An American Dream

by Norman Mailer

  But I was uneasy. When I closed my eyes I saw again the luminous full moon—would I never be free of her? I almost picked up the phone.

  The voice in my brain said, “Look first at Deborah’s face.”

  I knelt to turn her over. Her body made some rustling sound of protest, a muted whimper. She was bad in death. A beast stared back at me. Her teeth showed, the point of light in her eye was violent, and her mouth was open. It looked like a cave. I could hear some wind which reached down to the cellars of a sunless earth. A little line of spit came from the corner of her mouth, and at an angle from her nose one green seed had floated its small distance on an abortive rill of blood. I did not feel a thing. Which is not to say that nothing was happening to me. Like ghosts, emotions were passing invisibly through the aisles of my body. I knew I would mourn her on some distant day, and I would fear her. I had a certainty this instant that Deborah had been divided by death—by whatever fraction, what was good in her had been willed to me (how else account for the fine breath of this calm) and every last part which detested me was collected now in the face she showed for her death—if something endured beyond her dying, something not in me, it was vengeance. That delicate anxiety which pulses up to flutter in the nose was on me now. For Deborah would be there to meet me in the hour of my death.

  The verdict now came clear. I was not going to call the police, not now, not yet—some other solution was finding its way up through myself, a messenger from that magician who solved all riddles was on his way, ascending those endless stairs from the buried gaming rooms of the unconscious to the tower of the brain. He was on his way and I was doomed if I thought to do my work in jail. For her curse would be on me.

  I had an intimation then of Deborah’s presence. Did one lift after death like a feather, rising slowly? I went to open the window as though to hope some breeze might seduce her forth, and dropped my hand. For I had the sense I had been touched on the shoulder, there at the precise point where her fingers begged me to let go her throat. Something touched me and now pushed me without touch toward the door. Once again I could have been in a magnetic field where some force without sensation other than its own presence was coaxing me firmly to step away from Deborah, cross the room, and out the door. And I went with this force; it had a promise like the smell of bar whiskey when rich young girls are in a bar. There was a good sound somewhere in my head, and expectation came to life in me, two full breasts came to rest their balm upon my eyes, then dropped in soft taps of curve and fall about my throat, rubbed a turn on my chest, tickled a hair at the belly and came to fold like two does at my root. One kiss of flesh, one whiff of sweet was loose, sending life to the charnel house of my balls. Something fierce for pleasure was loose. And I was out that door and strolling down the stairs, still traveling in the field of force which drifted me clean out of Deborah’s room. As I stood at the lower landing of this duplex, I could breathe a tropical bouquet from the woven velvet flowers on the wall, I was near a swamp where butterflies and tropical birds went fanning up—and over the spoil of animals who looked for flesh—and floated on the air which rose from vegetation growing in the damp and drowning in the wet. At the door which opened to the elevator I stopped, turned around completely, and following that force which held me now as closely as an embrace I could not bear to quit, I crossed the hall, opened the door to the room where the maid must sleep, and pushed right in.

  The lamp by her bed was on. The windows were closed, the air was close, an oven of burgeonings was that room—and, nice shock, there was Ruta, Fräulein Ruta from Berlin, lying on top of the covers with her pajama pants down, a copy of a magazine in one hand (a flash of nude photographs in color) and her other hand fingering, all five fingers fingering like a team of maggots at her open heat. She was off in that bower of the libido where she was queen, and those five fingers were five separate lords and ladies hard at work on her.

  We did not say a word. Her face, caught in this pose, was on the edge of dividing into two women: that queen for certain of her fevers, and a little girl trapped in a dirty act I winked like the friendliest peasant neighbor—I recall how natural was this wink—and then I stripped my coat and started to take off my clothes. I removed them with care enough to fold them neat. And the atmosphere in the room which had quivered for an instant on my entrance like a whip of air from a bellows, now flared slowly up and higher. The maid set down the magazine and turned her free hand palm up toward me, her fingers long and thin with a hint of the fine curve in a double curved bow. I remember seeing that the curve of her fingers, her lips, and her long thin calves were a part of that sly bright fever she gave off, and in a new whiff of boldness as if to be bold was her métier, boldness had brought me to her, she lifted the other hand (those lords and ladies) and moved it across to me for a kiss to her fingers. Which I did, getting one full draft of a heated sex which was full of the flower, full of earth, and with suspicion of one sly mouse slipping through the garden, a bit of fish in its teeth. My bare foot came up from the carpet and I put my five toes where her hand had been, drawing up on the instant out of her a wet spicy wisdom of all the arts and crafts of getting along in the world. She made the high nasal sound of a cat disturbed in its play—I had stolen something from her, and she was about to draw back, but there was a look in my face—I was ready to kill her easy as not, there was an agreeable balance in the thought that I was ready to kill anyone at this moment—and my look cracked the glitter in her eye. She shook her head and gave the prize to my five toes which moved in the wet with all the deliverance of snakes who have crossed a desert. Something took me on then—the wisdom in my fingertips was sure; I could feel where her flesh was alive and where the skin was dead, my fingers played at the edge, making little forays, nipping her to life. I felt for the first time in my life like a healthy alley cat, and I stroked at her with a delicate hatred lacquered clean up to a small flame by the anticipation of my body. It must have been five minutes before I chose to give her a kiss, but I took her mouth at last, pinched the corner in my teeth, and our faces came together with the turn of a glove catching a ball. She had a virtuoso’s mouth, thin and alive, stingy and lightly fevered, a woodwind which tickled promise into me, yes those lips spoke of where they had traveled and where they could go now, something hot and mean and greedy to take the low road rose from her lean belly and tricky breasts which now popped out from under my thumb before I caught them, and at each corner of her mouth was a plump little mound, a tidbit for the teeth. Yes, she was sweet oil to the throat. She was breathing the pictures of her brain into mine, all the rosy tan and tinted gold of those pinup pictures in the magazine, and her thin lips now fluttered on my mouth, her warmth was rosy, her mouth offered to go down. I lay back like a king lion and let her romp. She had a gift. I was off on the nicest dream of Berlin nightclubs with their telephones and queer shows, of bal musettes and twisterias, she was giving a short lecture with her tongue on the habits of the Germans, the French, the English (one sorry bite indeed), the Italians, the Spanish, she must have had an Arab or two. All the tars and scents were blending into the one full smell which always makes you begin. I was ready to take the roller coaster, but I didn’t want it to end, not this one, not yet, her greed was riding through me, I wanted more and more, and so I slipped free of her mouth and put her on her back.

  But then, as abruptly as an arrest, a thin high constipated smell (a smell which spoke of rocks and grease and the sewer-damp of wet stones in poor European alleys) came needling its way out of her. She was hungry, like a lean rat she was hungry, and it could have spoiled my pleasure except that there was something intoxicating in the sheer narrow pitch of the smell, so strong, so stubborn, so private, it was a smell which could be mellowed only by the gift of fur and gems, she was money this girl, she cost money, she would make money, something as corrupt as a banquet plate of caviar laid on hundred-dollar bills would be required to enrich that odor all the way up to the smell of foie gras in Deborah’s world and Deborah’
s friends. I had a desire suddenly to skip the sea and mine the earth, a pure prong of desire to bugger, there was canny hard-packed evil in that butt, that I knew. But she resisted, she spoke for the first time, “Not there! Verboten!”

  I had, however, gotten an inch of the verboten. A virulent intricate hatred, a detailed specification of the hardest world of the poor, the knowledge of a city rat, came out from her into me and deadened the head of my heat. I could go for a while now. And go I did. That other presence (which, I could remind you, leads to the creation) was lying open for me, and I barreled in on a stroke, expecting glory and the hot beat of jungle wings, but she was slack, her box spoke of cold gasses from the womb and a storehouse of disappointments. I quit her there and went back to where I had begun, the fierce pinched struggle to gain an inch and then a crucial quarter of an inch more, my hand was in her red dyed hair, pulling at a swatch with a twisting upward motion, and I could feel the pain in her scalp strain like a crowbar the length of her body and push up the trap, and I was in, that quarter-inch more was gained, the rest was easy. What a subtle smell came from her then, something back of the ambition, the narrow stubbornness, the monomaniacal determination to get along in the world, no, that was replaced by something tender as the flesh but not at all clean, something sneaky, full of fear, but young, a child in soiled pants, “You’re a Nazi,” I said to her out of I knew not what.

  “Ja.” She shook her head. “No, no,” she went on. “Ja, don’t stop, ja.”

  There was a high private pleasure in plugging a Nazi, there was something clean despite all—I felt as if I were gliding in the clear air above Luther’s jakes and she was loose and free, very loose and very free, as if this were finally her natural act: a host of the Devil’s best gifts were coming to me, mendacity, guile, a fine-edged cupidity for the stroke which steals, the wit to trick authority. I felt like a thief, a great thief. And like a thief returning to church, I see-sawed up from that bank of pleasures up to her deserted warehouse, that empty tomb. But it was more ready now. Those flaccid walls had come together—back of my closed eyes I could see one poor flower growing in a gallery—what love she still possessed might have been in a flower. Like a thief I was out of church again and dropping down for more of that pirate’s gold.

  So that was how I finally made love to her, a minute for one, a minute for the other, a raid on the Devil and a trip back to the Lord, I was like a hound who has broken free of the pack and is going to get that fox himself, I was drunk with my choice, she was becoming mine as no woman ever had, she wanted no more than to be a part of my will, her face, that mobile, mocking, know-the-cost-of-every-bargain Berlin face, was loose and independent of her now, swimming through expressions, a greedy mate with the taste of power in her eyes and her mouth, that woman’s look that the world is theirs, and then I was traveling up again that crucial few centimeters of distance from the end to the beginning, I was again in the place where the child is made, and a little look of woe was on her face, a puckered fearful little nine-year-old afraid of her punishment, wishing to be good.

  “I have nothing in me,” she said. “Do we go ahead?”

  “Who knows,” I said, “keep quiet.”

  And I could feel her beginning to come. The doubt in me had tipped her off, the adjuration to be quiet had thrown the bolt. She was a minute away, but she was on her way, and just as if one of her wily fingers had thrown some switch in me, I was gone like a bat and shaking hands with the Devil once more. Rare greed shone in her eyes, pleasure in her mouth, she was happy. I was ready to chase, I was gorged to throw the first spill, high on a choice, like some cat caught on two wires I was leaping back and forth, in separate runs for separate strokes, bringing spoils and secrets up to the Lord from the red mills, bearing messages of defeat back from that sad womb, and then I chose—ah, but there was time to change—I chose her cunt. It was no graveyard now, no warehouse, no, more like a chapel now, a modest decent place, but its walls were snug, its odor was green, there was a sweetness in the chapel, a muted reverential sweetness in those walls of stone. “That is what prison will be like for you,” said a last effort on my inner tongue. “Stay here!” came a command from inside of me; except that I could feel the Devil’s meal beneath, its fires were lifting through the floor, and I waited for the warmth to reach inside, to come up from the cellar below, to bring booze and heat up and licking tongues, I was up above a choice which would take me on one wind or another, and I had to give myself, I could not hold back, there was an explosion, furious, treacherous and hot as the gates of an icy slalom with the speed at my heels overtaking my nose, I had one of those splittings of a second where the senses fly out and there in that instant the itch reached into me and drew me out and I jammed up her ass and came as if I’d been flung across the room. She let out a cry of rage. Her coming must have taken a ferocious twist. And with my eyes closed, I felt low sullen waters wash about a dead tree on a midnight pond. I had come to the Devil a fraction too late, and nothing had been there to receive me. But I had a vision immediately after of a huge city in the desert, in some desert, was it a place on the moon? For the colors had the unreal pastel of a plastic and the main street was flaming with light at five A.M. A million light bulbs lit the scene.

  It had been when all was said a bitch of a brawl. She lay for a minute half in sleep, half in stupor, and her tongue licked idly at my ear. Like a mother cat she was teaching a new kitten how to listen. “Mr. Rojack,” she said at last with her gutty fleshy Berlin speech, “I do not know why you have trouble with your wife. You are absolutely a genius, Mr. Rojack.”

  “A doctor is no better than his patient,” said I.

  There was a wicked look of amusement in her face. “But you are a vache,” she said. “You must not pull my hair. Not even for that.”

  “Der Teufel asked me to visit.”

  “Der Teufel!” She laughed. “What can a rich man like you know about der Teufel?”

  “Doesn’t der Teufel like the rich?”

  “No,” she said, “God protects the rich.”

  “But at the end I could not have paid my respects to God.”

  “Oh, you are dreadful,” she said, and pinched me a good mean German pinch where my belly was soft. Then she started uneasily.

  “Do you think your wife heard?” she asked.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Are the walls so good?” She sat up now, her tricky breasts lolling nicely. “No, I feel not so easy now,” she said, “your wife could come in on us.”

  “She would never do something like that. It’s not her style.”

  “I think you know a woman better than that,” said Ruta. She pinched again. “You know, at the end, you stole something from me.”

  “Half.”

  “Half.”

  We liked each other. That was fine. But again I could feel a stillness from the room above. Ruta was nervous.

  “When you walked in on me,” she said, “you looked pretty.”

  “So did you, I fear.”

  “No, but I never do something like that. At least,” she added with a malicious grin, “not unless I lock the door.”

  “And tonight you didn’t.”

  “No, I was asleep. After I let you in, I went to sleep. I was thinking how unhappy you looked. When you came to visit.” She put her head to one side as if to inquire whether I had been already with my wife in the bed above her, and then didn’t ask. “Of course,” she said, “you and Mrs. Rojack had a reconciliation.”

  “Of sorts.”

  “What a bad man you are. That’s what woke me up—making your reconciliation with Mrs. Rojack. I was awake, and I was so excited—I can’t explain it.” Her bold pointed spiteful nose made everything she said seem merry.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  She was probably twenty-eight. “You’re a charming twenty-three,” I said.

  “And you are still a vache.”

  Her fingers were beginning to pl
ay with me.

  “Let’s sleep another minute,” I said.

  “Yes.” She started to light a cigarette, then stopped. “Your wife thinks you’ve gone home.”

  “Probably.”

  “I hope the walls are good.”

  “Let’s try to sleep,” I said. I wanted the light out. I had a rendezvous in the dark. Something was waiting for me. But the moment I turned the switch, it was very bad. The darkness came over like air on a wound when the dressing is removed. My senses were much too alert. Everything which had passed from her body to mine was now alive inside, as if a horde of tourists, pokey and inquisitive, were wandering through my body. I had one of those anxieties which make it an act of balance to breathe: too little air compresses the sensation of being throttled, but too much—one deep breath—and there is the fear of a fall. There was something in the room besides Ruta and myself, something which gathered force. It was approaching now, but there were no eyes, no claws, just a sense of oppression waiting. I felt vile. “Do you have a drink?” I asked of Ruta.