiatic part, in a word, the Mongolian in me, has remained intact and will always remain intact. This Mongolian side of me has nothing to do with culture or personality; it represents the root being whose sap runs back to some ageless ancestral limb of the genealogical tree. In this unfathomable reservoir all the chaotic elements of my own nature and of the American heritage have been swallowed up as the ocean swallows the rivers which empty into it. Oddly enough, I have understood Dostoevski, or rather his characters and the problems which tormented them, better, being American-born, than had I been a European. The English language, it seems to me, is better suited to render Dostoevski (if one has to read him in translation) than French, German, Italian, or any other non-Slavic tongue. And American life, from the gangster level to the intellectual level, has paradoxically tremendous affinities with Dostoevski’s multilateral everyday Russian life. What better proving grounds can one ask for than metropolitan New York, in whose conglomerate soil every wanton, ignoble, crackbrained idea flourishes like a weed? One has only to think of winter there, of what it means to be hungry, lonely, desperate in that labyrinth of monotonous streets lined with monotonous homes crowded with monotonous individuals crammed with monotonous thoughts. Monotonous and at the same time unlimited!
Though millions among us have never read Dostoevski nor would even recognize the name were it pronounced, they are nevertheless, millions of them, straight out of Dostoevski, leading the same weird “lunatical” life here in America which Dostoevski’s creatures lived in the Russia of his imagining. If yesterday they might still have been regarded as having a human existence, tomorrow their world will possess a character and lineament more fantastically bedeviled than any or all of Bosch’s creations. Today they move beside us elbow to elbow, startling no one, apparently, by their antediluvian aspect. Some indeed continue to pursue their calling—preaching the Gospel, dressing corpses, ministering to the insane—quite as if nothing of any moment had taken place. They have not the slightest inkling of the fact that “man is no longer what he had been before.”
2
Ah, the monotonous thrill that comes of walking the streets on a winter’s morn, when iron girders are frozen to the ground and the milk in the bottle rises like the stem of a mushroom. A septentrional day, let us say, when the most stupid animal would not dare poke a nose out of his hole. To accost a stranger on such a day and ask him for alms would be unthinkable. In that biting, gnawing cold, the icy wind whistling through the glum, canyoned streets, no one in his right mind would stop long enough to reach into his pocket in search of a coin. On a morning like this, which a comfortable banker would describe as “clear and brisk,” a beggar has no right to be hungry or in need of carfare. Beggars are for warm, sunny days, when even the sadist at heart stops to throw crumbs to the birds.
It was on a day such as this that I would deliberately gather together a batch of samples in order to sally forth and call on one of my father’s customers, knowing in advance that I would get no order but driven by an all-consuming hunger for conversation.
There was one individual in particular I always elected to visit on such occasions, because with him the day might end, and usually did end, in most unexpected fashion. It was seldom, I should add, that this individual ever ordered a suit of clothes, and when he did it took him years to settle the bill. Still, he was a customer. To the old man I used to pretend that I was calling on John Stymer in order to make him buy the full-dress suit which we always assumed he would eventually need. (He was forever telling us that he would become a judge one day, this Stymer.)
What I never divulged to the old man was the nature of the unsartorial conversations I usually had with the man.
“Hello! What do you want to see me for?”
That’s how he usually greeted me.
“You must be mad if you think I need more clothes. I haven’t paid you for the last suit I bought, have I? When was that—five years ago?”
He had barely lifted his head from the mass of papers in which his nose was buried. A foul smell pervaded the office, due to his inveterate habit of farting—even in the presence of his stenographer. He was always picking his nose too. Otherwise—outwardly, I mean—he might pass for Mr. Anybody. A lawyer, like any other lawyer.
His head still buried in a maze of legal documents, he chirps: “What are you reading these days?” Before I can reply he adds: “Could you wait outside a few minutes? I’m in a tangle. But don’t run away. . . . I want to have a chat with you.” So saying he dives in his pocket and pulls out a dollar bill. “Here, get yourself a coffee while you wait. And come back in an hour or so . . . we’ll have lunch together, what!”
In the anteroom a half-dozen clients are waiting to get his ear. He begs each one to wait just a little longer. Sometimes they sit there all day.
On the way to the cafeteria I break the bill to buy a paper. Scanning the news always gives me that extrasensory feeling of belonging to another planet. Besides, I need to get screwed up in order to grapple with John Stymer.
Scanning the paper I get to reflecting on Stymer’s great problem. Masturbation. For years now he’s been trying to break the vicious habit. Scraps of our last conversation come to mind. I recall how I recommended his trying a good whorehouse—and the wry face he made when I voiced the suggestion. “What! Me, a married man, take up with a bunch of filthy whores?” And all I could think to say was: “They’re not all filthy!”
But what was pathetic, now that I mention the matter, was the earnest, imploring way he begged me, on parting, to let him know if I thought of anything that would help . . . anything at all. “Cut it off!” I wanted to say.
An hour rolled away. To him an hour was like five minutes. Finally I got up and made for the door. It was that icy outdoors I wanted to gallop.
To my surprise he was waiting for me. There he sat with clasped hands resting on the desk top, his eyes fixed on some pinpoint in eternity. The package of samples which I had left on his desk was open. He had decided to order a suit, he informed me.
“I’m in no hurry for it,” he said. “I don’t need any new clothes.”
“Don’t buy one, then. You know I didn’t come here to sell you a suit.”
“You know,” he said, “you’re about the only person I ever manage to have a real conversation with. Every time I see you I expand. . . . What have you got to recommend this time? I mean in the way of literature. That last one, Oblomov, was it? didn’t make much of an impression on me.”
He paused, not to hear what I might have to say in reply, but to gather momentum.
“Since you were here last I’ve been having an affair. Does that surprise you? Yes, a young girl, very young, and a nymphomaniac to boot. Drains me dry. But that isn’t what bothers me—it’s my wife. It’s excruciating the way she works over me. I want to jump out of my skin.”
Observing the grin on my face he adds: “It’s not a bit funny, let me tell you.”
The telephone rang. He listens attentively. Then, having said nothing but Yes, No, I think so, he suddenly shouts into the mouthpiece: “I want none of your filthy money. Let him get someone else to defend him.”
