I’ll just stop in, he thought, and see if there are any messages; I’ll see if there have been any phone calls. He hadn’t been back to the hotel, after all, for – let’s see – for almost five hours; just wandering around. There might be some messages. I’ll just stop in, he thought, and see; and maybe I’ll have one brandy. I don’t want to sit there in the lobby again and drink brandy; I don’t want to do that.
He didn’t go through the revolving doors of the hotel, though. He went on past the hotel and over to Broadway. A man asked him for some money. A shabbily dressed woman walked by, muttering. She had what he called the New York Mouth, a grim, set mouth, a strained, querulous mouth, a mouth that told of suffering and discontent. He looked in the window of a cane-and-umbrella shop and in the window of a cheap restaurant, a window holding artificial pie and cake, a cup of cold coffee, a plate of artificial vegetables. He got into the shoving and pushing and halting and slow flowing of Broadway. A big cop with a red face was striking his hands together and kidding with a couple of girls whom he had kept from crossing the street against a red light. A thin man in a thin overcoat watched them out of thin, emotionless eyes.
It was a momentary diversion to stand in front of the book counter in the drugstore at Forty-fifth Street and Broadway and look at the books, cheap editions of ancient favourites, movie editions of fairly recent best-sellers. He picked up some of the books and opened them and put them down again, but there was nothing he wanted to read. He walked over to the soda counter and sat down and asked for hot chocolate. It warmed him up a little and he thought about going to the movie at the Paramount; it was a movie with action and guns and aeroplanes, and Myrna Loy, the kind of movie that didn’t bother you. He walked down to the theatre and stood there a minute, but he didn’t buy a ticket. After all, he had been to one movie that day. He thought about going to the office. It would be quiet there, nobody would be there; maybe he could get some work done; maybe he could answer some of the letters he had been putting off for so long.
It was too gloomy, it was too lonely. He looked around the office for a while, sat down at his typewriter, tapped out the alphabet on a sheet of paper, took a paper-clip, straightened it, cleaned the ‘e’ and the ‘o’ on the typewriter, and put the cover over it. He never remembered to put the cover over the typewriter when he left in the evening. I never, as a matter of fact, remember anything, he thought. It is because I keep trying not to; I keep trying not to remember anything. It is an empty and cowardly thing, not to remember. It might lead you anywhere; no, it might stop you, it might stop you from getting anywhere. Out of remembrance comes everything; out of remembrance comes a great deal, anyway. You can’t do anything if you don’t let yourself remember things. He began to whistle a song because he found himself about to remember things, and he knew what things they would be, things that would bring a grimace to his mouth and to his eyes, disturbing fragments of old sentences, old scenes and gestures, hours, and rooms, and tones of voice, and the sound of a voice crying. All voices cry differently; there are no two voices in the whole world that cry alike; they’re like footsteps and fingerprints and the faces of friends …
He became conscious of the song he was whistling. He got up from the chair in front of his covered typewriter, turned out the light, and walked out of the room to the elevator, and there he began to sing the last part of the song, waiting for the elevator. ‘Make my bed and light the light, for I’ll be home late tonight, blackbird, bye bye.’ He walked over to his hotel through the slush and the damp gloom and sat down in a chair in the lobby, without taking off his overcoat. He didn’t want to sit there long.
‘Good evening, sir,’ said the waiter who looked after the guests in the lobby. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. I’ll have a brandy, with water on the side.’
He had several brandies. Nobody came into the lobby that he knew. People were gone to all kinds of places Sunday night. He hadn’t looked at his letter box back of the clerk’s desk when he came in, to see if there were any messages there. That was a kind of game he played, or something. He never looked for messages until after he had had a brandy. He’d look now after he had another brandy. He had another brandy and looked. ‘Nothing,’ said the clerk at the desk, looking too.
He went back to his chair in the lobby and began to think about calling up people. He thought of the Graysons. He saw the Graysons, not as they would be, sitting in their apartment, close together and warmly, but as he and Lydia had seen them in another place and another year. The four had shared a bright vacation once. He remembered various attitudes and angles and lights and colours of that vacation. There is something about four people, two couples, that like each other and get along; that have a swell time; that grow in intimacy and understanding. One’s life is made up of twos, and of fours. The Graysons understood the nice little arrangements of living, the twos and fours. Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.
No, not the Graysons. Somebody would be there on Sunday night, some couple, some two; somebody he knew, somebody they had known. That is the way life is arranged. One arranges one’s life – no, two arrange their life – in terms of twos, and fours, and sixes. Marriage does not make two people one, it makes two people two. It’s sweeter that way, and simpler. All this, he thought, summoning the waiter, is probably very silly and sentimental. I must look out that I don’t get to that state of tipsiness where all silly and lugubrious things seem brilliant divinations of mine, sound and original ideas and theories. What I must remember is that such things are sentimental and tiresome and grow out of not working enough and out of too much brandy. That’s what I must remember. It is no good remembering that it takes four to make a party, two to make a house.
People living alone, after all, have made a great many things. Let’s see, what have people living alone made? Not love, of course, but a great many other things: money, for example, and black marks on white paper. ‘Make this one a double-brandy,’ he told the waiter. Let’s see, who that I know has made something alone, who that I know of has made something alone? Robert Browning? No, not Robert Browning. Odd, that Robert Browning would be the first person he thought of. ‘And had you only heard me play one tune, or viewed me from a window, not so soon with you would such things fade as with the rest.’ He had written that line of Browning’s in a book once for Lydia, or Lydia had written it in a book for him; or they had both written it in a book for each other. ‘Not so soon with you would such things fade as with the rest.’ Maybe he didn’t have it exactly right; it was hard to remember now, after so long a time. It didn’t matter. ‘Not so soon with you would such things fade as with the rest.’ The fact is that all things do fade; with twos, and with fours; all bright things, all attitudes and angles and lights and colours, all growing in intimacy and understanding.
I think maybe I’ll call the Bradleys, he thought, getting up out of his chair. And don’t, he said to himself, standing still a moment, don’t tell me you’re not cockeyed now, because you are cockeyed now, just as you said you wouldn’t be when you got up this morning and had orange juice and coffee and determined to get some work done, a whole lot of work done; just as you said you wouldn’t be but you knew you would be, all right. You knew you would be, all right.
The Bradleys, he thought, as he walked slowly around the lobby, avoiding the phone booths, glancing at the headlines of the papers on the newsstand, the Bradleys have that four-square thing, that two-square thing – that two-square thing, God damn them! Somebody described it once in a short story that he had read: an intimacy that you could feel, that you could almost take hold of, when you went into such a house, when you went into where such people were, a warming thing, a nice thing to be in, like being in warm sea water, a little embarrassing, too, yes, damned embarrassing, too. He would only take a damp blanket into that warmth. That’s what I’d take into that warmth, he told himself, a damp blanket. They know it, too. Here comes old Kirk
again with his damp blanket. It isn’t because I’m so damned unhappy – I’m not so damned unhappy – it’s because they’re so damned happy, damn them. Why don’t they know that? Why don’t they do something about it? What right have they got to flaunt it at me, for God’s sake? … Look here now, he told himself,’ you’re getting too cockeyed now; you’re getting into one of those states, you’re getting into one of those states that Marianne keeps telling you about, one of those states when people don’t like to have you around … Marianne, he thought. He went back to his chair, ordered another brandy, and thought about Marianne.
She doesn’t know how I start my days, he thought, she only knows how I end them. She doesn’t even know how I started my life. She only knows me when night gets me. If. I could only be the person she wants me to be, why, then I would be fine, I would be fine, I would be the person she wants me to be. Like ordering a new dress from a shop, a new dress that nobody ever wore, a new dress that nobody’s ever going to wear but you. I wouldn’t get mad suddenly, about nothing. I wouldn’t walk out of places suddenly, about nothing. I wouldn’t snarl at nice people. About what she says is nothing. I wouldn’t be ‘unbearable’. Her word ‘unbearable’. A female word, female as a cat. Well, she’s right, too. I am unbearable. ‘George,’ he said to the waiter, ‘I am unbearable, did you know that?’ ‘No, sir, I did not, sir,’ said the waiter. ‘I would not call you unbearable, Mr Kirk.’ ‘Well, you don’t know, George,’ he said. ‘It just happens that I am unbearable. It just happened that way. It’s a long story.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said the waiter.
I could call up the Mortons, he thought. They’ll have twos and fours there, too, but they’re not so damned happy that they’re unbearable. The Mortons are all right. Now look, the Mortons had said to him, if you and Marianne would only stop fighting and arguing and forever analysing yourselves and forever analysing everything, you’d be fine. You’d be fine if you got married and just shut up, just shut up and got married. That would be fine. Yes, sir, that would be fine. Everything would work out all right. You just shut up and get married, you just get married and shut up. Everybody knows that. It is practically the simplest thing in the world…. Well, it would be, too, if you were twenty-five maybe, it would be if you were twenty-five, and not forty.
‘George,’ he said, when the waiter walked over for his empty glass, ‘I will be forty-one next November.’ ‘But that’s not old, sir, and that’s a long way off,’ said George. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s almost here. So is forty-two and forty-three and fifty, and here I am trying to be – do you know what I’m trying to be, George? I’m trying to be happy.’ ‘We all want to be happy, sir,’ said George. ‘I would like to see you happy, sir.’ ‘Oh, you will,’ he said. ‘You will, George. There’s a simple trick to it. You just shut up and get married. But you see, George, I am an analyser. I am also a rememberer. I have a pocketful of old used years. You put all those things together and they sit in a lobby getting silly and old.’ ‘I’m very sorry, sir’ said George.
‘And I’ll have one more drink, George,’ he called after the waiter.
He had one more drink. When he looked up at the clock in the lobby it was only 9.30. He went up to his room and, feeling sleepy, he lay down on his bed without turning out the overhead light. When he woke up it was 12.30 by his wristwatch. He got up and washed his face and brushed his teeth and put on a clean shirt and another suit and went back down into the lobby, without looking at the disarranged papers on the tables and on the desk. He went into the dining-room and had some soup and a lamb chop and a glass of milk. There was nobody there he knew. He began to realize that he had to see somebody he knew. He paid his check and went out and got into a cab and gave the driver an address on Fifty-third Street.
There were several people in Dick and Joe’s that he knew. There were Dick and Joe, for two – or, rather, for one, because he always thought of them as one; he could never tell them apart. There were Bill Vardon and Mary Wells. Bill Vardon and Mary Wells were a little drunk and gay. He didn’t know them very well, but he could sit down with them….
It was after three o’clock when he left the place and got into a cab. ‘How are you tonight, Mr Kirk?’ asked the driver. The driver’s name was Willie. ‘I’m fine tonight, Willie,’ he said. ‘You want to go on somewheres else?’ asked Willie. ‘Not tonight, Willie,’ he said. ‘I’m going home.’ ‘Well,’ said Willie, ‘I guess you’re right there, Mr Kirk. I guess you’re right about that. These places is all right for what they are – you know what I mean – it’s O.K. to kick around in ’em for a while and maybe have a few drinks with your friends, but when you come right down to it, home is the best place there is. Now, you take me, I’m hackin’ for ten years, mostly up around here – because why? Because all these places know me; you know that, Mr Kirk. I can get into ’em you might say the same way you do, Mr Kirk – I have me a couple drinks in Dick and Joe’s maybe or in Tony’s or anywheres else I want to go into – hell, I’ve had drinks in ’em with you, Mr Kirk – like on Christmas night, remember? But I got a home over in Brooklyn and a wife and a couple kids and, boy, I’m tellin’ you that’s the best place, you know what I mean?’
‘You’re right, Willie,’ he said. ‘You’re absolutely right, there.’
‘You’re darn tootin’ I am,’ said Willie. ‘These joints is all right when a man wants a couple drinks or maybe even get a little tight with his friends, that’s O.K. with me – ’
‘Getting tight with friends is O.K. with me, too,’ he said to Willie.
‘But when a man gets fed up on that kind of stuff, a man wants to go home. Am I right, Mr Kirk?’
‘You’re absolutely right, Willie,’ he said. ‘A man wants to go home.’
‘Well, here we are, Mr Kirk. Home it is.’
He got out of the cab and gave the driver a dollar and told him to keep the change and went into the lobby of the hotel. The night clerk gave him his key and then put two fingers into the recesses of the letter box. ‘Nothing,’ said the night clerk.
When he got to his room, he lay down on the bed a while and smoked a cigarette. He found himself feeling drowsy and he got up. He began to take his clothes off, feeling drowsily contented, mistily contented. He began to sing, not loudly, because the man in 711 would complain. The man in 711 was a grey-haired man, living alone … an analyser … a rememberer …
‘Make my bed and light the light, for I’ll be home late tonight …’
5
MY LIFE AND HARD TIMES
Preface to a Life
Benvenuto Cellini said that a man should be at least forty years old before he undertakes so fine an enterprise as that of setting down the story of his life. He said also that an autobiographer should have accomplished something of excellence. Nowadays nobody who has a typewriter pays any attention to the old master’s quaint rules. I myself have accomplished nothing of excellence except a remarkable and, to some of my friends, unaccountable expertness in hitting empty ginger ale bottles with small rocks at a distance of thirty paces. Moreover, I am not yet forty years old. But the grim date moves toward me apace; my legs are beginning to go, things blur before my eyes, and the faces of the rose-lipped maids I knew in my twenties are misty as dreams.
At forty my faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening, leaving me unable to write my memoirs with a fitting and discreet inaccuracy or, having written them, unable to carry them to the publisher’s. A writer verging into the middle years lives in dread of losing his way to the publishing house and wandering down to the Bowery or the Battery, there to disappear like Ambrose Bierce. He has sometimes also the kindred dread of turning a sudden corner and meeting himself sauntering along in the opposite direction. I have known writers at this dangerous and tricky age to phone their homes from their offices, or their offices from their homes, ask for themselves in a low tone, and then, having fortunately discovered that they were ‘out’, to collapse in hard-breathing relief. This is particularly true of write
rs of light pieces running from a thousand to two thousand words.
The notion that such persons are gay of heart and carefree is curiously untrue. They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats. Afraid of losing themselves in the larger flight of the two-volume novel, or even the one-volume novel, they stick to short accounts of their misadventures because they never get so deep into them but that they feel they can get out. This type of writing is not a joyous form of self-expression but the manifestation of a twitchiness at once cosmic and mundane. Authors of such pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbours, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends. To call such persons ‘humourists’, a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature. The little wheels of their invention are set in motion by the damp hand of melancholy.
The Thurber Carnival Page 20
