s rather startling, to say the least, to hear him say a little prayer
before eating. He performed this little ceremony in a strange way, much the
way one takes a tonic, for example. If he recommended me to read a certain
chapter of the Bible he would add very seriously - "it will do you good." It
was a new medicine which he had discovered, a sort of quack remedy which was
guaranteed to cure all ills and which one might even take if he had no ills,
because in any case it could certainly do no harm. He attended all the
services, all the functions which were held at the church, and between
times, when out for a stroll, for example, he would stop off at the
minister's home and have a little chat with him. If the minister said that
the president was a good soul and should be re-elected the old man would
repeat to every one exactly what the minister had said and urge them to vote
for the president's re-election. Whatever the minister said was right and
just and nobody could gainsay him. There's no doubt that it was an education
for the old man. If the minister had mentioned the pyramids in the course of
his sermon the old man immediately began to inform himself about the
pyramids. He would talk about the pyramids as though every one owed it to
himself to become acquainted with the subject. The minister had said that
the pyramids were one of the crowning glories of man, ergo not to know about
the pyramids was to be disgracefully ignorant, almost sinful. Fortunately
the minister didn't dwell much on the subject of sin: he was of the modem
type of preacher who prevailed on his flock more by arousing their curiosity
than by appealing to their conscience. His sermons were more like a night
school extension course and for such as the old man, therefore, highly
entertaining and stimulating. Every now and then the male members of the
congregation were invited to a little blow-out which was intended to
demonstrate that the good pastor was just an ordinary man like themselves
and could, on occasion, enjoy a hearty meal and even a glass of beer.
Moreover it was observed that he even sang - not religious hymns, but jolly
little songs of the popular variety. Putting two and two together one might
even infer from such jolly behaviour that now and then he enjoyed getting a
little piece of tail - always in moderation, to be sure. That was the word
that was balsam to the old man's lacerated soul - "moderation". It was like
discovering a new sign in the zodiac. And though he was still too ill to
attempt a return to even a moderate way of living, nevertheless it did his
soul good. And so, when Uncle Ned, who was continually going on the
water-waggon and continually falling off it again, came round to the house
one evening the old man delivered him a little lecture on the virtue of
moderation. Uncle Ned was, at that moment, on the water-waggon and so, when
the old man, moved by his own words, suddenly went to the sideboard to fetch
a decanter of wine every one was shocked. No one had ever dared invite Uncle
Ned to drink when he had sworn off; to venture such a thing constituted a
serious breach of loyalty. But the old man did it with such conviction that
no one could take offence, and the result was that Uncle Ned took a small
glass of wine and went home that evening without stopping off at a saloon to
quench his thirst. It was an extraordinary happening and there was much talk
about it for days after. In fact. Uncle Ned began to act a bit queer from
that day on. It seems that he went the next day to the wine store and bought
a bottle of Sherry which he emptied into the decanter. He placed the
decanter on the sideboard, just as he had seen the old man do, and, instead
of polishing it off in one swoop, he contented himself with a glassful at a
time - "just a thimbleful", as he put it. His behaviour was so remarkable
that my aunt, who was unable to quite believe her eyes, came one day to the
house and held a long conversation with the old man. She asked him, among
other things, to invite the minister to the house some evening so that Uncle
Ned might have the opportunity of falling under his beneficient influence.
The long and short of it was ħat Ned was soon taken into the fold and, like
the old man, seemed to be thriving under the experience. Things went fine
until the day of the picnic. That day, unfortunately, was an unusually warm
day and, what with the games, the excitement, the hilarity. Uncle Ned
developed an extraordinary thirst. It was not until he was three sheets to
the wind that some one observed the regularity and the frequency with which
he was running to the beer keg. It was then too late. Once in that condition
he was unmanageable. Even the minister could do nothing with him. Ned broke
away from the picnic quietly and went on a little rampage which lasted for
three days and nights. Perhaps it would have lasted longer had he not gotten
into a fist fight down at the waterfront where he was found lying
unconscious by the night watchman. He was taken to the hospital with a
concussion of the brain from which he never recovered. Returning from the
funeral the old man said with a dry eye - "Ned didn't know what it was to be
temperate. It was his own fault. Anyway, he's better off now ..."
And as though to prove to the minister that he was not made of the same
stuff as Uncle Ned he became even more assiduous in his churchly duties. He
had gotten himself promoted to the position of "elder", an office of which
he was extremely proud and by grace of which he was permitted during the
Sunday services to aid in taking up the collection. To think of my old man
marching up the aisle of a Congregationalist church with a collection box in
his hand; to think of him standing reverently before the altar with this
collection box while the minister blessed the offering, seems to me now
something so incredible that I scarcely know what to say of it. I like to
think, by contrast, of the man he was when I was just a kid and I would meet
him at the ferry house of a Saturday noon. Surrounding the entrance to the
ferry house there were then three saloons which of a Saturday noon were
filled with men who had stopped off for a little bite at the free lunch
counter and a schooner of beer. I can see the old man, as he stood in his
thirtieth year, a healthy, genial soul with a smile for every one and a
pleasant quip to pass the time of day, see him with his arm resting on the
bar, his straw hat tipped on the back of his head, his left hand raised to
down the foaming suds. My eye was then on about a level with his heavy gold
chain which was spread cross-wise over his vest; I remember the shepherd
plaid suit which he wore in mid-summer and the distinction it gave him among
the other men at the bar who were not lucky enough to have been born
tailors. I remember the way he would dip his hand into the big glass bowl on
the free lunch counter and hand me a few pretzels, saying at the same time
that I ought to go and have a look at the scoreboard in the window of the
Brooklyn Times nearby. And, perhaps, as I ran out of the saloon to see who
was winning a string of cyclists would pass close to the curb, holding to
the little strip of asphalt which had been laid down expressly for them.
Perhaps the ferry-boat was just coming into the dock and I would stop a
moment to watch the men in uniform as they pulled away at the big wooden
wheels to which the chains were attached. As the gates were thrown open and
the planks laid down a mob would rush through the shed and make for the
saloons which adorned the nearest comers. Those were the days when the old
man knew the meaning of "moderation", when he drank because he was truly
thirsty, and to down a schooner of beer by the ferry house was a man's
prerogative. Then it was as Melville has so well said: "Feed all things with
food convenient for them - that is, if the food be procurable. The food of
thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food
of the body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters;
and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be." Yes,
then it seems to me that the old man's soul had not yet shrivelled up, that
it was endlessly bounded by light and space and that his body, heedless of
the resurrection, was feeding on all that was convenient and procurable - if
not champagne and oysters, at least good lager beer and pretzels. Then his
body had not been condemned, nor his way of living, nor his absence of
faith. Nor was he yet surrounded by vultures, but only by good comrades,
ordinary mortals like himself who looked neither high nor low but straight
ahead, the eye always fixed on the horizon and content with the sight
thereof.
And now, as a battered wreck, he has made himself into an elder of the
church and he stands before the altar, grey and bent and withered, while the
minister gives his blessing to the measly collection which will go to make a
new bowling alley. Perhaps it was necessary for him to experience the birth
of the soul, to feed this sponge-like growth with that light and space which
the Congregational church offered. But what a poor substitute for a man who
had known the joys of that food which the body craved and which, without the
pangs of conscience, had flooded even his sponge-like soul with a light and
space that was ungodly but radiant and terrestrial. I think again of his
seemly little "corporation" over which the thick gold chain was strung and I
think that with that death of his paunch there was left to survive only the
sponge of a soul, a sort of appendix to his own bodily death. I think of the
minister who had swallowed him up as a sort of inhuman sponge-eater, the
keeper of a wigwam hung with spiritual scalps. I think of what subsequently
ensued as a kind of tragedy in sponges, for though he promised light and
space, no sooner had he passed out of my father's life than the whole airy
edifice came tumbling down.
It all came about in the most ordinary lifelike way. One evening, after
the customary men's meeting, the old man came home with a sorrowful
countenance. They had been informed that evening that the minister was
taking leave of them. He had been offered a more advantageous position in
the township of New Rochelle and, despite his great reluctance to desert his
flock, he had decided to accept the oner. He had of course accepted it only
after much meditation - as a duty, in other words. It would mean a better
income, to be sure, but that was nothing compared to the grave
responsibilities which he was about to assume. They had need of him in New
Rochelle and he was obeying the voice of his conscience. All this the old
man related with the same unctuousness that the minister had given to his
words. But it was immediately apparent that the old man was hurt. He
couldn't see why New Rochelle could not find another minister. He said it
wasn't fair to tempt the minister with a bigger salary. We need him here, he
said ruefully, with such sadness that I almost felt like weeping. He added,
that he was going to have a heart to heart talk with the minister that if
anybody could persuade him to remain it was he. In the days that followed he
certainly did his best, no doubt much to the minister's discomfiture. It was
distressing to see the blank look in his face when he returned from these
conferences. He had the expression of a man who was trying to grasp at a
straw to keep from drowning. Naturally the minister remained adamant. Even
when the old man broke down and wept before him he could not be moved to
change his mind. That was the turning point. From that moment on the old man
underwent a radical change. He seemed to grow bitter and querulous. He not
only forgot to say grace at the table but he abstained from going to church.
He resumed his old habit of going to the cemetery and basking on a bench. He
became morose, then melancholy, and finally there grew into his face an
expression of permanent sadness, a sadness encrusted with disillusionment,
with despair, with futility. He never again mentioned the man's name, nor
the church, nor any of the elders with whom he had once associated. If he
happened to pass them in the street he bade them the time of day without
stopping to shake hands. He read the newspapers diligently, from back to
front, without comment. Even the ads he read, every one, as though trying to
block up a huge hole which was constantly before his eyes. I never heard him
laugh again. At the most he would give us a sort of weary, hopeless smile, a
smile which faded instantly and left us with the spectacle of a life
extinct. He was dead as a crater, dead beyond all hope of resurrection. And
not even had he been given a new stomach, or a tough new intestinal tract,
would it have been possible to restore him to life again. He had passed
beyond the lure of champagne and oysters, beyond the need of light and
space. He was like the dodo which buries its head in the sand and whistles
out of its ass-hole. When he went to sleep in the Morris-chair his lower jaw
dropped like a hinge that has become unloosened; he had always been a good
snorer but now he snored louder than ever, like a man who was in truth dead
to the world. His snores, in fact, were very much like the death rattle,
except that they were punctuated by an intermittent long-drawn-out whistling
of the peanut stand variety. He seemed, when he snored, to be chopping the
whole universe to bits so that we who succeeded him would have enough
kindling wood to last a lifetime. It was the most horrible and fascinating
snoring that I have ever listened to: it was sterterous and stentorian,
morbid and grotesque; at times it was like an accordion collapsing, at other
times like a frog croaking in the swamps; after a prolonged whistle there
sometimes followed a frightful wheeze as if he were giving up the ghost,
then it would settle back again into a regular rise and fall, a steady
hollow chopping as though he stood stripped to the waist, with axe in hand,
before the accumulated madness of all the bric-a-brac of this world. What
gave these performances a slightly crazy quality was the mummy-like
expression of the face in which the big blubber lips alone came to life;
they were like the gills of a shark snoozing on the surface of the still
ocean. Blissfully he snored away on the bosom of the deep, never disturbed
by a dream or a draught, never fitful, never plagued by an unsatisfied
desire; when he closed his eyes and collapsed, the light of the world went
out and he was alone as before birth, a cosmos gnashing itself to bits. He
sat there in his Morris-chair as Jonah must have sat in the body of the
whale, secure in the last refuge of a black hole, expecting nothing,
desiring nothing, not dead but buried alive, swallowed whole and unscathed,
the big blubber lips gently flapping with the flux and reflux of the white
breath of emptiness. He was in the land of Nod searching for Cain and Abel
but encountering no living soul, no word, no sign. He dove with the whale
and scraped the icy black bottom; he covered furlongs at top speed, guided
only by the fleecy manes of undersea beasts. He was the smoke that curled
out of the chimney-tops, the heavy layers of cloud that obscured the moon,
the thick slime that made the slippery linoleum floor of the ocean depths.
He was deader than dead because alive and empty, beyond all hope of
resurrection in that he had travelled beyond the limits of light and space
and securely nestled himself in the black hole of nothingness. He was more
to be envied than pitied, for his sleep was not a lull or an interval but
sleep itself which is the deep and hence sleeping ever deepening, deeper and
deeper in sleep sleeping, the sleep of the deep in deepest sleep, at the
nethermost depth full slept, the deepest and sleepest sleep of sleep's sweet
sleep. He was asleep. He is asleep. He will be asleep. Sleep. Sleep. Father,
sleep, I beg you, for we who are awake are boiling in horror . . .
With the world fluttering away on the last wings of a hollow snore I
see the door opening to admit Grover Watrous. "Christ be with you!" he says,
dragging his club foot along. He is quite a young man now and he has found
God. There is only one God and Grover Watrous has found Him and so there is
nothing more to say except that everything has to be said over again in
Grover Watrous' new God-language. This bright new language which God
invented especially for Grover Watrous intrigues me enormously, first
because I had always considered Grover to be a hopeless dunce, second
because I notice that there are no longer any tobacco stains on his agile
fingers. When we were boys Grover lived next door to us. He would visit me
from time to time in order to practise a duet with me. Though he was only
fourteen or fifteen he smoked like a trooper. His mother could do nothing
against it because Grover was a genius and a genius had to have a little
liberty, particularly when he was also unfortunate enough to have been born
with a club foot. Grover was the kind of genius who thrives on dirt. He not
only had nicotine stains on his fingers but he had filthy black nails which
would break under hours of practising, imposing upon young Grover the
ravishing obligation of tearing them off with his teeth. Grover used to spit
out broken nails along with bits of tobacco which got caught in his teeth.
It was delightful and stimulating. The cigarettes burned holes into the
piano and, as my mother critically observed, also tarnished the keys. When
Grover took leave the parlour stank like the backroom of an undertaker's
establishment. It stank of dead cigarettes, sweat, dirty linen, Grover's
oaths and the dry heat left by the dying notes of Weber, Berlioz, Liszt and
Co. It stank too of Grover's running ear and of his decaying teeth. It stank
of his mother's pampering and whimpering. His own home was a stable divinely
suited to his genius, but the parlour of our home was like the waiting room
of a mortician's office and Grover was a lout who didn't even know enough to
wipe his feet. In the winter time his nose ran like a sewer and Grover,
being too engrossed in his music to bother wiping his nose, the cold snot
was left to trickle down until it reached his lips where it was sucked in by
a very long white tongue. To the flatulent music of Weber, Berlioz, Liszt
and Co. it added a piquant sauce which made those empty devils palatable.
Every other word from Grover's lips was an oath, his favourite expression
being - "I can't get the fucking thing right!" Sometimes he grew so annoyed
that he would take his fists and pound the piano like a madman. It was his
genius coming out the wrong way. His mother, in fact, used to attach a great
deal of importance to these fits of anger; they convinced her that he had
something in him. Other people simply said that Grover was impossible. Much
was forgiven, however, because of his club foot. Grover was sly enough to
exploit this bad foot; whenever he wanted anything badly he developed pains
in the foot. Only the piano seemed to have no respect for this maimed
member. The piano therefore was an object to be cursed and kicked and
pounded to bits. If he were in good form, on the other hand, Grover would
remain at the piano for hours on end; in fact, you couldn't drag him away.
On such occasions his mother would go stand in the grass plot in front of
the house and waylay the neighbours in order to squeeze a few words of
praise out of them. She would be so carried away by her son's "divine"
playing that she would forget to cook the evening meal. The old man, who
worked in the sewers, usually came home grumpy and famished. Sometimes he
would march directly upstairs to the parlour and yank Grover off the piano
stool. He had a rather foul vocabulary himself and when he let loose on his
genius of a son there wasn't much left for Grover to say. In the old man's
opinion Grover was just a lazy son of a bitch who could make a lot of noise.
Now and then he threatened to chuck the fucking piano out of the window -
and Grover with it. If the mother were rash enough to interfere during these
scenes he would give her a clout and tell her to go piss up the end of a
rope. He had his moments of weakness too, of course, and in such a mood he
might ask Grover what the hell he was rattling away at, and if the latter
said, for example, "why the Sonata Pathetique", the old buzzard would say -
"what the hell does that mean? Why, in Christ's name don't they put it down
in plain English?" The old man's ignorance was even harder for Grover to
bear than his brutality. He was heartily ashamed of his old man and when the
latter was out of sight he would ridicule him unmercifully. When he got a
little older he used to insinuate that he wouldn't have been born with a
club foot if the old man hadn't been such a mean bastard. He said that the
old man must have kicked his mother in the belly when she was pregnant. This
alleged kick in the belly must have affected Grover in diverse ways, for
when he had grown up to be quite a young man, as I was saying, he suddenly
took to God with such a passion that there was no blowing your nose before
him without first asking God's permission.
Grover's conversion followed right upon the old man's deflation, which
is why I am reminded of it. Nobody had seen the Watrouses for a number of
years and then, right in the midst of a bloody snore, you might say, in
pranced Grover scattering benedictions and calling upon God as his witness
as he rolled up his sleeves to deliver us from evil. What I noted first in
him was the change in his personal appearance; he had been washed dean in
the blood of the Lamb. He was so immaculate, indeed, that there was almost a
perfume emanating from him. His speech too had been cleaned up, instead of
wild oaths there were now nothing but blessings and invocations. It was not
a conversation which he held with us but a monologue in which, if there were
any questions, he answered them himself. As he took the chair which was
offered him he said with the nimbleness of a jack-rabbit that God had
given his only beloved Son in order that we might enjoy life everlasting.
Did we really want this life everlasting - or were we simply going to wallow
in the joys of the flesh and die without knowing salvation? The incongruity
of mentioning the "joys of the flesh" to an aged couple, one of whom was
sound asleep and snoring, never struck him, to be sure. He was so alive and
jubilant in the first flush of God's merciful grace that he must have
forgotten that my sister was dippy, for, without even inquiring how she had
been, he began to harangue her in this new-found spiritual palaver to which
she was entirely impervious because, as I say, she was minus so many buttons
that if he had been talking about chopped spinach it would have been just as
meaningful to her. A phrase like "the pleasures of the flesh" meant to her
something like a beautiful day with a red parasol. I could see by the way
she sat on the edge of her chair and bobbed her head that she was only
waiting for him to catch his breath in order to inform him that the pastor -
her pastor, who was an Episcopalian - had just returned from Europe and that
they were going to have a fair in the basement of the church where she would
have a little booth fitted up with doylies from the five-and-ten cent store.
In fact, no sooner had he paused a moment than she let loose - about the
canals of Venice, the snow in the Alps, the dog carts in Brussels, the
beautiful Uverwurst in Munich. She was not only religious, my sister, but
she was clean daffy. Grover had just slipped in something about having seen
a new heaven and a new earth... for the first heaven and the first earth
were passed away, he said, mumbling the words in a sort of hysterical
glissando in order to unburden himself of an oracular message about the New
Jerusalem which God had established on earth and in which he, Grover
Watrous, once foul of speech and marred by a twisted foot, had found the
peace and the calm of the righteous. "There shall be no more death ..." he
started to shout when my sister leaned forward and asked him very innocently
if he liked to bowl because the pastor had just installed a beautiful new
bowling alley in the basement of the church and she knew he would be pleased
to see Grover because he was a lovely man and he was kind to the poor.
Grover said that it was a sin to bowl and that he belonged to no church
because the churches were godless: he had even given up playing the piano
because God needed him for higher things. "He that overcometh shall inherit
all things," he added "and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." He
paused again to blow his nose in a beautiful white handkerchief, whereupon
my sister took the occasion to remind him that in the old days he always had
a running nose but that he never wiped it. Grover listened to her very
solemnly and then remarked that he had been cured of many evil ways. At this
point the old man woke up and, seeing Grover sitting beside him large as
life, he was quite startled and for a moment or two he was not sure, it
seemed, whether Grover was a morbid phenomenon of dream or an hallucination,
but the sight of the clean handkerchief brought him quickly to his wits.
"Oh, it's you!" he exclaimed. "The Watrous boy, what? Well, what in the name
of all that's holy are you doing here?"
"I came in the name of the Holy of Holies," said Grover unabashed. "I
have been purified by the death on Calvary and I am here in Christ's sweet
name that ye maybe redeemed and walk in light and power and glory."
The old man looked dazed. "Well, what's come over you?" he said, giving
Grover a feeble, consolatory smile. My mother had just come in from the
kitchen and had taken a stand behind Grover's chair. By making a wry grimace
with her mouth she was trying to convey to the old man that Grover was
cracked. Even my sister seemed to realize that there was something wrong
with him, especially when he had refused to visit the new bowling alley
which her lovely pastor had expressly installed for young men such as Grover
and his likes.
What was the matter with Grover? Nothing, except that his feet were
solidly planted on the fifth foundation of the great wall of the Holy City
of Jerusalem, the fifth foundation made entirely of sardonyx, whence he
commanded a view of a pure river of water of life issuing from the throne of
God. And the sight of this river of life was to Grover like the bite of a
thousand fleas in his lower colon. Not until he had run at least seven times
around the earth would he be able to sit quietly on his ass and observe the
blindness and the indifference of men with something like equanimity. He was
alive and purged, and though to the eyes of the sluggish, sluttish spirits
who are sane he was "cracked", to me he seemed infinitely better off this
way than before. He was a pest who could do you no harm. If you listened to
him long enough you became somewhat purged yourself, though perhaps
unconvinced. Grover's bright new language always caught me in the midriff
and through inordi- nate laughter cleansed me of the dross accumulated by
the sluggish sanity about me. He was alive as Ponce de Leon had hoped to be
alive; alive as only a few men have ever been. And being unnaturally alive
he didn't mind in the least if you laughed in his face, nor would he have
minded if you had stolen the few possessions which were his. He was alive
and empty, which is so close to Godhood that it is crazy.
With his feet solidly planted on the great wall of the New Jerusalem
Grover knew a joy which is incommensurable. Perhaps if he had not been born
with a club foot he would not have known this incredible joy. Perhaps it was
well that his father had kicked the mother in the belly while Grover was
still in the womb. Perhaps it was that kick in the belly which had sent
Grover soaring, which made him so thoroughly alive and awake that even in
his sleep he was delivering God's messages. The harder he laboured the less
he was fatigued. He had no more worries, no regrets, no clawing memories. He
recognized no duties, no obligations, except to God. And what did God expect
of him? Nothing, nothing ... except to sing His praises. God only asked of
Grover Watrous that he reveal himself alive in the flesh. He only asked of
him to be more and more alive. And when fully alive Grover was a voice and
this voice was a flood which made all dead things into chaos and this chaos
in turn became the mouth of the world in the very centre of which was the
verb to be. In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. So God; was this strange little infinitive which is
all there is - and is it not enough? For Grover it was more than enough: it
was everything. Starting from this Verb what difference did it make which
road he travelled? To leave the Verb was to travel away from the centre, to
erect a Babel. Perhaps God had deliberately maimed Grover Watrous in order
to hold him to the centre, to the Verb. By an invisible cord God held Grover
Watrous to his stake which ran through the heart of the world and Grover
became the fat goose which laid a golden egg every day . . .
Why do I write of Grover Watrous? Because I have met thousands of
people and none of them were alive in the way that Grover was. Most of them
were more intelligent, many of them were brilliant, some of them were even
famous, but none were alive and empty as Grover was. Grover was
inexhaustible. He was like a bit of radium which, even if buried under a
mountain does not lose its power to give off energy. I had seen plenty of
so-called energetic people before - is not America filled with them? - but
never, in the shape of a human being, a reservoir of energy. And what
created this inexhaustible reservoir of energy? An illumination. Yes, it
happened in the twinkling of an eye, which is the only way that anything
important ever does happen. Overnight all Grover's preconceived values were
thrown overboard. Suddenly, just like that, he ceased moving as other people
move. He put the brakes on and he kept the motor running. If once, like
other people, he had thought it was necessary to get somewhere now he knew
that somewhere was anywhere and therefore right here and so why move? Why
not park the car and keep the motor running? Meanwhile the earth itself is
turning and Grover knew it was turning and knew that he was turning with it.
Is the earth getting anywhere? Grover must undoubtedly have asked himself
this question and must undoubtedly have satisfied himself that it was not
getting anywhere. Who, then, had said that we must get somewhere? Grover
would inquire of this one and that where they were heading for and the
strange thing was that although they were all heading for their individual
destinations none of them ever stopped to reflect that the one inevitable
destination for all alike was the grave. This puzzled Grover because nobody
could convince him that death was not a certainty, whereas nobody could
convince anybody else that any other destination was an uncertainty.
Convinced of the dead certainty of death Grover suddenly became tremendously
and overwhelmingly alive. For the first time in his life he began to live,
and at the same time the dub foot dropped completely out of his
consciousness. This is a strange thing, too, when you come to think of it,
because the dub foot, just like death, was another ineluctable fact. Yet the
dub foot dropped out of mind, or, what is more important, all that had been
attached to the club foot. In the same way, having accepted death, death too
dropped out of Grover's mind. Having seized on the single certainty of death
all the uncertain- ties vanished. The rest of the world was now limping
along with dub-footed uncertainties and Grover Watrous alone was free and
unimpeded. Grover Watrous was the personification of certainty. He may have
been wrong, but he was certain. And what good does it do to be right if one
has to limp along with a club foot? Only a few men have ever realized the
truth of this and their names have become very great names. Grover Watrous
will probably never be known, but he is very great just the same. This is
probably the reason why I write about him - just the fact that I had enough
sense to realize that Grover had achieved greatness even though nobody else
will admit it. At the time I simply thought that Grover was a harmless
fanatic, yes, a little "cracked", as my mother insinuated. But every man who
has caught the truth of certitude was a little cracked and it is only these
men who have accomplished anything for the world. Other men, other great
men, have destroyed a little here and there, but these few whom I speak of,
and among whom I include Grover Watrous, were capable of destroying
everything in order that the truth might live. Usually these men were born
with an impediment, with a dub foot, so to speak, and by a strange irony it
is only the club foot which men remember. If a man like Grover becomes
depossessed of his club foot, the world says that he has become "possessed".
This is the logic of incertitude and its fruit is misery. Grover was the
only truly joyous being I ever met in my life and this, therefore, is a
little monument which I am erecting in his memory, in the memory of his
joyous certitude. It is a pity that he had to use Christ for a crutch, but
then what does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces
upon it and lives by it?
AN INTERLUDE
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not
understood. I like to dwell on this period when things were taking shape
because the order, if it were understood, must have been dazzling. In the
first place there was Hymie, Hymie the bull-frog, and there were also his
wife's ovaries which had been rotting away for a considerable time. Hymie
was completely wrapped up in his wife's rotting ovaries. It was the daily
topic of conversation; it took precedence now over the cathartic pills and
the coated tongue. Hymie dealt in "sexual proverbs", as he called them.
Everything he said began from or led up to the ovaries. Despite everything
he was still nicking it off with the wife - prolonged snake-life copulations
in which he would smoke a cigarette or two before un-cunting. He would
endeavour to explain to me how the pus from the rotting ovaries put her in
heat. She had always been a good fuck, but now she was better than ever.
Once the ovaries were ripped out there'd be no telling how she'd take it.
She seemed to realize that too. Ergo, fuck away! Every night, after the
dishes were cleared away, they'd strip down in their little bird-like
apartment and lay together like a couple of snakes. He tried to describe it
to me on a number of occasions - the ways she fucked. It was like an oyster
inside, an oyster with soft teeth that nibbled away at him. Sometimes it
felt as though he were right inside her womb, so soft and fluffy it was, and
those soft teeth biting away at his pecker and making him delirious. They
used to lie scissors-fashion and look up at the ceiling. To keep from coming
he would think about the office, about the little worries which plagued him
and kept his bowels tied up in a knot. In between orgasms he would let his
mind dwell on some one else, so that when she'd start working on him again
he might imagine he was having a brand new fuck with a brand new cunt. He
used to arrange it so that he could look out of the window while it was
going on. He was getting so adept at it that he could undress a woman on the
boulevard there under his window and transport her to the bed; not only
that, but he could actually make her change places with his wife, all
without un-cunting. Sometimes he'd fuck away like that for a couple of hours
and never bother to shoot off. Why waste it! he would say.
Steve Romero, on the other hand, had a hell of a time holding it in.
Steve was built like a bull and he scattered his seed freely. We used to
compare notes sometimes sitting in the Chop Suey joint around the comer from
the office. It was a strange atmosphere. Maybe it was because there was no
wine. Maybe it was the funny little black mushrooms they served us. Anyway
it wasn't difficult to get started on the subject. By the time Steve met us
he would already have had his workout, a shower and a rubdown. He was dean
inside and out. Almost a perfect specimen of a man. Not very bright, to be
sure, but a good egg, a companion. Hymie, on the other hand, was like a
toad. He seemed to come to the table direct from the swamps where he had
passed a mucky day. Filth rolled off his lips like honey. In fact, you
couldn't call it filth, in his case, because there wasn't any other
ingredient with which you might compare it. It was all one fluid, a slimy,
sticky substance made entirely of sex. When he looked at his food he saw it
as potential sperm; if the weather were warm he would say it was good for
the balls; if he took a trolley ride he knew in advance that the rhythmic
movement of the trolley would stimulate his appetite, would give him a slow,
"personal" hard-on, as he put it. Why "personal" I never found out, but that
was his expression. He liked to go out with us because we were always
reasonably sure of picking up something decent. Left to himself he didn't
always fare so well. With us he got a change of meat - Gentile cunt, as he
put it He liked Gentile cunt. Smelled sweeter, he said. Laughed easier
too... Sometimes in the very midst of things. The one thing he couldn't
tolerate was dark meat. It amazed and disgusted him to see me travelling
around with Valeska. Once he asked me if she didn't smell kind of extra
strong like. I told him I liked it that way - strong and smelly, with lots
of gravy around it. He almost blushed at that. Amazing how delicate he could
be about some things. Food, for example. Very finicky about his food.
Perhaps a racial trait. Immaculate about his person, too. Couldn't stand the
sight of a spot on his dean cuffs. Constantly brushing himself off,
constantly taking his pocket mirror out to see if there were any food
between his teeth. If he found a crumb he would hide his face behind the
napkin and extract it with his pearlhandled toothpick. The ovaries of course
he couldn't see. Nor could he smell them either, because his wife too was an
immaculate bitch. Douching herself all day long in preparation for the
evening nuptials. It was tragic, the importance she gave to her ovaries.
l62
Up until the day she was taken to the hospital she was a regular
fucking block. The thought of never being able to fuck again frightened the
wits out of her. Hymie of course told her it wouldn't make any difference to
him one way or the other. Glued to her like a snake, a cigarette in his
mouth, the girls passing below on the boulevard, it was hard for him to
imagine a woman not being able to fuck any more. He was sure the operation
would be successful. Successful! That's to say that she'd fuck even better
than before. He used to tell her that, lying on his back looking up at the
ceiling. "You know I'll always love you," he would say. "Move over just a
little bit,