Ask the Dust (3 page)

A room smaller than mine, carpetless, without pictures, a bed, a table, a wash-stand. She took off her coat. There was a blue print dress underneath. She was bare-legged. She took off the scarf. She was not a real blonde. Black hair grew at the roots. Her nose was crooked slightly. Bandini on the bed, put himself there with an air of casualness, like a man who knew how to sit on a bed.

Bandini: “Nice place you got here.”

My God I got to get out of here, this is terrible.

The girl sat beside me, put her arms around me, pushed her breasts against me, kissed me, flecked my teeth with a cold tongue. I jumped to my feet. Oh think fast, my mind, dear mind of mine please get me out of this and it will never happen again. From now on I will return to my Church. Beginning this day my life shall run like sweet water.

The girl lay back, her hands behind her neck, her legs over the bed. I shall smell lilacs in Connecticut, no doubt, before I die, and see the clean white small reticent churches of my youth, the pasture bars I broke to run away.

“Look,” I said. “I want to talk to you.”

She crossed her legs.

“I'm a writer,” I said. “I'm gathering material for a book.”

“I knew you were a writer,” she said. “Or a business man, or something. You look spiritual, honey.”

“I'm a writer, see. I like you and all that. You're okay, I like you. But I want to talk to you, first.”

She sat up.

“Haven't you any money, honey?”

Money—ho. And I pulled it out, a small thick roll of dollar bills. Sure I got money, plenty of money, this is a drop in the bucket, money is no object, money means nothing to me.

“What do you charge?”

“It's two dollars, honey.”

Then give her three, peel it off easily, like it was nothing at all,
smile and hand it to her because money is no object, there's more where this came from, at this moment Mamma sits by the window holding her rosary, waiting for the Old Man to come home, but there's money, there's always money.

She took the money and slipped it under the pillow. She was grateful and her smile was different now. The writer wanted to talk. How were conditions these days? How did she like this kind of life? Oh, come on honey, let's not talk, let's get down to business. No, I want to talk to you, this is important, new book, material. I do this often. How did you ever get into this racket. Oh honey, Chrissakes, you going to ask me that too? But money is no object, I tell you. But my time is valuable, honey. Then here's a couple more bucks. That makes five, my God, five bucks and I'm not out of here yet, how I hate you, you filthy. But you're cleaner than me because you've got no mind to sell, just that poor flesh.

She was overwhelmed, she would do anything. I could have it any way I wanted it, and she tried to pull me to her, but no, let's wait awhile. I tell you I want to talk to you, I tell you money is no object, here's three more, that makes eight dollars, but it doesn't matter. You just keep that eight bucks and buy yourself something nice. And then I snapped my fingers like a man remembering something, something important, an engagement.

“Say!” I said. “That reminds me. What time is it?”

Her chin was at my neck, stroking it. “Don't you worry about the time, honey. You can stay all night.”

A man of importance, ah yes, now I remembered, my publisher, he was getting in tonight by plane. Out at Burbank, away out in Burbank. Have to grab a cab and taxi out there, have to hurry. Goodbye, goodbye, you keep that eight bucks, you buy yourself something nice, goodbye, goodbye, running down the stairs, running away, the welcome fog in the doorway below, you keep that eight bucks, oh sweet fog I see you and I'm coming, you clean air, you wonderful world, I'm coming to you, goodbye, yelling up the stairs, I'll see you again, you keep that eight dollars and buy yourself something nice. Eight dollars pouring out of my eyes, Oh Jesus kill me dead and ship my body home, kill me dead and make me die like a pagan fool with no priest to absolve me, no extreme unction, eight dollars, eight dollars….

The lean days, blue skies with never a cloud, a sea of blue day after day, the sun floating through it. The days of plenty—plenty of worries, plenty of oranges. Eat them in bed, eat them for lunch, push them down for dinner. Oranges, five cents a dozen. Sunshine in the sky, sun juice in my stomach. Down at the Japanese market he saw me coming, that bullet-faced smiling Japanese, and he reached for a paper sack. A generous man, he gave me fifteen, sometimes twenty for a nickel.

“You like banana?” Sure, so he gave me a couple of bananas. A pleasant innovation, orange juice and bananas. “You like apple?” Sure, so he gave me some apples. Here was something new: oranges and apples. “You like peaches?” Indeed, and I carried the brown sack back to my room. An interesting innovation, peaches and oranges. My teeth tore them to pulp, the juices skewering and whimpering at the bottom of my stomach. It was so sad down there in my stomach. There was much weeping, and little gloomy clouds of gas pinched my heart.

My plight drove me to the typewriter. I sat before it, overwhelmed with grief for Arturo Bandini. Sometimes an idea floated harmlessly through the room. It was like a small white bird. It meant no ill-will. It only wanted to help me, dear little bird. But I would strike at it, hammer it out across the keyboard, and it would die on my hands.

What could be the matter with me? When I was a boy I had prayed to St. Teresa for a new fountain pen. My prayer was answered. Anyway, I did get a new fountain pen. Now I prayed to St. Teresa again. Please, sweet and lovely saint, gimme an idea. But she has deserted me, all the gods have deserted me, and like Huysmans I stand alone, my fists clenched, tears in my eyes. If
someone only loved me, even a bug, even a mouse, but that too belonged to the past; even Pedro had forsaken me now that the best I could offer him was orange peel.

I thought of home, of spaghetti swimming in rich tomato sauce, smothered in Parmesan cheese, of Mamma's lemon pies, of lamb roasts and hot bread, and I was so miserable that I deliberately sank my fingernails into the flesh of my arm until a spot of blood appeared. It gave me great satisfaction. I was God's most miserable creature, forced even to torturing myself. Surely upon this earth no grief was greater than mine.

Hackmuth must hear of this, mighty Hackmuth, who fostered genius in the pages of his magazine. Dear Mr. Hackmuth, I wrote, describing the glorious past, dear Hackmuth, page upon page, the sun a ball of fire in the West, slowly strangling in a fog bank rising off the coast.

There was a knock on my door, but I remained quiet because it might be that woman after her lousy rent. Now the door opened and a bald, bony, bearded face appeared. It was Mr. Hellfrick, who lived next door. Mr. Hellfrick was an atheist, retired from the army, living on a meager pension, scarcely enough to pay his liquor bills, even though he purchased the cheapest gin on the market. He lived perpetually in a grey bathrobe without a cord or button, and though he made a pretense at modesty he really didn't care, so that his bathrobe was always open and you saw much hair and bones underneath. Mr. Hellfrick had red eyes because every afternoon when the sun hit the west side of the hotel, he slept with his head out the window, his body and legs inside. He had owed me fifteen cents since my first day at the hotel, but after many futile attempts to collect it, I had given up hope of ever possessing the money again. This had caused a breach between us, so I was surprised when his head appeared inside my door.

He squinted secretively, pressed a finger to his lips, and shhhhhhhhhed me to be quiet, even though I hadn't said a word. I wanted him to know my hostility, to remind him that I had no respect for a man who failed to meet his obligations. Now he closed the door quietly and tiptoed across the room on his bony toes, his
bathrobe wide open.

“Do you like milk?” he whispered.

I certainly did, and I told him so. Then he revealed his plan. The man who drove the Alden milk route on Bunker Hill was a friend of his. Every morning at four this man parked his milk truck behind the hotel and came up the back stairs to Hellfrick's room for a drink of gin. “And so,” he said, “if you like milk, all you have to do is help yourself.”

I shook my head.

“That's pretty contemptible, Hellfrick,” and I wondered at the friendship between Hellfrick and the milkman. “If he's your friend, why do you have to steal the milk? He drinks your gin. Why don't you ask him for milk?”

“But I don't drink milk,” Hellfrick said. “I'm doing this for you.”

This looked like an attempt to squirm out of the debt he owed me. I shook my head. “No thanks, Hellfrick. I like to consider myself an honest man.”

He shrugged, pulled the bathrobe around him.

“Okay, kid. I was only trying to do you a favor.”

I continued my letter to Hackmuth, but I began to taste milk almost immediately. After a while I could not bear it. I lay on the bed in the semi-darkness, allowing myself to be tempted. In a little while all resistance was gone, and I knocked on Hellfrick's door. His room was madness, pulp western magazines over the floor, a bed with sheets blackened, clothes strewn everywhere, and clothes-hooks on the wall conspicuously naked, like broken teeth in a skull. There were dishes on the chairs, cigaret butts pressed out on the window sills. His room was like mine except that he had a small gas stove in one corner and shelves for pots and pans. He got a special rate from the landlady, so that he did his own cleaning and made his own bed, except that he did neither. Hellfrick sat in a rocking chair in his bathrobe, gin bottles around his feet. He was drinking from a bottle in his hand. He was always drinking, day and night, but he never got drunk.

“I've changed my mind,” I told him.

He filled his mouth with gin, rolled the liquor around in his
cheeks, and swallowed ecstatically. “It's a cinch,” he said. Then he got to his feet and crossed the room toward his pants, which lay sprawled out. For a moment I thought he was going to pay back the money he owed me, but he did no more than fumble mysteriously through the pockets, and then he returned empty handed to the chair. I stood there.

“That reminds me,” I said. “I wonder if you could pay the money I loaned you.”

“Haven't got it,” he said.

“Could you pay me a portion of it—say ten cents?”

He shook his head.

“A nickel?”

“I'm broke, kid.”

Then he took another swig. It was a fresh bottle, almost full.

“I can't give you any hard cash, kid. But I'll see that you get all the milk you need.” Then he explained. The milkman would arrive around four. I was to stay awake and listen for his knock. Hellfrick would keep the milkman occupied for at least twenty minutes. It was a bribe, a means of escaping payment of the debt, but I was hungry.

“But you ought to pay your debts, Hellfrick. You'd be in a bad spot if I was charging you interest.”

“I'll pay you, kid,” he said. “I'll pay every last penny, just as soon as I can.”

I walked back to my room, slamming Hellfrick's door angrily. I didn't wish to seem cruel about the matter, but this was going too far. I knew the gin he drank cost him at least thirty cents a pint. Surely he could control his craving for alcohol long enough to pay his just debts.

The night came reluctantly. I sat at the window, rolling some cigarets with rough cut tobacco and squares of toilet paper. This tobacco had been a whim of mine in more prosperous times. I had bought a can of it, and the pipe for smoking it had been free, attached to the can by a rubber band. But I had lost the pipe. The tobacco was so coarse it made a poor smoke in regular cigaret papers, but wrapped twice in toilet tissue it was powerful and compact,
sometimes bursting into flames.

The night came slowly, first the cool odor of it, and then the darkness. Beyond my window spread the great city, the street lamps, the red and blue and green neon tubes bursting to life like bright night flowers. I was not hungry, there were plenty of oranges under the bed, and that mysterious chortling in the pit of my stomach was nothing more than great clouds of tobacco smoke marooned there, trying frantically to find a way out.

So it had happened at last: I was about to become a thief, a cheap milk-stealer. Here was your flash-in-the-pan genius, your one-story-writer: a thief. I held my head in my hands and rocked back and forth. Mother of God. Headlines in the papers, promising writer caught stealing milk, famous protégé of J. C. Hackmuth haled into court on petty thief charge, reporters swarming around me, flashlights popping, give us a statement, Bandini, how did it happen? Well, fellows, it was like this: you see, I've really got plenty of money, big sales of manuscripts and all that, but I was doing a yarn about a fellow who steals a quart of milk, and I wanted to write from experience, so that's what happened, fellows. Watch for the story in the
Post
, I'm calling it “Milk Thief.” Leave me your address and I'll send you all free copies.

But it would not happen that way, because nobody knows Arturo Bandini, and you'll get six months, they'll take you to the city jail and you'll be a criminal, and what'll your mother say? and what'll your father say? and can't you hear those fellows around the filling station in Boulder, Colorado, can't you hear them snickering about the great writer caught stealing a quart of milk? Don't do it, Arturo! If you've got an ounce of decency in you, don't do it!

I rose from the chair and paced up and down. Almighty God, give me strength! Hold back this criminal urge! Then, all at once, the whole plan seemed cheap and silly, for at that moment I thought of something else to write in my letter to the great Hackmuth, and for two hours I wrote, until my back ached. When I looked out of my window to the big clock on the St. Paul Hotel, it was almost eleven. The letter to Hackmuth was a very long one—already I had twenty pages. I read the letter. It seemed silly. I felt
the blood in my face from blushes. Hackmuth would think me an idiot for writing such puerile nonsense. Gathering the pages, I tossed them into the wastebasket. Tomorrow was another day, and tomorrow I might get an idea for a short story. Meanwhile I would eat a couple of oranges and go to bed.

They were miserable oranges. Sitting on the bed I dug my nails into their thin skins. My own flesh puckered, my mouth was filled with saliva, and I squinted at the thought of them. When I bit into the yellow pulp it shocked me like a cold shower. Oh Bandini, talking to the reflection in the dresser mirror, what sacrifices you make for your art! You might have been a captain of industry, a merchant prince, a big league ball player, leading hitter in the American League, with an average of .415; but no! Here you are, crawling through the days, a starved genius, faithful to your sacred calling. What courage you possess!

I lay in bed, sleepless in the darkness. Mighty Hackmuth, what would he say to all this? He would applaud, his powerful pen would eulogize me in well-turned phrases. And after all, that letter to Hackmuth wasn't such a bad letter. I got up, dug it from the wastebasket, and re-read it. A remarkable letter, cautiously humored. Hackmuth would find it very amusing. It would impress upon him the fact that I was the selfsame author of
The Little Dog Laughed
. There was a story for you! And I opened a drawer filled with copies of the magazine that contained the story. Lying on the bed I read it again, laughing and laughing at the wit of it, murmuring in amazement that I had written it. Then I took to reading it aloud, with gestures, before the mirror. When I was finished there were tears of delight in my eyes and I stood before the picture of Hackmuth, thanking him for recognizing my genius.

I sat before the typewriter and continued the letter. The night deepened, the pages mounted. Ah, if all writing were as easy as a letter to Hackmuth! The pages piled up, twenty-five, thirty, until I looked down to my navel, where I detected a fleshy ring. The irony of it! I was gaining weight: oranges were filling me out! At once I jumped up and did a number of setting-up exercises. I twisted and writhed and rolled. Sweat flowed and breathing came hard. Thirsty
and exhausted, I threw myself on the bed. A glass of cool milk would be fine now.

At that moment I heard a knock on Hellfrick's door. Then Hellfrick's grunt as someone entered. It could be no one but the milkman. I looked at the clock: it was almost four. I dressed quickly: pants, shoes, no socks, and a sweater. The hallway was deserted, sinister in the red light of an old electric bulb. I walked deliberately, without stealth, like a man going to the lavatory down the hall. Two flights of whining, irritable stairs and I was on the ground floor. The red and white Alden milk-truck was parked close to the hotel wall in the moon-drenched alley. I reached into the truck and got two full quart bottles firmly by their necks. They felt cool and delicious in my fist. A moment later I was back in my room, the bottles of milk on the dresser table. They seemed to fill the room. They were like human things. They were so beautiful, so fat and prosperous.

You Arturo! I said, you lucky one! It may be the prayers of your mother, and it may be that God still loves you, in spite of your tampering with atheists, but whatever it is, you're lucky.

For old times' sake, I thought, and for old times' sake I knelt down and said grace, the way we used to do it in grade school, the way my mother taught us back home: Bless us, Oh Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy most bountiful hands, through the same Christ, Our Lord, Amen. And I added another prayer for good measure. Long after the milkman left Hellfrick's room I was still on my knees, a full half hour of prayers, until I was ravenous for the taste of milk, until my knees ached and a dull pain throbbed in my shoulder blades.

When I got up I staggered from cramped muscles, but it was going to be worthwhile. I took the toothbrush from my glass, opened one of the bottles, and poured a full glass. I turned and faced the picture of J. C. Hackmuth on the wall.