Desolation Angels (34 page)

Irwin received a shot from Gaines and lay down on the bed under the pink drapes and sighed. Laz the child received one of Gaines' soft drinks. Raphael thumbed thru
The Outline of History
and wanted to know Gaines' theory of Alexander the Great. “I wanta be like Alexander the Great,” he yelled, he somehow always yelled, “I wanta dress in rich jeweled general outfits and swing my sword at India and go glimpsing at Samarkand!”

“Yeah,” I said, “but you dont wanta have your first lieutenant buddy murdered or have a whole village of women and children killed!” The argument started. I remember now, the first thing we did was argue about Alexander the Great.

Raphael Urso I liked quite well, too, in spite or perhaps because of a previous New York hassle over a subterranean girl, as I say. He respected me tho he was always talking behind my back, in a way, tho he did that to everybody. For instance he whispered to me in the corner “That Gaines is a
grippling.
”

“What you mean?”

“The day of the grippling is come, the hunchback creep …”

“But I thought you liked him!”

“Look at my
poems
—” He showed me a notebook full of scribblings in black ink and drawings, excellent eerie drawings of starved children drinking from a big fat Coca-Cola bottle with legs and teats and a hank of hair labeled “Mexico Doom.” “There's
death
in Mexico—I saw a windmill turning death this way—I dont
like
it here—and your old Gaines is a
grippling.
”

As an example. But I loved him too because of his utterdust broodings, the way he stands on a streetcorner looking down, at night, hand to brow, wondering where to go in the world. He dramatized the way we all felt. And his poems did that best of all. That kind of old invalid Gaines was a “grippling” was merely Raphael's cruel but honest horror.

As for Lazarus, when you ask him “Hey Laz, are you okay?” he just looks up with innocent level blue eyes and a slight almost cherubic hint of a smile, sad, and doesnt need to reply. If anything, he reminded me more of my brother Gerard than anyone in the world. He was a tall slumping teenager with pimples but a handsome profile, completely helpless if it hadnt been for the care and protection of his brother Simon. He couldnt count money too well, or ask directions without getting involved, and least of all get a job or even understand legal papers and even newspapers. He was on the verge of catatonia like an older brother now in an institution (an older brother who had been his idol, by the way). Without Simon and Irwin to herd him along and protect him and provide him with bed and board, the authorities would have netted him at once. Not that he was cretinous, or unintelligent. He was extremely brilliant in fact. I saw letters he wrote at age 14 before his recent spell of silence: they were perfectly normal and better than average writings, in fact sensitive and better than anything I could have written at 14 when I also was an innocent introverted monster. As for his hobby, drawing, he was better at that than most artists alive today and I always knew he was really a great young artist pretending to be withdrawn so people would leave him alone, also so people wouldnt ask him to get a job. Because often I've seen the strange side glance he gives me which is like the look of a fellow or a brother conspirator in a world of busybodies, say—

Like the look that says: “I know, Jack, that you know what I'm doing, and you're doing the same thing in your way.” For Laz, like myself, also spent whole afternoons staring into space, doing nothing whatever, except maybe brush his hair, mostly just listening to his own mind as tho he too was alone with his Guardian Angel. Simon was usually busy, but during his semiannual “schizophrenic” spells he withdrew from everybody and also sat in his room doing nothing. (I'm telling you, these were real Russian brothers.) (Actually partly Polish.)

11

When Irwin had first met Simon, Simon pointed to trees and said “See, they're waving at me and bowing hello.” Besides all that weird interesting native mysticism, he was really an angelic kid and for instance now in Gaines' room he immediately undertook to empty the old man's pail upstairs, even rinsed it, came down nodding and smiling at the curious landladies (the landladies hung out in the kitchen boiling pots of beans and heating tortillas)—He then cleaned up the room with broom and dustpan, moved us all sternly aside, wiped clean the wall table and asked Gaines if he wanted anything at the store (almost with a bow). His relation to me was, like he'd bring me two fried eggs on a plate (later) and say “Eat! Eat!” and I'd say no I wasn't hungry and he'd yell “Eat, you brat!! If you dont watch out we'll have a revolution and make you work in the mills!”

So between Simon, Laz, Raphael and Irwin there was plenty of fantastically funny action going on, especially when we all sat down with the head landlady to hassle over the rent of their new apartment which was to be on the ground floor with windows opening on the tile courtyard.

The landlady was actually a European lady, French I think, and since I'd told her the “poets” were coming she sat somewhat politely and ready to be impressed on the couch. But if her vision of poets was of some caped de Musset or elegant Mallarmé—just a bunch of hoods. And Irwin haggled her down 100 pesos or so with arguments about no hot water and not enough beds. She said to me in French: “
Monsieur Duluoz, est ce qu'ils sont des poètes vraiment ces gens?
”

“
Oui madame
,” answered Irwin himself in his most elegant tone, assuming the role he called “the well groomed Hungarian,” “
nous sommes des poètes dans la grande tradition de Whitman et Melville, et surtout, Blake.
”

“
Mais, ce jeune là
.” She indicated Laz. “
Il est un poète?
”

“
Mais certainement, dans sa manière
” (Irwin).

“
Et bien, et vous n'avez pas l'argent pour louer à cinq cents pesos?
”

“
Comment?
”

“Five hundret pesos—
cinquo ciente pesos.
”

“Ah,” says Irwin leaping into Spanish, “
Sí, pero el departamiento n'est pas assez grande
for the whole lot.”

She understood all three languages and had to give in. Meanwhile, that settled, we all rushed out to dig Thieves' Market downtown but as we emerged on the street some Mexican kids drinking Cokes gave out a long low whistle at us. I was enraged because not only I was subjected to this now in the company of my motley weirdy gang but I didnt think it was fair. Yet Irwin, that international hepcat, said “That's not a whistle addressed at queers or anything you're thinking in your paranoia—it's a whistle of admiration.”

“Admi
ra
tion?”

“Certainly” and several nights later sure enough the Mexicans rapped on our door with Mescals in their hands, wanting to drink and toast, a bunch of Mexican medical students in fact living two flights above us (more later).

We started off down Orizaba Street on our first walk in Mexico City. I walked with Irwin and Simon in front, talking; Raphael (like Gaines) walked far to the side alone, along the curb, brooding; and Lazarus stomped along in his slow monster walk a half a block behind us, sometimes staring at the centavos in his hand and wondering where he could get an ice cream soda. Finally we turned around and found him stepping into a fish store. We all had to go back and get him. He stood there before giggling Mexican girls holding out his hand with the centavos in it saying “Ice crim suda, I wanta ice crim suda” in his funny New York accent, muttering at them, looking at them innocently.

“
Pero, señor, no comprendo.
”

“Ice crim suda.”

When Irwin and Simon gently led him out, once again as we resumed our walk he fell behind half a block and (as Raphael now cried sadly) “Poor Lazarus—wondering about pesos!” “Lost in Mexico wondering about pesos! What will ever happen to poor Lazarus! So sad, so
sad,
life, life, who can ever
stand
it!”

But Irwin and Simon walked gaily ahead to new adventures.

12

So my peacefulness in Mexico city was at an end tho I didnt mind too much because my writing was done for awhile but it was really too much the next morning when I was sleeping sweetly on my solitary roof Irwin bursting in “Get up! We're going to Mexico City University!”

“What do I care about Mexico City University, let me go sleep!” I was dreaming of a mysterious world mountain where everybody and everything was, why bother?

“You fool,” said Irwin in one of the rare instances when he let slip what he really thought of me, “how can you sleep all day and never see anything, what's the sense of being alive?”

“You invisible bastard I can see right thru you.”

“Can you really?” suddenly interested sitting on my bed. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like a lot of little Gardens are going to travel prating to the grave, talking about wonders.” It was our old argument about Samsara vs. Nirvana tho the highest Buddhist thinking (well, Mahayana) stresses that there is no difference between Samsara (this world) and Nirvana (the no-world) and maybe they're right. Heidegger and his “essents” and his “nothing.” “And so if that's the case,” says I, “I'm going back to sleep.”

“But Samsara is just the X-mystery mark on the surface of Nirvana—how can you reject this world, ignore it like you try, poorly really, when it is the surface of what you want and you should study it?”

“So already I should go riding on bummy buses to a silly university with a heart-shaped stadium or something?”

“But it's a big international famous university full of ignus and anarchists with some of the students from Delhi and Moscow—”

“So screw Moscow!”

Meanwhile here comes Lazarus up on my roof carrying a chair and a big bundle of brand new books he'd had Simon buy for him yesterday (quite expensive) (books on drawing and art)—He sets up his chair near the roof's edge, in the sun, as the washerwomen giggle, and starts reading. But even as Irwin and I are still arguing about Nirvana in the cell he gets up and goes back downstairs, leaving the chair and the books right there—and never looked at them again.

“This is insane!” I yell. “I'll go with you to show you the Pyramids of Teotihuacan or something interesting, but dont drag me to this silly excursion—” But I end up going anyway because I want to see what they're all going to do next.

After all, the only reason for life
or
a story is “What Happened Next?”

13

It was a mess in their apartment below. Irwin and Simon slept in the doublebed in the only bedroom, Lazarus slept on a thin couch in the livingroom (in his usual manner, with just one white sheet drawn up and completely around and over him like a mummy), and Raphael across the room on a shorter couch, curled up with all his clothes on in a little sad dignified heap.

And the kitchen was already littered with all the mangoes, bananas, oranges, garbanzos, apples, cabbages and pots we'd bought yesterday in the markets of Mexico.

I always sat there with a beer in my hand watching them. Whenever I rolled a joint of pot they all smoked at it without a word, though.

“I want roastbeef!” yelled Raphael waking up on his couch. “Where's the meat around here? Is it all Mexico death meat?”

“We're going to the university first!”

“I want meat first! I want garlic!”

“Raphael,” I yell, “when we come back from Irwin's university I'll take you to Kuku's where you can eat a huge T-bone steak and throw the bones over your shoulder like Alexander the Great!”

“I want a banana,” says Lazarus.

“You ate em all last night, ya maniac” says Simon to his brother yet arranging his bed neatly and tucking in the sheet.

“Ah, charming,” says Irwin emerging from the bedroom with Raphael's notebook. He quotes out loud: “‘Heap of fire, haylike universe sprinting towards the gaudy eradication of Swindleresque ink?' Wow, how great that is—do you realize how
fine
that is? The universe is on fire and a big swindler like Melville's confidence man is writing the history of it on inflammable gauze or something but in
self eradicating ink
on top of all that, a big hype fooling everybody, like magicians making worlds and letting them disappear by themselves.”

“Do they teach that at the university?” I say. But we go anyway. We take a bus and go out for miles and nothing happens. We wander around a big Aztec campus talking. The only thing I clearly remember is my reading an article by Cocteau in a Paris newspaper in the reading room. The only thing that really happens therefore
is
that self eradicating magician of gauze.

Back in town I lead the boys to Kuku's restaurant and bar on Coahuila and Insurgentes. This restaurant had been recommended to me by Hubbard years ago (Hubbard up ahead in the story) as being a fairly interesting Viennese restaurant (in all the Indian city) run by a Viennese fellow of great vigor and ambition. They had a great 5-peso soup full of everything that could feed you for an entire day, and of course the enormous T-bone steaks with all the trimmings for 80 cents American money. You ate these huge steaks in candlelit dimness and drank mugs of good barrel beer. And at the time I'm writing about, the Viennese blond proprietor did indeed rush around eagerly and energetically to see that everything was just right. But only last night (now, in 1961) I went back there and he was asleep in a chair in the kitchen, my waiter spat in a corner of the diningroom, and there was no water in the restaurant bathroom. And they brought me an old sick steak badly cooked, with potato chips all over it—but in those days the steaks were still good and the boys dove in trying to cut them up with butter knives. I said “Like I say, like Alexander the Great, eat that steak with your hands” so after a few furtive looks around in the half darkness they all grabbed their steaks and tore at them with ronching teeth. Yet they all looked so humble because they were in a restaurant!