Hunger and Thirst (64 page)

Nearby was a key chain crumpled on the brown rug. One of the keys pointed at the dresser.

Which stood by the radiator against the door that led to the drunk’s room. It sagged. On its top below the hovering, lopsided mirror were a box of crackers and peanut butter jar. There was a toothbrush and paste and a dirty white towel under it. The dirty white towel was supposed to be a dresser cloth.

On the floor, farther in the room was a crumpled brown overcoat with three things on it. One, a crumpled up dollar bill standing motionless at the hem of the coat. Two, a brown-edged floppy rose lying head down on the brown silk lining. Three, a broken piece of mirror.

Beyond the coat were piles and swirls of bills, fives and tens and twenties and one fifty-dollar bill.

And, against the wall, beside the dresser, was a waste basket with a few sundries inside and a chair with a brown hat leaning against the back.

Against the far wall was another table. It had a typewriter on it and a rumpled yellow sweater over it.

By the door was another chair. And, leaning against one of its legs was the hard, jagged-edged bottom part of a glass.

Against the other wall was a wardrobe closet with a flimsy suitcase on top and a few pair of trousers and a suit hanging inside.

There was a bed. Underneath its springs were heavy clumps of grey dust and pieces of broken glass, splinters of a mirror and fragments of a drinking glass.

On the bed were three things.

A small piece of mirror.

A handkerchief.

A man, almost dead.

He dreamed that he was walking. He dreamed that there was a lake just over the hill. And he ran to the top of the hill. And there was a valley and another hill. And he said to himself, well it’s over
that
hill. And he ran down and up and over and saw that there was another hill. And he kept walking and walking, he kept searching patiently for the lake.

He stepped into the pouring sunlight and walked among the frying fish. His feet carried him away from the black subway depths. The distant roar of underground machinery left his ears to be replaced by myriad whispers of the city.

Now I am walking up Broadway, he thought. People walk past me coming and going. I am in no hurry. I am breaking away.

Incredible rabbit fecundity of the world. That it should start out with a cell, progress to a few slithering mollusks, work up to this; an ever multiplying horde of scurrying animals all hurrying to their instinctive ends. Rushing under the glass-eyed city, between the steel ribs of the body called Manhattan.

Veiled bodies hurrying to the end of their times. Blending their hurrying dust with the still restless dust of their hurrying ancestors. Transient flesh. Brief moments of passion, locked bodies dying soon to sullen reciprocity, the end of youth and accomplishment beyond more from the mold to dawdle away another few generations. Crying for peace and stumbling into war. Asking freedom and, each day, buying slavery. The same, the ineffable, unalterable same.

On down the proud gash of the city.

A striker.
Empty Promises
scribed on a cardboard coat of arms. You, my child, are another. Give you your twenty cents more an hour and the sun shines again. And, behind, whirs the silent machinery until you must carry another sign and effect another glare and, like an economic Oliver Twist ask resentfully for more. Then, soon, it crashes about you and you rise painfully from the economic rubble muttering, wondrous-eyed—How the hell did
that
happen?

How utterly fascinating in this bugheap on the continent; the logical ants running about with their new clothes and old minds.

How tragically delightful to stand still and watch while others heave about their impermanent little orbits, their dizzy little passionate rounds.

I am free as may be, he thought. Thus it is when things come to a closing. And why must it be that named age to bring things to a close?

He passed magazines grey suits, sweaters and beards, no-parking signs, taxicabs and people, people.

Sex shining from the newstands. How cruel and unfair to our crowning weakness. To thrust excitement through every sense into our bodies. To maliciously set fire to the loins and then punish unless we live by narrow mandates from the same fountainhead. Ah, life! Giddy world. Children dancing around a maypole draped in black.

He stopped.

Flowers. Foliage in the wilderness. Growing behind glass in a city of steel.
Natures Own Rarity. Century-Old Branches of Dwarf Peruvian Cypress
. The sign chortled on,
No Care Necessary. Will Last Forever!
And who wants that? Will I last forever? Purchase of these eternal leaves would be folly.

Lovely, though, inside. Sweet smelling touches of life on the drained earth. Always on the inside. The door is hard to open. Sir, I am pleased with your flowers. Of course you realize they aren’t really yours. Whattaya mean! I paid good money for then! Pass on sir, you do not understand.

Maybe next time.

Twenty to eleven on the black church façade. The home walls ringing with cries. I won’t have the jerk in the same house with us. Oh, why don’t you shut your big fat stupid mouth. Him screaming it. Grace’s husband lunging, clench-fisted, temple veins pulsing. Mother screaming weakly and bursting into hysterical tears. Him crashing his typewriter to the floor, rushing out the door. His mother calling after him—Please don’t leave me, oh please Erick! Her frail voice fluttering down over the street as he hurried away from all he hated, rushing away blindly in escape.

All thought of as he saw twenty to eleven on the black church facade.

Black fingers poking at the hot hair. Dark steeple pushing a gold cross at the sky. Can’t hardly see it, Ma. Shut up, you ain’t supposed to. And trees growing beside the sacred abutments. And a holy man with hand on hip, watching the people hurry by with stony ridicule. I am holy too. He leaned against a building, staring.

Omnibus passing, foul breathed, heavy-tongued omnibus. People crowding into its belly for a price. Carry me away bus! To eternity? Hell, no, to 29
^th
street.

I see stomach, turgid flesh creeping about the heart putting more distance between that pulsing meatball and the sun. I see that here. He pressed fingers into his own enlarging stomach. I see a world sucking on a weed ugly and foul. I see smiles of death.

A finger of sun touches a window and glorifies the common pane with pure gold for a moment. Brief purge. Mother what is that green stuff poking up between the gravestones? That is grass, my son.

Cedar. Wall. Sunglasses, signs. More strikers. A pretty girl dressed in blue. In your sweet little Alice Blue Gown, on strike you walk up and down …

“Would you help a poorman to a cup of coffee?”

He stopped. He looked at the old man. The old man had red fish eyes, a beard, a cane. He fished in his pocket and drew out a dollar bill. He pressed it into the old man’s hand. The man looked up in rheumy astonishment. He passed by the old man and strode on quickly, legs like pistons on the hot sidewalk.

Young breasts and old. Sly glances and no glances. Fast breath and even breath. Love and fatigue. Salt and pepper. No brush, no lather, no …

He glanced into a liquor store passing by. Scotch. Rye. Whiskey. Gin. Rum. Life. A sign—
Scotch, 20 years old
. A fact—American, 23 years old. Shake.

A watch store. He stopped and looked in the window. Dozens of watches, round square and shapeless. Money for time. Put it on your wrist and watch it pass away. Watch your hair fall out, your belly expand, your dreams grovel to the tick tock of our time-honored piece. Die to the tick tock of … ask about our special …

Eve.

What would you say to all these means of glorifying those fleshy mounds on your tired chest. You know, dear one of the purloined rib, that even if you had no more than Adam you could still wow men. Yes, definitely. Those warm structures are a sort of pivot of civilization now. Adoration of the female breast it is called in a book. Did you know it? I guess not. When you were kicking around, you fed your kids with them and let it go at that. But today! Oh Christ, Eve, what civilization has done for women.

Civilize: to be civil to one another.

Civilization: A society of people who are civil to one another.

Folks I have a grand idea.

Let’s change the name.

He passed a man sitting in a black Cadillac. Smooth. Shiny. Costs money. I have nothing. Walk, your health is yours. Great consolation.

The sun shot its beams together. They knit a hot blanket which fell over his head. His head was hot and his neck and upper lip had great drops of sweat that clung and then fell into his mouth. God begins with a G, he thought, and so does garbage.

Nathan Hale. He looked at him statued over the people. He had piano hands. His coat was out of style. So was his gallantry. Did you really say what they claim you did? Did it really matter to you whether cigarette-rolling Americans prided themselves on your death and put a statue for the bus gas to light on? Nathan what were you thinking of? I’m sorry. You died in vain.

“Here you are, pal!”

A man pressed a pamphlet into his hands with messiah fingers and rushed on spreading THE TRUTH OF LIFE.

He leaned against the pipe fence that girdled the park and read quietly, dully.

The BIG QUESTION is—Have you been born again? Let’s see, his other mind asked. Christianity is Christ. I see. NOT trying but trusting. HOW may I be born again? THEN connect section A-6 to section T-9 through joint ABF using screws in envelope.

God has a wireless everywhere, poemed the book. We call it (quote) the Word of God. (Unquote) And every one may daily win, God’s choicest gifts by (quote) tuning in (unquote) Only $14.95. Hear one today at your local …

He dropped the pamphlet on the bleached and short-chopped grass and pushed away from the fence. On and on. Alone.

Here comes a car, he thought. If I walk faster he will miss me. If I walk slower he will miss me. If I walk just right he will grind on his brakes but the heavy steel will leap out upon me and black tires will crush breath from my body.

He walked faster. Habit, said his mind.

A woman stopped him.

“Chambers Street is near here, haah?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know,” he said.

She looked displeased, she passed on. He watched her broad buttocks move up and down like meshed gears. What am I sorry for? He wondered. What’s the difference if you find it or not? What difference? Where is this and where is that? And when you get there you’d just want to leave and go somewhere else.

Store having a birthday. Banner across the building.
75
^th
Birthday
. Happy Birthday to you, he thought. Hands clapping, happy laughter, cries of “Speech!” Store groans to its steel feet. “Friends!” Applause. “Unaccustomed as I am to …” Laughter, giggles, hands clapping, singing—For he’s a jolly good fellow!

An old woman in black selling shoe laces.

He stopped and leaned against the building in a burst of sunlight. He stared at her.

This is your noble civilization, he thought. This is your beauty and your grandeur and your mountain structures and your progress words.

Tears came to his eyes. He wanted to rush out at the people and grab them by the clothes and shake them and make them look at the old lady.

She was looking at the sidewalk with dead eyes.

The fetid hot city wind rustled the voluminous black skirt lightly around her thin ankles. She wore heavy black shoes. Her face was thin. Her shrunken lips were tight together.

What are you thinking about? You were not always this way. Is it not so? Recipient of brief glances and pitiful pennies from the grubby hands of bright-eyed monster children. And your parents, tell me of them. Your youth. When those parchment cheeks were red with love and those drawn eyes feasted on a loved one’s face. And now, black shoe laces. To hold feet together so they can run from here to there.

Sleep, old woman!

He almost cried it out. His lips trembled. He was lost in his pity for her. Let your hair blow softly in the foul zephyr. Dream and die and leave the sadness and the blank. Let the box of black shoe laces slip from your tired fingers and fall to the sidewalk. Let the people stare as you sit open mouthed and dead. You will be free of them. Happy in the garden spot where shoes mean nothing. Where your cares will be nothing. Where once more those faded cheeks will flood pink and those set unhappy lips curl into a smile. Come with me! I love you, old woman!

He put a bill in her box and passed down the city gash. A long way to go. He did not look back at her. Because I’m lying. Because there is no garden spot. All is desert.

A chinaman selling ice cream. Notary Public sign. Duane Street and people still hurrying. Liquor? The suggestion came. No, it is tasteless. I will not start now. Be brave. Brave. The word was repelling. Once he was brave. Once he had hope. With his finger he was to trace his pattern on the world. Now it was shattered, bent and junked like his typewriter, hurled to the floor.

Cards for all occasions
.

His eyes pierced the window panes and he stared dully at their ludicrous phrases, their infinitude of the saccharine.
A birthday wish for YOU so much have you given to others
. From the bottom of my heart for twenty five cents. Odd that the more a person spent the more tears should flow from the restless pen of the semper paratus poet.

Happy Birthday Mother exclamation point.

Happy Birthday Sister exclamation point.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart exclamation point.

Happy Birthday Old Woman Selling Black Shoe Laces.

A high breasted jewess strode past him, blouse shaking like six delicious flavors stuff. Excites the transient groin. Gone, a thrill. Passed, a possible erotic night or day. Pass on good or bad or indifferent woman. Our paths uncross, we lose the moment.

Lunchtime.

The buildings spewed forth the masses. For frankfurters and roast lamb. Orange drink and wine. Swamp and the Mountain. It all comes out the same. Leonard Street. Franklin Street. Cottons. Rayons. Naked under the cloth. Brutal currents under the placid jaws chewing a sandwich. All different. All go home different. Stay different. Clothe different. Eat different. Cry different.