fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard—and in order to forget. I wanted something of the earth which was not of man’s doing, something absolutely divorced from the human of which I was surfeited. I wanted something purely terrestrial and absolutely divested of idea. I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and the light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think. To be englobed and encompassed and to encompass and to englobe at the same time. No more pity, no more tenderness. To be human only terrestrially, like a plant or a worm or a brook. To be decomposed, divested of light and stone, variable as the molecule, durable as the atom, heartless as the earth itself.
It was just about a week before Valeska committed suicide that I ran into Mara. The week or two preceding that event was a veritable nightmare. A series of sudden deaths and strange encounters with women. First of all there was Pauline Janowski, a little Jewess of sixteen or seventeen who was without a home and without friends or relatives. She came to the office looking for a job. It was toward closing time and I didn’t have the heart to turn her down cold. For some reason or other I took it into my head to bring her home for dinner and if possible try to persuade the wife to put her up for a while. What attracted me to her was her passion for Balzac. All the way home she was talking to me about Lost Illusions. The car was packed and we were jammed so tight together that it didn’t make any difference what we were talking about because we were both thinking of only one thing. My wife of course was stupefied to see me standing at the door with a beautiful young girl. She was polite and courteous in her frigid way but I could see immediately that it was no use asking her to put the girl up. It was about all she could do to sit through the dinner with us. As soon as we had finished she excused herself and went to the movies. The girl started to weep. We were still sitting at the table, the dishes piled up in front of us. I went over to her and I put my arms around her. I felt genuinely sorry for her and I was perplexed as to what to do for her. Suddenly she threw her arms around my neck and she kissed me passionately. We stood there a long while embracing each other and then I thought to myself no, it’s a crime, and besides maybe the wife didn’t go to the movies at all, maybe she’ll be ducking back any minute. I told the kid to pull herself together, that we’d take a trolley ride somewhere. I saw the child’s bank lying on the mantelpiece and I took it to the toilet and emptied it silently. There was only about seventy-five cents in it. We got on a trolley and went to the beach. Finally we found a deserted spot and we lay down in the sand. She was hysterically passionate and there was nothing to do but to do it. I thought she would reproach me afterwards, but she didn’t. We lay there a while and she began talking about Balzac again. It seems she had ambitions to be a writer herself. I asked her what she was going to do. She said she hadn’t the least idea. When we got up to go she asked me to put her on the highway. Said she thought she would go to Cleveland or some place. It was after midnight when I left her standing in front of a gas station. She had about thirty-five cents in her pocketbook. As I started homeward I began cursing my wife for the mean bitch that she was. I wished to Christ it was she whom I had left standing on the highway with no place to go to. I knew that when I got back she wouldn’t even mention the girl’s name.
I got back and she was waiting up for me. I thought she was going to give me hell again. But no, she had waited up because there was an important message from O’Rourke. I was to telephone him soon as I got home. However, I decided not to telephone. I decided to get undressed and go to bed. Just when I had gotten comfortably settled the telephone rang. It was O’Rourke. There was a telegram for me at the office—he wanted to know if he should open it and read it to me. I said of course. The telegram was signed Monica. It was from Buffalo. Said she was arriving at the Grand Central in the morning with her mother’s body. I thanked him and went back to bed. No questions from the wife. I lay there wondering what to do. If I were to comply with the request that would mean starting things all over again. I had just been thanking my stars that I had gotten rid of Monica. And now she was coming back with her mother’s corpse. Tears and reconciliation. No, I didn’t like the prospect at all. Supposing I didn’t show up? What then? There was always somebody around to take care of a corpse. Especially if the bereaved were an attractive young blonde with sparkling blue eyes. I wondered if she’d go back to her job in the restaurant. If she hadn’t known Greek and Latin I would never have been mixed up with her. But my curiosity got the better of me. And then she was so goddamned poor, that too got me. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if her hands hadn’t smelled greasy. That was the fly in the ointment—the greasy hands. I remember the first night I met her and we strolled through the park. She was ravishing to look at, and she was alert and intelligent. It was just the time when women were wearing short skirts and she wore them to advantage. I used to go to the restaurant night after night just to watch her moving around, watch her bending over to serve or stooping down to pick up a fork. And with the beautiful legs and the bewitching eyes a marvelous line about Homer, with the pork and sauerkraut a verse of Sappho’s, the Latin conjugations, the odes of Pindar, with the dessert perhaps The Rubaiyat or Cynara. But the greasy hands and the frowsy bed in the boarding house opposite the marketplace—Whew! I couldn’t stomach it. The more I shunned her the more clinging she became. Ten-page letters about love with footnotes on Thus Spake Zarathustra. And then suddenly silence and me congratulating myself heartily. No, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the Grand Central Station in the morning. I rolled over and I fell sound asleep. In the morning I would get the wife to telephone the office and say I was ill. I hadn’t been ill now for over a week—it was coming to me.
At noon I find Kronski waiting for me outside the office. He wants me to have lunch with him . . . there’s an Egyptian girl he wants me to meet. The girl turns out to be a Jewess, but she came from Egypt and she looks like an Egyptian. She’s hot stuff and the two of us are working on her at once. As I was supposed to be ill I decided not to return to the office but to take a stroll through the East Side. Kronski was going back to cover me up. We shook hands with the girl and we each went our separate ways. I headed toward the river where it was cool, having forgotten about the girl almost immediately. I sat on the edge of the pier with my legs dangling over the string-piece. A scow passed with a load of red bricks. Suddenly Monica came to my mind. Monica arriving at the Grand Central Station with a corpse. A corpse f. o. b. New York! It seemed so incongruous and ridiculous that I burst out laughing. What had she done with it? Had she checked it or had she left it on a siding? No doubt she was cursing me out roundly. I wondered what she would really think if she could have imagined me sitting there at the dock with my legs dangling over the stringpiece. It was warm and sultry despite the breeze that was blowing off the river. I began to snooze. As I dozed off Pauline came to my mind. I imagined her walking along the highway with her hand up. She was a brave kid, no doubt about it. Funny that she didn’t seem to worry about getting knocked up. Maybe she was so desperate she didn’t care. And Balzac! That too was highly incongruous. Why Balzac? Well, that was her affair. Anyway she’d have enough to eat with, until she met another guy. But a kid like that thinking about becoming a writer! Well, why not? Everybody had illusions of one sort or another. Monica too wanted to be a writer. Everybody was becoming a writer. A writer! Jesus, how futile it seemed!
I dozed off . . . When I woke up I had an erection. The sun seemed to be burning right into my fly. I got up and I washed my face at the drinking fountain. It was still as hot and sultry as ever. The asphalt was soft as mush, the flies were biting, the garbage was rotting in the gutter. I walked about between the pushcarts and looked at things with an empty eye. I had a sort of lingering hard on all the while, but no definite object in mind. It was only when I got back to Second Avenue that I suddenly remembered the Egyptian Jewess from lunch time. I remembered her saying that she lived over the Russian restaurant near Twelfth Street. Still I hadn’t any definite idea of what I was going to do. Just browsing about, killing
