Desolation Angels (46 page)

Always Gaines had told me in Mexico City that the Chinese said that Opium was for sleep but for me it wasnt sleep but this horrible turning and turning in horror in bed (people who poison themselves moan), and realizing “Opium is for Horror—De Quincey O my—” and I realized my mother was waiting for me to take her home, my mother, my mother who smiled in her womb when she bore me—Though every time I sang “Why Was I Born?” (by the Gershwins) she snapped “Why are you singing that?”—I slurp up the final cup of O.

Happy priests who play basketball in the Catholic church behind, are up at dawn ringing the Benedict Bell, for me, as Stella the star of the Sea shines hopeless on waters of millions of drowned babies still smiling in the womb of the sea. Bong! I go out on the roof and glare gloomily at everybody, the priests are looking up at me. We just stare. All my olden friends are ringing bells in monasteries everywhere. There's a conspiracy going on. What would Hubbard say? There's no hope even in the cassocks of Sacristy. To never see the Bridge at Orleans again is not perfect safety. The best thing to do is be like a baby.

56

And I had really liked Tangiers, the fine Arabs who never even looked at me in the street but minded their eyes to themselves (unlike Mexico which is
all
eyes), the great roof room with tile patio looking down on the little dreamy Spanish Moroccan tenements with an empty lot hill that had a shackled goat grazing—The view over those roofs to the Magic Bay with its sweep to the Headland Ultimo, on clear days the distant shadow mump of Gibraltar far away—The sunny mornings I'd sit on the patio enjoying my books, my kief and the Catholic churchbells—Even the kids' basketball games I could see by leaning far over and around and—or down straight I'd look to Bull's garden, see his cats, himself mulling a minute in the sun—And on heavenly starlit nights just to lean on the roof rail (concrete) and look to sea till sometimes often I saw glittering boats putting in from Casablanca I felt the trip had been worthwhile. But now on the opium overdose I felt snarling dreary thoughts about all Africa, all Europe, the world—all I wanted somehow now was Wheaties by a pine breeze kitchen window in America, that is, I guess a vision of my childhood in America—Many Americans suddenly sick in foreign lands must get the same childlike yen, like Wolfe suddenly remembering the lonely milkman's bottle clink at dawn in North Carolina as he lies there tormented in an Oxford room, or Hemingway suddenly seeing the autumn leaves of Ann Arbor in a Berlin brothel. Scott Fitz tears coming into his eyes in Spain to think of his father's old shoes in the farmhouse door. Johnny Smith the Tourist wakes up drunk in a cracked Istanbul room crying for ice cream sodas of Sunday Afternoon in Richmond Hill Center.

So by the time Irwin and Simon finally arrived for their big triumphant reunion with us in Africa, it was too late. I was spending more and more time on my roof and now actually reading Van Wyck Brooks' books (all about the lives of Whitman, Bret Harte, even Charles Nimrod of South Carolina) to get the feel of home, forgetting entirely how bleak and grim it had been only a short while ago like in Roanoke Rapids the lost tears—But it
has
been ever since then that I've lost my yen for any further outside searching. Like Archbishop of Canterbury says “A constant detachment, a will to go apart and wait upon God in quiet and silence,” which more or less describes his own feeling (he being Dr. Ramsey the scholar) about retirement in this gadfly world. At the time I sincerely believed that the only decent activity in the world was to pray for everyone, in solitude. I had many mystic joys on my roof, even while Bull or Irwin were waiting for me downstairs, like the morning I felt the whole living world ripple joyfully and all the dead things rejoice. Sometimes when I saw the priests watching me from seminary windows, where they too leaned looking to sea, I thought they knew about me already (happy paranoia). I thought they rang the bells with special fervor. The best moment of the day was to slip in bed with bedlamp over book, and read facing the open patio windows, the stars and the sea. I could also hear it sighing out there.

57

Meanwhile the big lovely arrival was strange with Hubbard suddenly getting drunk and waving his machete at Irwin who told him to stop frightening everybody—Bull had waited so long, in such torment, and now he realized probably in an opium turningabout of his own that it was all nonsense anyway—Once when he'd mentioned a very pretty girl he met in London, daughter of a doctor, and I'd said “Why dont you marry a girl like that someday?” he said: “O dear I'm a bachelor, I want to live alone.” He didnt particularly want to live with anybody, ever. He spent hours staring in his room like Lazarus, like me. But now Irwin wanted to do everything right. Dinners, walks around the Medina, a proposed railroad trip to Fez, circuses, cafes, swims in the ocean, hikes, I could see Hubbard grabbing his head in dismay. All he went on doing were the same thing: his 4
P.M.
apéritifs signalled the new excitement of the day. While John Banks and the other raconteurs swarmed around the room laughing with Bull, drinks in their hands, poor Irwin bent to the kerosene burner cooking big fishes he'd bought in the market that afternoon. Once in a while Bull bought us all dinner at the Paname but it was too expensive. I was waiting for my next advance installment from the publishers so I could start back for home via Paris and London.

It was a little sad. Bull would be too tired to go out so Irwin and Simon would call up to me from the garden just like little kids calling at your childhood window, “Jack-Kee!” which would bring tears to my eyes almost and force me to go down and join them. “Why are you so with
drawn
all of a sudden!” cried Simon. I couldnt explain it without telling them they bored me as well as everything else, a strange thing to have to say to people you've spent years with, all the
lacrimae rerum
of sweet association across the hopeless world dark, so dont say anything.

We explored Tangiers together, the funny thing too was that Bull had explicitly written to them in New York
never
to go into a Mohammedan establishment like a tea shop or anything where you sat down socially, they would not be wanted, but Irwin and Simon had come to Tangiers via Casablanca where they'd already strolled into Mohammedan cafés and smoked pot with the Arabs and bought some even to take away. So now we strolled into a strange hall with benches and tables where teenagers sat either sleeping or playing checkers and drinking green mint tea in glasses. The eldest boy was a young hobo in flowing rags and bandages for a hurt foot, barefooted, the robe's hood over his head like St. Joseph, bearded, 22 or so, Mohammed Mayé by name, who invited us to his table and produced a bag of marijuana which he thumbed into a long-stemmed pipe and lighted and passed around. Out of his tattered robes he pulled out a worn newspaper picture of his hero, Sultan Mohammed. A radio was blaring the endless yellings of Radio Cairo. Irwin told Mohammed Mayé he was Jewish and that was alright with Mohammed and everyone else in the joint, absolutely cool bunch of hipsters and urchins probably of a new “beat” east—“Beat” in the original true sense of mind-your-own-business—Because we did see gangs of bluejeaned Arab teenagers playing rock n roll records in a crazy jukebox hangout full of pinball machines, just like Albuquerque New Mexico or anywhere, and when we went to the circus a big gang of them cheered and applauded Simon when they heard him laugh at the juggler, all turning around, a dozen of them, “Yay! Yay!” like hepcats at a Bronx dance. (Later Irwin traveled further and saw the same thing in all countries of Europe and heard about it going on in Russia and Korea.) Old mournful Holy Men of the Mohammedan world called “Men Who Pray” (
Hombres Que Rison
), who walked the streets in white robes and long beards, were said to be the only last remaining individuals who could cause gangs of Arab hipsters to disperse with just one look. Cops made no difference, we saw a riot in the Zoco Grande that flared up over an argument between Spanish cops and Moroccan soldiers. Bull was there with us. All of a sudden a seething yelling mass of cops and soldiers and robed oldsters and bluejeaned hoodlums came piling up the alley from wall to wall, we all turned and ran. I myself ran alone down one particular alley accompanied by two Arab boys of ten who laughed with me as we ran. I ducked into a Spanish wine shop just as the proprietor dragged down the sliding iron door, bang. I ordered a Malaga as the riot boomed on by and down the street. Later I met the gang at café tables. “Riots every day,” said Bull proudly.

But the “ferment” in the Middle East we could all see was not as simple as our passports indicated, where officials (1957) had forbidden us to visit Israel for instance, which had made Irwin mad and for good reasons judging from the fact that the Arabs didnt care if he was Jewish or whichever as long as he came on cool the way he always does anyway. That “international hepness” I mentioned.

One look at the officials in the American Consulate where we went for dreary paper routines was enough to make you realize what was wrong with American “diplomacy” throughout the Fellaheen world:—stiff officious squares with contempt even for their own Americans who happened not to wear neckties, as tho a necktie or whatever it stands for meant anything to the hungry Berbers who came into Tangiers every Saturday morning on meek asses, like Christ, carrying baskets of pitiful fruit or dates, and returned at dusk in silhouetted parades along the hill by the railroad track. The railroad track where barefooted prophets still walked and taught the Koran to children along the way. Why didnt the American consul ever walk into the urchin hall where Mohammed Mayé sat smoking? or squat in behind empty buildings with old Arabs who talked with their hands? or
any
thing? Instead it's all private limousines, hotel restaurants, parties in the suburbs, an endless phoney rejection in the name of “democracy” of all that's pith and moment of every land.

The beggar boys slept with their heads on tables as Mohammed Mayé passed us pipe after pipe of strong kief and hasheesh, explaining his city. He pointed out the window down a parapet: “The sea used to be right here.” Like an old memory of the flood still there at the gates of the flood.

The circus was a fantastic North African jumble of phenomenally agile acrobats, mysterious fire eaters from India, white doves walking up silver ladders, crazy comedians we didnt understand, and bicyclists Ed Sullivan never saw and should see. It was like “Mario and the Magician,” a night of torments and applause ending with sinister magicians nobody liked.

58

My money came and it was time to go but there's poor Irwin at midnight calling up to me from the garden “Come on down Jack-Kee, there's a big bunch of hipsters and chicks from Paris in Bull's room.” And just like in New York or Frisco or anywhere there they are all hunching around in marijuana smoke, talking, the cool girls with long thin legs in slacks, the men with goatees, all an enormous drag after all and at the time (1957) not even started yet officially with the name of “Beat Generation.” To think that I had so much to do with it, too, in fact at that very moment the manuscript of
Road
was being linotyped for imminent publication and I was already sick of the whole subject. Nothing can be more dreary than “coolness” (not Irwin's cool, or Bull's or Simon's, which is natural quietness) but postured, actually secretly
rigid
coolness that covers up the fact that the character is unable to convey anything of force or interest, a kind of sociological coolness soon to become a fad up into the mass of middleclass youth for awhile. There's even a kind of insultingness, probably unintentional, like when I said to the Paris girl just fresh she said from visiting a Persian Shah for Tiger hunt “Did you actually shoot the tiger yourself?” she gave me a cold look as tho I'd just tried to kiss her at the window of a Drama School. Or tried to trip the Huntress. Or
something.
But all I could do was sit on the edge of the bed in despair like Lazarus listening to their awful “likes” and “like you know” and “wow crazy” and “a wig, man” “a real gas”—All this was about to sprout out all over America even down to High School level and be attributed in part to my doing! But Irwin paid no attention to all that and just wanted to know what they were thinking anyway.

Lying on the bed stretched out as tho gone forever was Joe Portman son of a famous travel writer who said to me “I hear you're going to Europe. How about traveling with me on the Packet? We'll get tickets this week.”

“Okay.”

Meanwhile the Parisian jazz musician was explaining that Charley Parker wasnt disciplined enough, that jazz needed European classical patterns to give it depth, which sent me upstairs whistling “Scrapple,” “Au Privave” and “I Get a Kick.”

59

After one long hike along the surf and up into the Berber foothills, where I saw Moghreb itself, I finally packed and got my ticket. Moghreb is the Arab name of the country. The French call it
La Marocaine.
It was a little shoeshine boy on the beach who pronounced the name for me by spitting it out and giving me a fierce look then trying to sell me dirty pictures then rushing off to play soccer in the beach sand. Some of his older buddies told me they couldnt get me any of the young girls on the beach because they hated “Christians.” But did I want a boy? The shoeshine boy and I watched an American queer angrily tearing up dirty pictures and throwing the pieces to the wind as he hurried from the beach, crying.

Poor old Hubbard was in bed when I left and actually looked sad when he gripped my hand and said “Take care of yourself, Jack” with that upward lilt on my name which tries to ease the seriousness of goodbye. Irwin and Simon waved from the dock as the Packet eased off. Both of them wearing glasses finally lost sight of my own waves as the ship turned about and headed for the waters off Gibraltar in a sudden heaving mass of smooth glassy groundswells. “Good, God, Atlantis is still yelling underneath.”