Part 4 (1/2)

Suddenly I was exhausted. The little waves leaped over me. I swallowed water, I was sinking. I prayed, I groaned and fought the water, and I knew I should not fight it. The sea was quiet out here. Far inland I heard the roar of the breakers. I called, waited, called again. No answer save the slush of my arms and the sound of the little choppy waves. Then something happened to my right leg, to the toes of the foot. They seemed lodged. When I kicked the pain shot to the thigh. I wanted to live. G.o.d, don't take me now! I swam blindly towards the sh.o.r.e.

Then I felt myself in the big breakers once more, heard them booming louder. It seemed too late. I couldn't swim, my arms were so tired, my right leg ached so much. To breathe was all that mattered. Under water the current rushed, rolling and dragging me. So this was the end of Camilla, and this was the end of Arturo Bandini - but even then I was writing it all down, seeing it across a page in a typewriter, writing it out and coasting along the sharp sand, so sure I would never come out alive. Then I was in water to my waist, limp and too far gone to do anything about it, floundering helplessly with my mind clear, composing the whole thing, worrying about excessive adjectives. The next breaker smashed me under once more, dragged me to water a foot deep, and I crawled on my hands and knees out of water a foot deep, wondering if I could perhaps make a poem out of it. I thought of Camilla out there and I sobbed and noticed my tears were saltier than the sea water. But I couldn't lie there, I had to get help 77.

somewhere, and I got to my feet and staggered towards the car. I was so cold and my jaws chattered.

I turned and looked at the sea. Not fifty feet away Camilla waded towards the land in water to her waist. She was laughing, choking from it, this supreme joke she had played, and when I saw her dive ahead of the next breaker with all the grace and perfection of a seal, I didn't think it was funny at all. I walked out to her, felt my strength returning with every step, and when I got to her I picked her up bodily, over my shoulders, and I didn't mind her screaming, her fingers scratching my scalp and tearing my hair. I lifted her as high as my arms and threw her in a pool of water a few feet deep. She landed with a thud that knocked the breath out of her. I waded out, took her hair in both my hands, and rubbed her face and mouth in the muddy sand. I left her there, crawling on her hands and knees, crying and moaning, and I walked back to the car. She had mentioned blankets in the rumble seat. I pulled them out, wrapped myself up, and lay down on the warm sand.

In a little while she made her way through the deep sand and found me sitting under the blankets. Dripping and clean she stood before me, showing herself, proud of her nakedness, turning round and round.

'You still like me?'

I stole glances at her. I was speechless, and I nodded and grinned. She stepped upon the blankets and asked me to move over. I made a place and she slipped under, her body sleek and cold. She asked me to hold her, and I held her, and she kissed me, her lips wet and cool. We lay a long time, and I was worried and afraid and without pa.s.sion. Something like a grey flower grew between us, a thought that took shape and spoke of the chasm that separated us. I didn't know what it was. I 78 felt her waiting. I drew my hands over her belly and legs, felt my own desire, searched foolishly for my pa.s.sion, strained for it while she waited, rolled and tore my hair and begged for it, but there was none, there was none at all, only the retreat to Hackmuth's letter and thoughts that remained to be written, but no l.u.s.t, only fear of her, and shame and humiliation. Then I was blaming and cursing myself and I wanted to get up and walk into the sea. She felt my retreat. With a sneer she sat up and began drying her hair on the blanket. 'I thought you liked me,' she said.

I couldn't answer. I shrugged and stood up. We dressed and drove back to Los Angeles. We didn't speak. She lit a cigarette and looked at me strangely, lips pursed. She blew smoke from her cigarette into my face. I took the cigarette out of her mouth and threw it into the street. She lit another and inhaled languidly, amused and contemptuous. I hated her then.

Dawn climbed the mountains in the east, gold bars of light cutting the sky like searchlights. I took out Hackmuth's letter and read it again. Back East in New York Hackmuth would just now be entering his office. Somewhere in that office was my ma.n.u.script The Long Lost Hills. Love wasn't everything. Women weren't everything. A writer had to conserve his energies.

We reached the city. I told her where I lived. 'Bunker Hill?' She laughed. 'It's a good place for you.' 'It's perfect,' I said. 'In my hotel they don't allow Mexicans.'

It sickened both of us. She drove to the hotel and killed the engine. I sat wondering if there was anything more to say, but there was nothing. I got out, nodded, and walked towards the hotel. Between my shoulder blades I felt her eyes 79.like knives. As I got to the door she called me. I walked back to the car.

'Aren't you going to kiss me goodnight?'

I kissed her.

'Not that way.'

Her arms slipped around my neck. She pulled my face down and sank her teeth into my lower lip. It stung and I fought her until I was free. She sat with one arm over the seat, smiling and watching me enter the hotel. I took out my handkerchief and dabbed my lips. The handkerchief had a spot of blood on it. I walked down the grey hall to my room. As I closed the door all the desire that had not come a while before seized me. It pounded my skull and tingled in my fingers. I threw myself on the bed and tore the pillow with my hands.

Chapter Ten

All that day it was on my mind. I remembered her brown nakedness and her kiss, the flavour of her mouth as it came cold from the sea, and I saw myself white and virginal, pulling in the pudgy line of my stomach, standing in the sand and holding my hands over my loins. I walked up and down the room. Late in the afternoon I was exhausted and the sight of myself in the mirror was unbearable. I sat at the typewriter and wrote about it, poured it out the way it should have happened, hammered it out with such violence that the portable typewriter kept moving away from me and across the table. On paper I stalked her like a tiger and beat her to the earth and overpowered her with my invincible strength. It ended with her creeping after me, in the sand, tears streaming from her eyes, beseeching me to have mercy upon her. Fine. Excellent. But when I read it over it was ugly and dull. I tore the pages and threw them away.

h.e.l.lfrick knocked on the door. He was pale and trembling, his skin like wet paper. He was off the booze; never would he touch another drop. He sat on the edge of my bed and wrung his bony fingers. Nostalgically he talked of meat, of the good old steaks you got back in Kansas City, of the wonderful T-bones and tender lamb chops. But not out here in this land of the eternal sun, where the cattle ate nothing but dead weeds and suns.h.i.+ne, where the meat was full of worms and they had 81.to paint it to make it look b.l.o.o.d.y and red. And would I lend him fifty cents? I gave him the money and he went down to the butcher shop on Olive Street. In a little while he was back in his room and the lower floor of the hotel was fragrant with the tangy aroma of liver and onions. I walked into his room. He sat before a plate of the food, his mouth bloated, his thin jaws working hard. He shook his fork at me. 'I'll make it good with you, kid. I'll pay you back a thousand times.”

It made me hungry. I walked down to the restaurant near Angel's Flight and ordered the same thing. I took my time having dinner. But no matter how long I loitered over coffee I knew I would eventually walk down the Flight to the Columbia Buffet. I had only to touch the lump on my lip to grow angry, and then to feel pa.s.sion.

When I got down to the buffet I was afraid to enter. I crossed the street and watched her through the windows. She was not wearing her white shoes, and she seemed the same, happy and busy with her beer tray.

I got an idea. I walked quickly, two blocks, to the telegraph office. I sat down before the telegraph blank, my heart pounding. The words writhed across the page. I love you Camilla I want to marry you Arturo Bandini. When I paid for it the clerk looked at the address and said it would be delivered in ten minutes. I hurried back to Spring Street and stood in the shadowed doorway waiting for the telegraph boy to appear.

The moment I saw him coming around the corner I knew the telegram was a blunder. I ran into the street and stopped him. I told him I wrote the telegram and didn't want it delivered. 'A mistake,' I said. He wouldn't listen. He was tall with a pimply face. I offered him ten dollars. He shook his head and smiled emphatically. Twenty dollars, thirty.

82 'Not for ten million,' he said.

I walked back to the shadows and watched him deliver the telegram. She was amazed to get it. I saw her finger point at herself, her face dubious. Even after she signed for it she stood holding it in her hand, watching the telegraph boy disappear. As she tore it open I locked my eyes shut. When I opened them she was reading the telegram and laughing. She walked to the bar and handed the wire to the sallow-faced bartender, the one we had driven home the night before. He read it without expression. Then he handed it to the other bartender. He, too, was unimpressed. I felt a deep grat.i.tude for them. When Camilla read it again, I was grateful for that, too, but when she took it to a table where a group of men sat drinking my mouth opened slowly and I was sick. The laughter of the men floated across the street. I shuddered and walked away quickly.

At Sixth I turned the corner and walked down to Main.

I wandered through the crowds of seedy, hungry derelicts without destination. At Second I stopped before a Filipino taxi-dancehall. The literature on the walls spoke eloquently of forty beautiful girls and the dreamy music of Lonny Killula and his Melodic Hawaiians. I climbed one flight of echoing stairs to a booth and bought a ticket. Inside were the forty women, lined against the opposite wall, sleek in tight evening dresses, most of them blondes. n.o.body was dancing, not a soul. On the platform the five-piece orchestra banged out a tune with fury. A few customers like myself stood behind a short wicker fence, opposite the girls. They beckoned to us.

I surveyed the group, found a blonde whose gown I liked, and bought a few dance tickets. Then I waved at the blonde.

She fell into my arms like an old lover and we beat the oak for two dances.

She talked soothingly and called me honey, but I thought only of that girl two streets away, of myself lying with her in the sand and making a fool of myself. It was useless. I gave the cloying blonde my handful of tickets and walked out of the hall and into the streets again. I could feel myself waiting, and when I kept looking at street clocks I knew what was wrong with myself. I was waiting for eleven o'clock when the Columbia closed.

I was there at a quarter to eleven. I was there in the parking lot, walking towards her car. I sat on the burst upholstery and waited. Off in one corner of the parking lot was a shed where the attendant kept his accounts. Over the shed was a neon clock in red. I kept my eye on the clock, watched the minute hand rush towards eleven. Then I was afraid to see her again and as I squirmed and writhed in the seat my hand touched something soft. It was a cap of hers, a tam-o-shanter, it was black with a tiny fluffy k.n.o.b on the crown. I felt it with my fingers and smelled it with my nose. Its powder was like herself. It was what I wanted. I stuffed it into my pocket and walked out of the parking lot. Then I climbed the stairs of Angel's Flight to my hotel. When I got to my room I took it out and threw it on the bed. I undressed, turned out the light, and held her hat in my arms.

Another day, poetry! Write her a poem, spill your heart to her in sweet cadences; but I didn't know how to write poetry. It was love and dove with me, bad rhymes, blundering sentiment. Oh Christ in Heaven, I'm no writer: I can't even put down a little quatrain, I'm no good in this world. I stood at the window and waved my hands at the sky; no good at all, just a cheap fake; neither writer nor lover; neither fish nor fowl.

Then what was the matter?

I had breakfast and went to a little Catholic Church at the edge of Bunker Hill. The rectory was in back of the frame church. I rang the bell and a woman in a nurse's ap.r.o.n answered. Her hands were covered with flour and dough. 'I want to see the pastor,' I said.

The woman had a square jaw and a hostile pair of sharp grey eyes. 'Father Abbot is busy,' she said. 'What do you want?'

'I have to see him,' I said. 'I tell you he's busy.'

The priest came to the door. He was stocky, powerful, smoking a cigar, a man in his fifties. 'What is it?' he asked. I told him I wanted to see him alone. I had some trouble on my mind. The woman sniffed contemptuously and disappeared through a hall. The priest opened the door and led me to his study. It was a small room crammed with books and magazines. My eyes bulged. There in one corner was a huge stack of Hackmuth's magazine. I walked to it at once, and pulled out the issue containing The Little Dog Laughed. The priest had seated himself. 'This is a great magazine,' I said. 'The greatest of them all.' The priest crossed his legs, s.h.i.+fted his cigar. 'It's rotten,' he said. 'Rotten to the core.' 'I disagree,' I said. 'I happen to be one of its leading contributors.'

'You?' the priest asked. 'And what did you contribute?' I spread The Little Dog Laughed before him on the desk. He glanced at it, pushed it aside. 'I read that story,' he said. 'It's a piece of hogwash. And your reference to the Blessed Sacrament was a vile and contemptible lie. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

84.85.Leaning back in his chair, he made it very plain that he didn't like me, his angry eyes centred on my forehead, his cigar rolling from one side of his mouth to the other.

'Now,' he said. 'What is it you wish to see me about?'

I didn't sit down. He made it very clear in his own way that I wasn't to use any of the furniture in the room. 'It's about a girl,' I said.

'What have you done to her?' he said.

'Nothing,' I said. But I could speak no more. He had plucked out my heart. Hogwas.h.!.+ All those nuances, that superb dialogue, that brilliant lyricism - and he had called it hogwash. Better to close my ears and go away to some far off place where no words were spoken. Hogwas.h.!.+

'I changed my mind,' I said. 'I don't want to talk about it now.'

He stood up and walked towards the door.

'Very well,' he said. 'Good day.'

I walked out, the hot sun blinding me. The finest short story in American Literature, and this person, this priest, had called it hogwash. Maybe that business about the Blessed Sacrament wasn't exactly true; maybe it didn't really happen. But my G.o.d, what psychological values! What prose! What sheer beauty!

As soon as I got to my room I sat down before my typewriter and planned my revenge. An article, a scathing attack upon the stupidity of the Church. I pecked out the t.i.tle: The Catholic Church Is Doomed. I hammered it out furiously, one page after another, until there were six. Then I paused to read it. The stuff was awful, ludicrous. I tore it up and threw myself on the bed. I still hadn't written a poem to Camilla. As I lay there, inspiration came. I wrote it out from memory: 86.I have forgot much, Camilla! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put the pale, lost lilies out of mind; But I was desolate and sick with an old pa.s.sion, yes, all the time, because the dance was long; I have been faithful to thee, Camilla, in my fas.h.i.+on.

Arturo Bandini I sent it by telegraph, proud of it, watched the telegraph clerk read it, beautiful poem, my poem to Camilla, a bit of immortality from Arturo to Camilla, and I paid the telegraph man and walked down to my place in the dark doorway, and there I waited. The same boy floated by on his bicycle. I watched him deliver it, watched Camilla read it in the middle of the floor, watched her shrug and rip it to pieces, saw the pieces floating to the sawdust on the floor. I shook my head and walked away. Even the poetry of Ernest Dowson had no effect upon her, not even Dowson.