Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (47 page)

“Here, take this,” he says, shoving the greenbacks in my fist. “I’ll probably
owe you money before I leave.”

“Have you anything good to read?” he asks suddenly. “Like that Giono book you
lent me, remember? What about that guy Cendrars you’re always pissing in the pants about? Has
any of his stuff been translated yet?” He threw another half-finished Havana away, crushed it
under his heel, and lit a fresh one. “I suppose you think I never look at a book. You’re
wrong. I read plenty…. Some day you’re going to write a script for me—and earn some real
dough. By the way”—he jerked his thumb in the
direction of Moricand’s
studio—“is that guy taking you for a lot of dough? You’re a chump. How did you ever fall into
the trap?”

I told him it was a long story … some other time.

“What about those drawings of his? Should I have a look? He wants to sell
them, I suppose? I wouldn’t mind taking some—if it would help
you
out…. Wait a
minute, I want to take a crap first.”

When he returned he had a fresh cigar in his mouth. He was looking
roseate.

“There’s nothing like a good crap,” he said, beaming. “Now let’s visit that
sad-looking bimbo. And fetch Lilik, will you? I want his opinion before I let myself in for
anything.”

As we entered Moricand’s cell Leon sniffed the air. “For Christ’s sake, make
him open a window!” he exclaimed.

“Can’t, Leon. He’s afraid of draughts.”

“Just like him, for crying out loud. O.K. Tell him to trot his dirty pictures
out—and make it snappy, eh? I’ll puke up if we have to stay here more than ten minutes.”

Moricand proceeded to get out his handsome leather portfolio. He placed it
circumspectly before him, then calmly lit a
gauloise bleue
.

“Ask him to put it out,” begged Leon. He drew a pack of Chesterfields from his
pocket and offered Moricand one. Moricand politely refused, saying he couldn’t stand American
cigarettes.

“He’s nuts!” said Leon.
“Here!”
and he proffered Moricand a big
cigar.

Moricand declined the offer. “I like these better,” he said, brandishing his
foul French cigarette.

“If that’s how it is, fuck it!” said Leon. “Tell him to get going. We can’t
waste the whole afternoon in this tomb.”

But Moricand wasn’t to be hurried. He had his own peculiar way of presenting
his work. He allowed no one to touch the drawings. He held them in front of him, turning them
slowly, page by page, as if they were ancient papyri to be handled with a
shovel only. Now and then he drew a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket to remove
the perspiration from his hands.

It was my first view of his work. I must confess the drawings left a bad taste
in my mouth. They were perverse, sadistic, sacrilegious. Children being raped by lubricious
monsters, virgins practicing all manner of illicit intercourse, nuns defiling themselves with
sacred objects … flagellations, medieval tortures, dismemberments, coprophagic orgies, and so
forth. All done with a delicate, sensitive hand, which only magnified the disgusting element
of the subject matter.

For once Leon was nonplused. He turned to Lilik inquiringly. Asked to see some
of them a second time.

“The bugger knows how to draw, doesn’t he?” he remarked.

Lilik hereupon pointed out a few he thought were exceptionally well
executed.

“I’ll take them,” said Leon. “How much?”

Moricand named a price. A stiff one, even for an American client.

“Tell him to wrap them up,” said Leon. “They’re not worth it, but I’ll take
them. I know someone would give his right arm to own one.”

He fished out his wad, counted the bills rapidly, and shoved them back into
his pocket.

“Can’t spare the cash,” he said. “Tell him I’ll send him a check when I get
home …
if he’ll trust me.”

At this point Moricand seemed to undergo a change of heart. Said he didn’t
want to sell them singly. All or nothing. He named a price for the lot. A whopping price.

“He’s mad,” shrieked Leon. “Let him stick ’em up his ass!”

I explained to Moricand that Leon would have to think it over.

“Okay,” said Moricand, giving me a wry, knowing smile. I knew that in
his
mind the bird was in the bag. A handful of trumps, that’s what he was holding.
“Okay,” he repeated as we took leave of him.

As we sauntered down the steps Leon blurted out: “If the
bastard had any brains he’d offer to let me take the portfolio and show them around. I could
probably get twice what he’s asking. They might get soiled, of course. What a finicky prick!”
He gave me a sharp nudge. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it,
to dirty that smut!”

At the foot of the steps he paused a moment and caught me by the arm.

“You know what’s the matter with him? He’s
sick.”
He touched his
cranium with his forefinger.

“When you get rid of him,” he added, “you’d better disinfect the place.”

Some few nights later, at the dinner table, we at last drifted into the
subject of the war. Moricand was in excellent form and only too eager to relate his
experiences. Why we had never touched on all this before I don’t know. To be sure, in his
letters from Switzerland he had given me an outline of all that had taken place since we
parted that night in June of 1939. But I had forgotten most of it. I knew that he had joined
the Foreign Legion, for the second time, joined it not out of patriotism but to survive. How
else was he to obtain food and shelter? He lasted only a few months in the Legion, of course,
being altogether unfit for the rigors of that life. Discharged, he had returned to his garret
in the Hotel Modial, more desperate, naturally, than ever before. He was in Paris when the
Germans marched in. The presence of the Germans didn’t bother him as much as the absence of
food. At the last ditch he ran into an old friend, a man who held an important post at
Radio-Paris. The friend took him on. It meant money, food, cigarettes. An odious job, but. …
At any rate, the friend was now in prison. A collaborator, evidently.

He rehearsed the whole period again, this evening, and in great detail. As
though he felt compelled to get it off his chest. From time to time I lost the thread. Never
interested in politics, in feuds,
in intrigues and rivalries, I became
utterly confused just at the crucial period when, by command of the Germans, he intimated that
he had been forced to go to Germany. (They had even picked out a wife for him to marry.)
Suddenly the whole picture got out of whack. I lost him in a vacant lot with a Gestapo agent
holding a revolver against his spine. It was all an absurd and horrendous nightmare anyway.
Whether he had been in the service of the Germans or not—he never defined his position
clearly—was all one to me. I wouldn’t have minded if he had quietly informed me that he had
turned traitor. What I
was
curious about was—how did he manage to get out of the
mess? How did it happen that he came off with a whole skin?

Of a sudden I realize that he’s telling me of his escape. We’re no longer in
Germany, but in France … or is it Belgium or Luxembourg? He’s headed for the Swiss border.
Bogged down by two heavy valises which he’s been dragging for days and weeks. One day he’s
between the French Army and the German Army, the next day between the American Army and the
German Army. Sometimes its neutral terrain he’s traversing, sometimes it’s no mans land.
Wherever he goes it’s the same story: no food, no shelter, no aid. He has to get ill to obtain
a little nourishment, a place to flop, and so forth. Finally he really is ill. With a valise
in each hand he marches on from place to place, shaking with fever, parched with thirst,
dizzy, dopey, desperate. Above the cannonade he can hear his empty guts rattling. The bullets
whizz overhead, the stinking dead lie in heaps everywhere, the hospitals are overcrowded, the
fruit trees bare, the houses demolishd, the roads filled with homeless, sick, crippled,
wounded, forlorn, abandoned souls. Every man for himself! War! War! And there he is
floundering around in the midst of it: a Swiss neutral with a passport and an empty belly. Now
and then an American soldier flings him a cigarette. But no Yardley’s talc. No toilet paper.
No perfumed soap. And with it all he’s got the itch. Not only the itch, but lice. Not only
lice, but scurvy.

The armies, all sixty-nine of them, are battling it out
around him. They don’t seem to care at all for his safety. But the war is definitely coming to
an end. It’s all over but the mopping up. Nobody knows why he’s fighting, nor for whom. The
Germans are licked but they won’t surrender. Idiots. Bloody idiots. In fact, everybody’s
licked except the Americans. They, the goofy Americans, are romping through in grand style,
their kits crammed with tasty snacks, their pockets loaded with cigarettes, chewing gum,
flasks, crap-shooting dice and what not. The highest paid warriors that ever donned uniform.
Money to burn and nothing to spend it on. Just praying to get to Paris, praying for a chance
to rape the lascivious French girls—or old hags, if there are no girls left. And as they romp
along they burn their garbage—while starving civilians watch in horror and stupefaction.
Orders
. Keep moving! Keep liquidating! On, on … on to Paris! On to Berlin! On to
Moscow! Swipe what you can, guzzle what you can, rape what you can. And if you can’t, shit on
it! But don’t beef! Keep going, keep moving, keep advancing! The end is near. Victory is in
sight. Up with the flag! Hourrah! Hourrah! And fuck the generals, fuck the admirals! Fuck your
way through! Now or never!

What a grand time! What a lousy mess! What horripilating insanity!

(“I am that General So-and-So who is responsible for the death of so many of
your beloved!”)

Like a ghost our dear Moricand, by now witless and shitless, is running the
gauntlet, moving like a frantic rat between the opposing armies, skirting them, flanking them,
outwitting them, running head on into them; in his fright speaking good English now and then,
or German, or just plain horseshit, anything to disengage himself, anything to wiggle free,
but always clinging to his saddlebags which now weigh a ton, always headed for the Swiss
border, despite detours, loops, hairpin turns, double-eagles, sometimes crawling on all fours,
sometimes walking erect, sometimes smothered under a load of manure, sometimes doing the St.
Vitus dance.
Always going forward, unless pushed backward. Finally
reaching the border, only to find that it is blocked. Retracing his steps. Back to the
starting point. Double fire. Diarrhea. Fever and more fever. Cross-examinations. Vaccinations.
Evacuations. New armies to contend with. New battle fronts. New bulges. New victories. New
retreats. And more dead and wounded, naturally. More vultures. More unfragrant breezes.

Yet always and anon he manages to hold on to his Swiss passport, his two
valises, his slender sanity, his desperate hope of freedom.

“And what was in those valises that made them so precious?”

“Everything I cherish,” he answered.

“Like what?”

“My books, my diaries, my writings, my….”

I looked at him flabbergasted.

“No, Christ! You don’t mean to say….”

“Yes,” he said, “just books, papers, horoscopes, excerpts from Plotinus,
Iamblichus, Claude Saint-Martin….”

I couldn’t help it, I began to laugh. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I
thought I’d never stop laughing.

He was offended. I apologized.

“You lugged all that crap around like an elephant,” I exclaimed, “at the risk
of losing your own hide?”

“A man doesn’t throw away everything that is precious to him—just like
that!”

“I would!” I exclaimed.

“But my whole life was bound up in those encumbrances.”

“You should have thrown your life away too!”

“Not Moricand!” he replied, and his eyes flashed fire.

Suddenly I no longer felt sorry for him, not for anything that had ever
happened to him.

For days those two valises weighed me down. They weighed as heavily on my
mind and spirit as they had on Moricand’s when he was crawling like a bedbug over that crazy
quilt called Europe. I dreamed about them too. Sometimes he appeared in a dream,
Moricand, looking like Emil Jannings, the Jannings of
The Last
Laugh
, the Grand Hotel porter Jannings, who has been sacked, who has lost his standing,
who furtively smuggles his uniform out each night after he has been demoted to attendant in
the toilet and washroom. In my dreams I was forever shadowing poor Conrad, always within
shouting distance of him yet never able to make him hear me, what with the cannonades, the
blitz bombs, the machine-gun fire, the screams of the wounded, the shrieks of the dying.
Everywhere war and desolation. Here a shell crater filled with arms and legs; here a warrior
still warm, his buttons ripped off, his proud genitals missing; here a freshly bleached skull
crawling with bright red worms; a child impaled on a fence post; a gun carriage reeking with
blood and vomit; trees standing upside down, dangling with human limbs, an arm to which a hand
is still attached, the remains of a hand buried in a glove. Or animals in stampede, their eyes
blazing with insanity, their legs a blur, their hides aflame, their bowels hanging out,
tripping them, and behind them thousands more, millions of them, all singed, scorched, racked,
torn, battered, bleeding, vomiting, racing like mad, racing ahead of the dead, racing for the
Jordan, shorn of all medals, passports, halters, bits, bridles, feathers, fur, bills and
hollyhocks. And Conrad Moriturus ever ahead, fleeing, his feet shod in patent leather boots,
his hair neatly pomaded, his nails manicured, his linen starched, his mustache waxed, his
trousers pressed. Galloping on like the Flying Dutchman, his valises swinging like ballast,
his cold breath congealing behind him like frozen vapor.
To the border! To the
border!

And that was Europe! A Europe I never saw, a Europe I never tasted. Ah,
Iamblichus, Porphyry, Erasmus, Duns Scotus, where are we? What elixir are we drinking? What
wisdom are we sucking? Define the alphabet, O wise ones! Measure the itch! Flog insanity to
death, if you can! Are those stars looking down upon us, or are they burnt holes in a filament
of sick flesh?