Kim was not too absorbed in his own life not to take up my interests with alacrity, and the same morning I arrived he took Brown and me and a friend of Brown’s to luncheon in a luxurious French restaurant. Brown’s friend wanted translations done of some commercial advertising to be used in Chinese movies. As Kim had foreseen, here was some easy work for me, that could easily be forwarded from Boston to New York. Having been introduced by Kim, I was commissioned at once. So my business in New York was practically over. Kim said to wait a day or two and he would be going to Boston himself. We could go together. Helen, he hinted, might make one of the party. He said we would ask her at dinner that night. I looked forward to our trip with pleasurable anticipation, but by the middle of the afternoon, Kim was again in the depths of depression.
We took a long walk over Brooklyn Bridge and back. We paused on the bridge. I was thinking, “What a picture! The arched City Hall against the afternoon sunset, these long columns and these high towers. What different rhythm from the Grand Canal of Venice or the Hankang of Hanyang! How much more crowded and more vast! This city . . . this bridge. It links humanity to the world of mechanism, the world of mass production, this magnanimous gigantic structure. . . . All is the work of a short time, in a small space. It would have taken men in different ages hundreds of years to accomplish this. See what man has done, the changes made, here. Could nature herself with all her sweeping storms above and bursting volcanoes below affect earth so much? And what this bridge contains in people and things, spirit and matter! Where could you find that elsewhere over half a continent? The craftsman may have worked in deadening monotony, the engineer may have planned in routine formation. But the product emerges with individual creativeness, a monument to the American age. Precise, exact, swift, poignant, and powerful. It is like the swoop of the high falcon, like winged horses galloping down.”
While Kim looked down into the water as upon wounded marks in his own soul, “This island,” he muttered, “is rockbound. It can’t grow any more. Yet the inhabitants in it increase more and more. Probably it is no longer than the span of a century since the New York of today emerged, from rural farmlands where a few simple, contented people worked, out of green pastures which once fed innocent crows to cry ‘caw’! Now all the depraved creatures and exiled souls in humanity gather to help the big city’s growth and add to the radical scare. Harlem is no more a forest to walk in. The Battery is no more a bathing beach. How much has the salty water down there increased its salty volume through human tears? Probably not much . . . most New Yorkers are not like Kim to come out here and cry in it, they are too busy. This too is called evolution. Well, science that tries to explain the how-and-where of truth, from simple to complex, from particular to general, is no help to me. As for religion and philosophy, they bring us these headaches. Is man an image of heavenly pattern, vitalized with divine breath? Bless Helen, who would seem to think so. Is he a monkey developed to the higher level with added links? Bless Darwin, who enlightened us so much . . . and if so where could there be that dignified soul any more than in the crow whose wing I once broke? It doesn’t matter how we come here . . . the fact is, we are here. As for God, good, holy, infinite, the personification of highest aim and purest virtues . . . isn’t Helen all these to me? . . . But what is a drop of water in that mighty river which itself is eaten up and swelled by the ocean in that shadow of Lady Liberty? Why not cut the hearts and livers of fools out and feed them to some monster the way I eat chicken livers? That way, no more fools and no more heartbreak. Here, toss them to Lady Liberty.”
But when Helen came that night, Kim had changed again. He was subdued, tranquil, and joyous again. We all three took a taxi and went to some street, just where I can’t remember. It seemed that it was somewhere east of Sixth Avenue, maybe on 12th Street, or perhaps it was nearer to Fifth Avenue. As we came in from the outside, down a long dim corridor, we knocked with a little brass stick, and a man’s eye looked out through a narrow hole just the size of a slit in the posting box for letters. He immediately opened the door, so he must have known Kim by sight. The man was talking to Kim in some foreign language. Then we were led in and there was an imposing lady, stout and tall, in a black sequa-trimmed evening dress. She saluted Kim in a familiar voice:
“Buona sera, Signor. . . . Lei va bene, Signor?”
She spoke English too. She was talking English with other men who came in. She wore a perpetually easy and affable smile with frequent strong laughter. She appeared the good friend to everybody, and everybody in turn called her “Mumsey.” What Mumsey meant, I did not know. It may have meant Fat Lady, or the feminine master of the house. All looked at us. Helen’s arms were full of roses—Kim always had flowers for her, procured from a special Korean shop that he knew. Her face, gold red on white, appeared radiantly fresh here, among more artificial women. She was eager and simple like a freshman college girl, yet with that stand-offish attitude which to Kim was a great attraction. She and Kim looked an unusual pair. People there smiled, not at us but with us, everybody in a happy-go-lucky mood. Kim chose a table, took the roses, called by name to a waiter he knew to bring a vase of water. But we were not ready to sit down yet. Kim said, “This way we go and have some drinks.”
He led the way down a narrow stairway rather dark. The upper room I saw was meant for dining, although the waiters were bringing in drinks constantly there from that place below, too. Kim stepped down first, Helen followed him, and I followed her. She didn’t seem to have been in the place before, but she was quite at home. This was to me strange in view of New England morality and American prohibition. So I concluded that it was not bad etiquette, even among the puritanical, to dine at speakeasies, well-conducted ones as this appeared to be. Custom always can smooth out all inconsistencies, and generally it is custom rather than moral law that sways, as Kim earlier explained. Certainly Helen showed no sign of being inconsistent. Her slender form, which habitually had rapid movement always accompanied with a smile, moved proudly through, and one was proud to be seen with her there.
Now we were in a large basement room. It had an exit in front of an iron gate going up steps, but nobody came in that way, though a few were going out. A man employed by the speakeasy was working the door, letting people out. There were also several tables scattered over this room, and seats with tall black backs, and a few men and women drinking in happy and jolly topsy-turvy mood, some singly and some doubly, and others triadly or fourly, fively. There was a long bar running at one end, and some ladies and men standing there and drinking. A good-looking, sociable young man waited on the bar. Behind him back of the bar were pictures of Jimmy Walker, many movie actresses, actors, fighters, etc., all autographed. Around the room were signs written in several languages, meaning, it seems, “Your health.” Kim asked what we wanted. Helen said reluctantly, “Beer.” And I, “Ginger ale.” The man at the bar looked surprised at me and asked, “Ginger ale with what?” So I said, “With water.” Everybody around us laughed. Helen said, “You’d better have this,” and pointed to her beer runner. I said, “Yes.” For himself, Kim ordered a smaller glass, something yellowish-white with a red cherry dangling on top. This was the first beer I was to taste. Kim and Helen took up their glasses, so I took mine, and we all touched glasses, and Kim and Helen said, “Prosit.” We drank. The beer was awfully bitter—vile stuff, I thought. It was not even so good as tasteless water, and certainly worse than argyrol in the nose, which I had had once, up in Green Grove while sick. I almost spit that first mouthful out of my mouth. But I pretended to drink, and sipped in each time in quantity about the size of the tiniest bead—then more—and a little more. We stood there, and Helen and Kim amused themselves by reading the signs in different languages over the walls. Kim seemed to know them all, Helen only English, German, and French. Then he taught her how to say “Prosit” in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, which three, however, were not there.
Kim finished his small glass quickly, and ordered a
nother. At last Helen finished hers, and Kim ordered that repeated too. Then they looked at my glass and asked me what was the matter. I said it was bitter and not like the rice wine in the Orient. But I knew it must have been the same kind that Helen drank, because it came out of the same spigot, and she seemed to like it. So I restored my courage and took a big mouthful and shut my eyes and swallowed, as if I were taking cod-liver oil. Kim and Helen laughed. But the method worked. And beer didn’t taste so bitter now. I tried once more and it was not at all bitter—rather it was the bitter taste that is melIow and suave, with echoes of sweet. Now my beer was all gone. Kim promptly got me another. I drank that much more quickly. It made my tongue more elastic, my eyes more visionary, my head more dreamy. I began to see how Kim could make such good soliloquies. With drink it was not hard to be Shakespearean. I, too, felt ready to see “Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.”
“It’s very strong beer,” Helen said. “Something is added.” She left most of her second glass, but I drank mine.
My stomach was a bit full. But I knew I was not sick. Oh, I had the brain to think, but I could not stand up by myself. I grasped the edge of a stool and waited. I knew what I was doing, but my legs did not seem to know what they were doing. I tried to move them, and they did not support my body very well. I was thinking how I would be able to carry myself upstairs without any embarrassment. I still held to the stool tightly for fear that I might fall. I guess the other two did not know how I was feeling. Kim said, “We will have dinner now.” So I thought I should not have taken so many pretzels while beering my stomach. But we started up. Helen went ahead. Kim led me, to follow. My lord, it was going to be hard! I grasped the edge of the bar from my stool and I measured from the bar to the wall, then from the wall to the stairway. Well, it was not so hard as I at first supposed. And luckily the table was not far from the stairway, back in a little corner quite secluded. Here the roses were waiting. On our table was a dim lamplight, and against the wall beside the lamp, the roses. We sat in a triangular way, no one facing the other but semi-facing, all in profile.
Helen took out a little case from her bag and smoothed her neatly pointed nose. I think she was not drunk, for she was just the same, speaking neither more nor less. Only Kim and I seemed to be drunk, he on his yellow-white stuff, I on beer. He was a changeable personality. One must think of him as a complete pessimist, except that on certain occasions he could become as inwardly joyous as a little child. Tonight it looked as if he did not know whether he were happy or miserable.
It got late, but we were still eating dinner, there were so many courses. Afterwards, we had coffee, and then Kim ordered for us all three liqueurs too. Over the liqueurs, he talked: “This time tomorrow night, we will be upon the sea. Under us, all around us, there will be nothing . . . no nationality, no civilization, only sea . . . out of the human world, into the mermaids’ world. . . . Yes, I always wanted to see mermaids singing and combing their green hair down underneath on blue rocks. . . . Perhaps I have let the crashing waves and perilous rocks disillusion me as to those mermaids, fancies only on the lips of outlived poets. Yet I know well what they should look like. . . . Mermaids are dressed in beautiful dress and carry silk fans of fish fins. They wear necklaces of pearls still wet and living out of oyster shells. They never feel cold. They think it is fun to leap out like the flying fish through rain showers, then they wring themselves out again under the sea. If ever you got their coat, it would be good material for your raincoat. Better than synthetic rubber. Better than Korean straw. Mermaids swim better than they walk. They can sing better than Whitman. They eat crabs and lobsters. But not chickens and steaks. Sometimes I wish to go to the mermaid universe . . . marry a mermaid . . . and learn to sing her song. Won’t I miss chickens? Chickens such as we ate just now? Never mind, there is sure to be drink. . . . I wonder if she has good drink . . . as good as your Western whisky and martini. . . . Mermaid’s drink . . . I will look it up on this drink-card. . . . By God, it is not here! though I see everything else. . . . I ask your advice, shall I take my Korean silver cup-bowl and candlesticks to the sea? They might be rare down there, that realm knows no East or West. . . . No, I will not pack up my lofty objects. . . . I will give them to my old charwoman, with my heavy German books by Spengler and Kant. . . . Has she any use for them, I wonder? Well, I have none, for I will enter the mermaid universe . . . one good in poetry would not be barren there, their muses have a swifter wing . . .” and on and on he spoke, nonsense like this.
Every now and then a waiter ran up from downstairs carrying little trays with glasses. The place was not crowded, but still there was a good number of people, drinking and talking and laughing at their different tables. Mumsey was a member of many of these parties. Finally she came over to us and apologized in a whisper for the room being noisy. She looked at one man, rather elderly with bald head, drinking and singing and staying a long time.
“Far niente. It makes no difference. Your place is very nice,” Kim said in Italian. “But tell me,” he continued in English, “Who is that gentleman making his night home here lately all the time?”
Mumsey said: “That is Professor X, a very well-known writer, who was an editor.” (She mentioned a very proper woman’s periodical.) “You know professional men—businessmen—if married, are very happy when their wives’ vacation comes. Mrs. X is visiting some relatives in Boston, where she goes home every year. She and her husband come here sometimes together, but then he never gets to go downstairs, and has to return home early. It is she who keeps him quiet, and makes him go away early to bed, so miserably. But now that he’s alone, he’s having such a good time here! Look at his innocent pleasure! That, you see, is the married man’s vacation. Some do lots worse. The whole trouble is, she tries to make him be a nice gentleman and he has to go through the whole thing, even not swear, except on the golf links on Saturday afternoons. But every year he makes it up like this. See! That she objects to. Well, she may be back any time now, and he will be so different.”
That old man was really very funny. He quoted Virgil in Latin and Sophocles in Greek and Shakespeare in English. He was a friend of the waiters, of Mumsey, and of the man at the bar. He was going around, talking to everybody, sitting now here, now there, as if he were the host. And now he tried to wrestle with the waiter.
We took Helen back about midnight and set her down at the Browns’ door without going in. Then Kim dismissed the taxi and we walked back. I saw Kim’s mood had changed again. Joy and hope had abandoned him as if forever. A taxi skidded by us holding two amorous people clasped in each other’s arms. “Taxi love!” exclaimed Kim, with hollow laugh. “Why not taxi birth and death? Does it read like the legends of Chin, the myths of Arabia or the fables of Greece? But all twentieth-century matter of fact in New York City.”
I tried to cheer him up with thoughts of our trip on the boat next night, though I wondered what he intended to do in Boston when he got Helen there. Kim was not to be moved from despondency, and answered my optimism, “Yes, why does not God give me a pair of rosy-colored glasses, too? The ones that Alice in Wonderland wore, for instance! Maybe Alice’s glasses were operated by English angels, mine by heathen devils. . . . Christians say angels are happy in heaven and devils breathe out the cry of hellish anguish, heart-sick and mind out of order. Even a beautiful September night seems to me like an ominous gloomy one. Serene moonlight above is a flatterer. Aha, Macbeth and King John reign in this night air for me! And yet I don’t know that I want Alice looking glasses. It takes a greater eye to see the irony of the world. I prefer the noble Don Quixote’s history. When this noble knight charges through ghosts and clouds to sure defeat, how could one retain the innocent heart of Alice in Wonderland?”
By the time we reached his apartment, Kim seemed back in the don’t-care mood of the Buddhist, everything one. “Well, in the long run of history, what does this heartache matter? Life—‘like a dream, like a vision, like a bubble, like a
shadow, like dew, like lightning,’ as the Lady Chou, dying, said. We’ll light candles, and try to warm ourselves in ghostly flame. Buddhism and I both died in the land that gave us birth. Still its candles, so many candles (he pointed) burn here over the shrines of strangers. . . . Well, well, a mighty dream of life to him who found it once. . . . To Asoka and Wu Ti. O yes, enlightened Sakamuni! Let us not doubt: once under that pippala branch and morning star, the mystic dawn did come to that ascetic Gautama. But that was long ago. In the twentieth century on the cold hard pavement, worlds and centuries away, what of it? Here we are in the agony of the dreadful night, dream-haunted, solitary, as the babe that has never smiled, yet filled with the lonely experience of weary old age. Empty grumblings, rhythmic rumblings. Sight may not come again. Old man, poor man . . . dawn is too far ahead. But bow. We should bow to our ancestral candles. . . . Nami Abitapool! Boundless grace! All love! All humanity! . . . Oh, to the man in dreary darkness, will there come a star?”
5
So the tickets for Boston were bought. Helen came in a taxi with bags, having left the Browns as if she were boarding the evening train for Boston. Apparently she and Kim had not taken even the Browns into their confidence about this trip to Boston. Her aunt in New York had made a great deal of trouble about Kim, and except the Browns everybody in Helen’s family was passionately stirred up. This had happened only recently. Now Helen was going home to face the trouble and try to persuade them to have a different attitude toward Kim. Kim had no such illusion. But he could not bear to wait in New York, and I think he had some idea of getting her to fly off to Europe with him, or somewhere far away from their grasp.
The boat was not at all crowded. The holiday people had all returned. And Labor Day’s rush was over. Neither had the students started back in a body for the college campus. All others but ourselves on the boat looked like business people. In the bow of the boat, alien and isolated, Helen and Kim stood, arm in arm like two people walking intimately down a country lane together, suddenly frozen immobile. I left them to themselves, and stood apart watching the sunset which was painting on the sea canvas a lake of fire. Colors became ever more brilliant, yellows and Aztec scarlets making the universe strange. Sea birds wove toward us and away. The boat glided through waves of gold and blood, as if travelling out in sacrifice to a cruel god. I took a walk and came back again. The sky and sea had softened and grown tender. A blue hour with the lilacs of New England, and the pearly luster of an Autumn moon. Helen and Kim stood as before. They were not saying much, only a word now and then. All that I got was pantomime. Helen’s eyes seemed to be full of tears. I know, for Kim put his finger to her cheek and showed her the moisture which came off on his finger, gently shaking his head.
East Goes West Page 31
