Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

by Miller, Henry

  The three Lopez boys, on the other hand, will know how to fix anything, right anything, adapt themselves to anything, long before they become adults. The Lopez family, I must say at once, is my idea of a model family. The father, of Mexican origin, is one of those underpaid workers that any man in his right senses would give his right hand to keep forever as an employee. The mother is a mother in the real sense of the term. From Mexico they brought with them those precious attributes which Americans tend to underestimate and even to exploit: patience, tenderness, respect, reverence, gentleness, humility, forbearance and abounding love. The Lopez children reflect these virtues of the parents. There are three boys, two of them identical twins, and a girl who is the eldest. They get along like one big family. Almost like a holy family, I should say. With them the word family means something. Nothing can threaten it from within and probably nothing from without either. They have had a hard life here in “the land of the free and the brave,” as Mexicans always do. But they have won the love and respect of all who know them and have watched them struggle.

  When one of the restless mothers in the community wishes to dump her child on someone for a day, or a day and a night, or a week, or even for a month, it is to the Lopez family she invariably turns. Rosa Lopez never says No. The word is not in her vocabulary. “Si señora!” she says, and she takes the child into the fold as she would her own. And there, in the immaculate, overcrowded hut which they call home, this American child may see for the first time a picture of the Madonna, a taper burning before a crucifix, a rosary hanging from a nail in the wall. Perhaps also for the first time this American child will see an adult joining hands in prayer, lowering his eyes, repeating the litany. I am not a Catholic; I have no use for all the mummery and flummery which goes with Catholicism. But I have a profound respect for the Lopez family, which is an ardent and a devout Catholic family. When I visit them I feel as one ought to feel, but seldom does, after visiting a church. I feel as if God’s presence had made itself manifest. And though I am against rosaries, crucifixes, ikons and chromos of the Madonna, I say it is good that there is one family in Big Sur where these appurtenances of the faith are in evidence and convey what they were meant to convey.

  The boys are incurable rascals, incurably happy, active, and helpful at home. There is not a trace of spite, of meanness or vulgarity in them. As is so often the case in America, the children of foreign families, poor foreigners especially, seem born with taste, sensitivity and an inner resourcefulness which are usually lacking in the American child. The Lopez kids have something additional. A chivalrous nature, I would call it. If they are obliged to play with children younger than themselves, which is frequently the case, they sponsor them as no grownup could. What I particularly like about them is that they play hard and rough: they have a vitality and a sense of play which seems inborn. You will never find them whimpering and whining. They were little men at five and six. As for Rosita, the daughter, she has been a little mother ever since she began to walk.

  As a hired man, a gardener, Señor Lopez was never able to afford expensive toys for his children. He was only too thankful that they had their health. He loved his children very much and he knew how to handle them—gently but firmly. His wife, Rosa, had scarcely enough time each day to finish the household tasks. They had none of the conveniences which even the poorest American family considers indispensable. (I am using the past tense only because I am referring to their life at Krenkel Corners, in the years when we, too, were guilty of abusing Rosa’s generous nature.) No, the Lopez family had never anything in the way of luxury. They considered themselves fortunate in that Señor Lopez had a job—possibly for life.

  Did the children suffer because of the parents’ restricted means? Hardly. Just as in Spain one finds the happiest children in all Europe, ragged, barefoot, naked though they often are, and generally filthy and starved—often beggars at three or four—so in Big Sur one has to go to the home of the poorest family to find that joy and contentment, that spontaneity, that love of life, which the Lopez children ever exhibit. In a book devoted to London street games, Norman Douglas, author of South Wind, makes it painfully clear that the children who have the most fun, the children who are the most inventive, are those who have absolutely nothing to play with. By contrast, look at the recreation grounds attached to the public schools in our big cities. Millions of dollars spent on expensive apparatus, yet the poor urchins look like little convicts who have been given permission to exercise—or else like pent-up demons who have a half-hour in which to wreak havoc.

  One day I happened on the Lopez kids just as they were at work building an imaginary city. It was in the back of the vegetable garden, among the brambles and thistles which they had hastily cleared away. The project already covered quite an area, and they were only at the beginning of their enterprise. What got me were the “materials” they were using to create this miniature world. What were they, these materials? Tin cans, milk cartons, old matting, matchboxes, toothpicks, marbles, beads, shoelaces, dominoes, playing cards, used tires, rusty curling irons, bent nails, discarded toys, pincushions, safety pins, broken scissors, pebbles, rocks, hunks of wood … any god-damned thing that came to hand.

  Only a few days before I had called on a friend of ours, a physician, whose son Tony wanted to play with while I did the shopping. The doctor seemed extremely grateful that his son would have a playmate for a few hours and graciously offered to drive Tony to the house himself.

  I had never been to his home before. When I arrived, toward sundown, I found the Japanese gardener watering the flowers and shrubs, but the kids were nowhere in sight. I dallied awhile, studying the beautiful, well-kept grounds, inspecting the spacious patio with its lounging chairs and tables, admiring the house tree hidden in a majestic oak, staring in amazement at the assortment of apparatus—scups and swings, ladders, a “labyrinth” (it probably has another name), the bikes and trikes, the wagons and pushmobiles, and so on. Christ only knows what this devoted father had not thought to buy for his children. He was fond of children, and he believed in doing his utmost to make them happy. His wife, who was turning them out as fast as could be, also loved children. Fortunately. The children owned the place; the parents merely lived there.

  But where were the two boys? After I had explored a few wings of the house—nobody seemed to be home—I came upon a huge room, the sort I would love to annex as a living room, which was obviously intended for the exclusive use of the children. There on the floor were Tony and the doctor’s son, playing with a piece of wood and a string. What they were playing I never discovered. What I did learn, though, was that they were overjoyed to have hit upon something of their own contraption, something which didn’t cost fifty or a hundred dollars, something that wasn’t rubberized, chromium plated, jet propelled, and of the very latest model.

  There is another family I cannot pass over without a word or two, since here, once again, the children dominate the scene. I mean the Fassett family whose abode is “Nepenthe,” one of the show places along the Coast. Lolly and Bill, the parents, are busy seven months of the year running the establishment, which specializes in food, drink and dancing. The kids—up until recently, at any rate—specialized in raising hell. All five of them.

  The point about the Fassett youngsters is this—they give the impression of playing at being children. They revel in the fact that they are just kids, and that it’s the business of kids to have a good time. For inventiveness they are hard to match. Entering their quarters, if it’s an unexpected call, you have the feeling of being introduced to a simian world. It’s not only the chatter, the monkeyshines, the acrobatic, hair-raising stunts they put on, it’s the pandemonium they know so well how to create, and delight in creating—particularly when papa and mamma are not hitting it off so well. But who would think of raising the word discipline in their presence? Discipline would be the death of them. All they need is space, more and more space. As it is, they have a wonderful roller-skating rink in
the dance floor, which adjoins the dining room and bar outdoors. Evenings, before the place gets too crowded, the whole gang of them entertain the guests doing folk dances. They have a repertoire which would do credit to a professional dancer. To watch Kim, the youngest, who is still only a bit of a tot, is a delight. She floats about as if she were in heaven. They need no supervision and they get none. When they’re weary they retire, to listen in quiet to a Beethoven quartet, Sibelius or an album of Shankar.

  The parents, of course, are sometimes puzzled by the various problems this brood presents. Particularly Bill, the provider, who, before he hit on the brilliant idea of opening “Nepenthe,” used to sit up nights wondering how to feed and clothe such a tribe. But those days are past. His chief problem now is: should Griff, the oldest one, be sent to Europe to have his fling or should he be permitted to stay in Big Sur and become a Jack of all trades. The major problem is—where will they all go to live, what part of the world, when Bill has made his pile?

  A rather pleasant problem, I should say. Why not Capri?

  “Henry was always a good boy!” That’s a phrase of my mother’s which is relayed to me at odd moments. I’ll tell you why in a moment.

  Jack Morgenrath has a son, Helmut, who is about three years younger than Tony. Nobody calls him Helmut. “Pookie” is the moniker he’s been saddled with. And it fits him, for some strange reason. The difference in age between Pookie and Tony has made for a strange and touching relationship between them. To begin with, they live about six miles apart and so only get to see one another at fairly long intervals. (Long for a child.) Tony, it appears, is a sort of little god to Pookie. All the latter thinks about is—when will we go see Tony again? And Tony, who is a rather rough playmate, invariably reveals his tender, solicitous side when Pookie shows up. Like a big dog playing with a puppy.

  Now and then I catch Pookie looking up at Tony with an expression compounded of love, admiration and wonder. It may be that he has just opened wide his mouth to say something and, in the fraction of a second which it takes for thought to reach tongue, Pookie undergoes a transformation which, if I am fortunate enough to witness it, always moves me deeply. Ever since a tiny child, Pookie has manifested this state of rapture which we almost never see any more in the countenance of an adult. It explains—to me, at least—why there is always this peculiar pause or hesitancy when Pookie opens his mouth to make an exclamatory remark. Evidently, the emotion which fills him is much greater than his ability to verbalize it. He wells up, is ready to spill over, and then—for a moment or two, a long moment or two—he is blocked. (Fra Angelico has captured the phenomenon again and again.)

  Fascinatedly, my gaze travels from his mouth to his eyes. Suddenly the eyes become two liquescent pools of light. Gazing into them, I find myself looking up at the boy I so idolized as a child: Eddie Carney. There was just about the same difference in age between Eddie Carney and myself as there is between Tony and Pookie. Eddie was a demigod for whom I would lie, steal or commit murder, if he had asked it of me.

  I have written about all these companions of the street (the old 14th Ward, Brooklyn) in Black Spring. I have mentioned all these chivalrous comrades by name: Eddie Carney, Lester Reardon, Johnny Paul, Jimmy Short, Stanley Borowski, and others. Their images are just as alive in my memory as if it were yesterday or the day before that I left that grand old neighborhood.

  Recently, hoping to get some photographs of the streets in this old neighborhood as they looked in the 1890’s, I inserted a letter in “The Old Timers” column of a Brooklyn daily. To my joy and astonishment, some of my playmates were still alive, I discovered. Most of them, of course, had gone to the Elysian fields. The relatives of some who had passed away were kind enough to write me and enclose photographs of “my little chums,” all going on seventy now. (“Time is running out,” wrote one of the boys. I suppose he meant clock time.)

  One of these letters came from the elder sister of my idol, Eddie Carney. She had inserted several photographs of Eddie—one as a boy of sixteen (in which he seemed hardly changed from the lad of ten that I knew), another in uniform, as a corporal in World War I, and a third after he had been demobilized, his lungs contaminated by poison gas. It’s the one in uniform which stands out vividly in my mind. Such sadness, such resignation, such a sense of utter forsakenness is registered in his face! How could “they” have done that to the shining hero of my boyhood? The whole cruel, senseless story of war was written into this unrecognizable visage.

  Reading his sister’s letter over again, I discovered that Eddie had died just a few months before my letter appeared in the paper. Then my eye suddenly leaped to this phrase: “Eddie was always a good boy.” With it a great flood of emotion swept over me. I wondered, deeply wondered, if I had always been “a good boy,” as my mother was fond of telling people. It was probably true, all things considered, for I had no great remembrance of scoldings, naggings, beatings, and so forth. Not as a boy! The image of another “good boy” came to mind: Jack Lawton. At least, everybody thought him that.

  Jack Lawton was one of the first pals I made in the new neighborhood—“the street of early sorrows”—which I have always compared unfavorably with the old neighborhood. What I recall particularly about this chum is that he seemed so much wiser, so much more sophisticated than I. It was he who initiated me into “the secrets of life,” though we were of the same age. It was he who pointed out to me the defects, the stupidities, the vices of our elders. The good boy, no less! Entering his home, which was always in a state of disorder and filthy to boot, I would receive a welcome reserved only for angelic beings. His mother, a charming slovenly Englishwoman, who always invited the minister, the school principal and such “dignitaries” to tea, doted on me almost as though I were her own son. There was only this difference, and it registered deep in me: when she looked at Jack, even if it were to reprimand him, it was with eyes of love. That look I never encountered in the eyes of other mothers. In the homes of my other little friends I was ever aware of the scolding, the nagging, the cuffing that went on. All these disciplinary measures, to be sure, had anything but the desired effect.

  No, thought I to myself, you must have had it pretty easy, my lad. You were never obliged to get out and hustle, in order to swell the family budget. You did as you pleased and went where you pleased. Until…. Until you decided of your own volition to go to work. You could have continued your studies, you could have prepared yourself for a career, you could have married the right woman and all that. Instead…. Well, those who have read my books know my life. I haven’t glossed over the ugly parts. Up all the wrong alleys, down all the wrong streets—yet how right I was!—until I came to the end of my tether.

  If it was a mistake not to finish school (it wasn’t!), it was an even worse mistake to go to work. (“Work! The word was so painful he couldn’t bring himself to pronounce it,” says a character in one of Cossery’s books.) Until I was almost eighteen I had known freedom, a relative freedom, which is more than most people ever get to know. (It included “freedom of speech,” which has hung over into my writing.) Then, like an idiot, I entered the lists. Overnight, as it were, the bit was put in my mouth, I was saddled, and the cruel rowels were dug into my tender flanks. It didn’t take long to realize what a shithouse I had let myself into. Every new job I took was a step further in the direction of “murder, death and blight.” I think of them still as prisons, whorehouses, lunatic asylums: the Atlas Portland Cement Co., the Federal Reserve Bank, the Bureau of Economic Research, the Charles Williams Mail Order House, the Western Union Telegraph Co., etc. To think that I wasted ten years of my life serving these anonymous lords and masters! That look of rapture in Pookie’s eyes, that look of supreme admiration which I reserved for such as Eddie Carney, Lester Reardon, Johnny Paul: it was gone, lost, buried. It returned only when, much later, I reached the point where I was completely cut off, thoroughly destitute, utterly abandoned. When I became the nameless one, wandering as a mendicant through th
e streets of my own home town. Then I began to see again, to look with eyes of wonder, eyes of love, into the eyes of my fellow-man. Perhaps because all the pride, the vanity, the arrogance with which I had been puffed up fell away. Possibly my “lords and masters” had unwittingly done me a good turn. Possibly….

  Anyway, in the interim since I turned writer—a good thirty years—I have hobnobbed with all varieties of man, from the highest to the lowest. I have known intimately saints and seers as well as those whom we disdainfully refer to as “the dregs of humanity.” I don’t know to which group I am the more indebted. But I do know this—if we were suddenly faced with an overwhelming calamity, if I had to choose just one man with whom I would share the rest of my life in the midst of chaos and destruction, I would pick that unknown Mexican peon whom my friend Doner brought one day to clear the weeds in our garden. I no longer remember his name, for he was truly without name.

  He, more than any saint, was the truly selfless individual. He was also the most handsome, in a spiritual sense. In behavior and appearance he was what the Christ would be like, I imagine, if He were to appear again on earth. (Has He ever left it?) There was that look in his eyes, and it never left him—not even in sleep, I would hazard—which Pookie displays on occasion. He was a gem, of the human realm, for which we have ceased to search. A gem we tread upon unthinkingly, as we would a weed or a stone, whilst hunting for uranium or some other currently “rare” mineral which will give us, idiots that we are, priority over the rest of the human race in the race toward annihilation.