Saga Of Arturo Bandini - Ask The Dust Part 8

But there were ways and means, and that sick man out in the desert was going to get his too. I'll get you, Sammy. I'll cut you to pieces, I'll make you wish you were dead and buried a long time ago. The pen is mightier than the sword, Sammy boy, but the pen of Arturo Bandini is mightier still. Because my time has come, Sir. And now you get yours.

I sat down and read his stories. I made notes on every line and sentence and paragraph of it. The writing was pretty terrible, a first effort, clumsy stuff, vague, jerky, absurd. Hour after hour I sat there consuming cigarettes and laughing wildly at Sammy's efforts, gloating over them, rubbing my hands together gleefully. Oh boy, would I lay him low! I jumped up and strutted around the room, shadow-boxing: take that, Sammy boy, and that, and how do you like this left hook, and how do you like this right cross, zingo, bingo, bang, biff, blooey!

I turned around and saw the crease on the bed where Camilla had been seated, the sensuous contour where her thighs and hips had sunk beneath the softness of the blue chenille bedspread. Then I forgot Sammy, and wild with longing I threw myself upon my knees before the spot and kissed it reverently.

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'Camilla, I love you!'

And when I had worn the sensation to vaporous nothingness, I got up, disgusted with myself, black awful Arturo Bandini, black vile dog.

I sat down and grimly went to work on my letter of criticism to Sammy.

Dear Sammy, That little wh.o.r.e was here tonight; you know, Sammy, the little Greaser dame with a wonderful figure and a mind for a moron. She presented me with certain alleged writings purportedly written by yourself. Furthermore she stated the man with the scythe is about to mow you under. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances I would call this a tragic situation. But having read the bile your ma.n.u.scripts contain, let me speak for the world at large and say at once that your departure is everybody's good fortune. You can't write, Sammy, I suggest you concentrate on the business of putting your idiotic soul in order these last days before you leave a world that sighs with relief at your departure. I wish I could honestly say that I hate to see you go. I wish too that, like myself, you could endow posterity with something like a monument to your days upon this earth. But since this is so obviously impossible, let me urge you to be without bitterness in your final days. Destiny has indeed been unkind to you. Like the rest of the world, I suppose you too are glad that in a short time all will be finished, and the ink spot you have splattered will never be examined from a larger view. I speak for all sensible, civilized men when I urge you to burn this ma.s.s of literary manure and thereafter stay away from pen 142.

and ink. If you have a typewriter, the same holds true; because even the typing in this ma.n.u.script is a disgrace. If, however, you persist in your pitiful desire to write, by all means send me the pap you compose. I found at least you are amusing. Not deliberately, of course.

There it was, finished, devastating. I folded the ma.n.u.scripts, placed the note with them inside a big envelope, sealed it, addressed it to Samuel Wiggins, General Delivery, San Juan, California, stamped it, and shoved it into my back pocket. Then I went upstairs and out of the lobby to the mailbox on the corner. It was a little after three o'clock of an incomparable morning. The blue and white of stars and sky were like desert colours, a gentleness so stirring I had to pause and wonder that it could be so lovely. Not a blade of the dirty palms stirred. Not a sound was to be heard.

All that was good in me thrilled in my heart at that moment, all that I hoped for in the profound, obscure meaning of my existence. Here was the endlessly mute placidity of nature, indifferent to the great city; here was the desert beneath these streets, around these streets, waiting for the city to die, to cover it with timeless sand once more. There came over me a terrifying sense of understanding about the meaning and the pathetic destiny of men. The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pa.s.s into the darkness. Then men seemed brave to me, and I was proud to be numbered among them. All the evil of the world seemed not evil at all, but inevitable and good and part of that endless struggle to keep the desert down.

I looked southward in the direction of the big stars, and I knew that in that direction lay the Santa Ana desert, that under the big stars in a shack lay a man like myself, who 143.

would probably be swallowed by the desert sooner than I, and in my hand I held an effort of his, an expression of his struggle against the implacable silence towards which he was being hurled. Murderer or bartender or writer, it didn't matter: his fate was the common fate of all, his finish my finish; and here tonight in this city of darkened windows were other millions like him and like me: as indistinguishable as dying blades of gra.s.s. Living was hard enough. Dying was a supreme task. And Sammy was soon to die.

I stood at the mailbox, my head against it, and grieved for Sammy, and for myself, and for all the living and the dead. Forgive me, Sammy! Forgive a fool! I walked back to my room and spent three hours writing the best criticism of his work I could possibly write. I didn't say that this was wrong or that was wrong. I kept saying, in my opinion this would be better if, and so forth, and so forth. I got to sleep about six o'clock, but it was a grateful, happy sleep. How wonderful I really was! A great, soft-spoken, gentle man, a lover of all things, man and beast alike.

Chapter Fifteen.

I didn't see her again for a week. In the meantime I got a letter from Sammy, thanking me for the corrections. Sammy, her true love. He also sent some advice: how was I getting along with the Little Spick? She wasn't a bad dame, not bad at all when the lights were out, but the trouble with you, Mr Bandini, is that you don't know how to handle her. You're too nice to that girl. You don't understand Mexican women. They don't like to be treated like human beings. If you're nice to them, they walk all over you.

I worked on the book, pausing now and then to re-read his letter. I was reading it the night she came again. It was about midnight, and she walked in without knocking.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said.

I said, 'h.e.l.lo, Stupid.'

'Working?' she said.

'What does it look like?' I said.

'Mad?' she said.

'No,' I said. 'Just disgusted.'

'With me?'

'Naturally,' I said. 'Look at yourself.'

Under her jacket was the white smock. It was spotted, stained. One of her stockings was loose, wrinkled at the ankles. Her face seemed tired, some of the lip rouge having 145.

vanished. The coat she wore was dotted with lint and dust. She was perched on cheap high heels.

'You try so hard to be an American,' I said. 'Why do you do that? Take a look at yourself.'

She went to the mirror, studied herself gravely. 'I'm tired,' she said. 'We were busy tonight.'

'It's those shoes,' I said. 'You ought to wear what your feet were meant to wear - huaraches. And all that paint on your face. You look awful - a cheap imitation of an American. You look frowsy. If I were a Mexican I'd knock your head off. You're a disgrace to your people.'

'Who are you to talk like that?' she said. 'I'm just as much an American as you are. Why, you're not an American at all. Look at your skin. You're dark like Eyetalians. And your eyes, they're black.'

'Brown,' I said.

'They're not either. They're black. Look at your hair. Black.'

'Brown,' I said.

She took off her coat, threw herself on the bed and stuck a cigarette in her mouth. She began to rumble and search for a match. There was a pack beside me on the desk. She waited for me to hand them to her.

'You're not crippled,' I said. 'Get them yourself.'

She lit a cigarette and smoked in silence, her stare at the ceiling, smoke tumbling from her nostrils in quiet agitation. It was foggy outside. Far away came the sound of a police siren.

'Thinking of Sammy?' I said.

'Maybe.'

'You don't have to think of him here. You can always leave, you know.'

146 She snubbed out the cigarette, twisted and gutted it and her words had the same effect. 'Jesus, you're nasty,' she said. 'You must be awfully unhappy.'

'You're crazy.'

She lay with her legs crossed. The tops of her rolled stockings and an inch or two of dark flesh showed where the white smock ended. Her hair spilled over the pillow like a bottle of overturned ink. She lay on her side, watching me out of the depth of the pillow. She smiled. She lifted her hand and wagged her finger at me.

'Come here, Arturo,' she said. It was a warm voice.

I waved my hand.

'No thanks. I'm comfortable.'

For five minutes she watched me stare through the window. I might have touched her, held her in my arms; yes, Arturo, it was only a matter of getting out of the chair and stretching out beside her, but there was the night at the beach and the sonnet on the floor and the telegram of love and I remembered them like nightmares filling the room.

'Scared?' she said.

'Of you?' I laughed.

'You are,' she said.

'No I'm not.'

She opened her arms and all of her seemed to open to me. but it only closed me deeper into myself, carrying with me the image of her at that time, how lush and soft she was.

'Look,' I said. 'I'm busy. Look.' I patted the pile of ma.n.u.script beside the typewriter.

'You're afraid, too.'

'Of what?'

'Me.'

'Pooh.'

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Silence.

'There's something wrong with you,' she said.

'What?'

'You're queer.'

I got up and stood over her.

'That's a lie,' I said.

We lay there. She was forcing it with her scorn, the kiss she gave me, the hard curl of her lips, the mockery of her eyes, until I was like a man made of wood and there was no feeling within me except terror and a fear of her, a sense that her beauty was too much, that she was so much more beautiful than I, deeper rooted than I. She made me a stranger unto myself, she was all of those calm nights and tall eucalyptus trees, the desert stars, that land and sky, that fog outside, and I had come there with no purpose save to be a mere writer, to get money, to make a name for myself and all that piffle. She was so much finer than I, so much more honest, that I was sick of myself and I could not look at her warm eyes, I suppressed the shiver brought on by her brown arms around my neck and the long fingers in my hair. I did not kiss her. She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. Then she took my wrist with her two hands. She pressed her lips into the palm of my hand. She placed my hand upon her bosom between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She turned her lips towards my face and waited. And Arturo Bandini, the great author dipped deep into his colourful imagination, romantic Arturo Bandini, just chock-full of clever phrases, and he said, weakly, kittenishly, 'h.e.l.lo.'

'h.e.l.lo?' she answered, making a question of it. 'h.e.l.lo?' And she laughed. 'Well, how are you?'

Oh that Arturo! That spinner of tales.

'Swell,' he said.

148 And now what? Where was the desire and the pa.s.sion? She would go away in a little while and then it would come. But my G.o.d, Arturo. You can't do that! Recall your marvellous predecessors! Measure to your standards. I felt her groping hands, and I groped to discourage them, to hold them in pa.s.sionate fear. Once more she kissed me. She might have given her lips to a cold boiled ham. I was miserable.

She pushed me away.

'Get away,' she said. 'Let me go.'

The disgust, the terror and humiliation burned in me, and I would not let go. I clung to her, forced the cold of my mouth against her warmth, and she fought with me to break away, and I lay there holding her, my face in her shoulder, ashamed to show it. Then I felt her scorn grow to hatred as she struggled, and it was then that I wanted her, held her and pleaded with her, and with each wrench of her black rage my desire mounted and I was happy, saying hooray for Arturo, joy and strength, strength through joy, the delicious sense of it, the rapturous self-satisfaction, the delight to know that I could possess her now if I wished. But I did not wish it, for I had had my love. Dazzled I had been by the power and joy of Arturo Bandini. I released her, took my hand from her mouth, and jumped off the bed.

She sat there, the white of saliva at the ends of her mouth, her teeth gritted, her hands pulling at her long hair, her face fighting off a scream, but it didn't matter; she could scream if she liked, for Arturo Bandini wasn't queer, there was nothing at all wrong with Arturo Bandini; why, he had a pa.s.sion like six men, that boy, he had felt it coming to the surface: some guy, mighty writer, mighty lover; right with the world, right with his prose.

I watched her straighten her dress, watched her stand up, 149.

panting and frightened, and go to the mirror and look at herself, as though to make sure it was really herself.

'You're no good,' she said.

I sat down and chewed on a fingernail.

'I thought you were something else,' she said. 'I hate rough stuff.'

Rough stuff: pooh. What did it matter what she thought? The big thing was proved: I could have had her, and whatever she thought was not important. I was something else besides a great writer: I was no longer afraid of her: I could look into her face as a man should look into the face of a woman. She left without speaking again. I sat in a dream of delight, an orgy of comfortable confidence: the world was so big, so full of things I could master. Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets, I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen yet, and that Camilla, she can have her Sammy in the desert, with his cheap short stories and stinking prose, but wait until she has a taste of me, because it will happen, as sure as there's a G.o.d in heaven.

I don't remember. Maybe a week pa.s.sed, maybe two weeks. I knew she would return. I did not wait. I lived my life. I wrote a few pages. I read a few books. I was serene: she would come back. It would be at night. I never thought of her as a thing to be considered by daylight. The many times I had seen her, none had been in the day. I expected her like I expected the moon.

She did come. This time I heard pebbles plinking off my windowpane. I opened the window wide, and there she stood on the hillside, a sweater over her white ap.r.o.n. Her mouth was open slightly as she gazed up at me.

'What you doing?' she said.

'Just sitting here.'

'You mad at me?'

'No. You mad at me?'

She laughed. 'A little.'

'Why?'

'You're mean.'

We went for a ride. She asked if I knew anything about guns. I didn't. We drove to a shooting gallery on Main Street. She was an expert shot. She knew the proprietor, a kid in a leather jacket. I couldn't hit anything, not even the target in the middle. It was her money, and she was disgusted with me. She could hold a revolver under her armpit and hit the bull's eye of the big target. I took about fifty shots, and missed every time. Then she tried to show me how to hold the gun. I jerked it away from her, flung the barrel recklessly in all directions. The kid in the leather jacket ducked under the counter. 'Be careful!' he yelled. 'Look out!'

Her disgust became humiliation. She dug a fifty cent piece out of her pocketful of tips. 'Try again,' she said. 'And this time, don't miss, or I won't pay for it.' I didn't have any money with me. I put the gun down on the counter and refused to shoot again. 'To h.e.l.l with it,' I said.

'He's a sissy, Tim,' she said. 'All he can do is write poetry.'

Tim obviously liked only people who knew how to shoot a gun. He looked at me with distaste, saying nothing. I picked up a repeating Winchester rifle, took aim, and started pumping lead. The big target sixty feet away, three feet above the ground on a post, showed no sign of being hit. A bell was supposed to ring when the bull's eye was. .h.i.t. Not a sound. I emptied the gun, sniffed the tart stench of powder, 150.

151.

and made a face. Tim and Camilla laughed at the sissy. By now a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. They all shared Camilla's disgust, for it was a contagious thing, and I felt it too. She turned, saw the crowd, and blushed. She was ashamed of me, annoyed and mortified. Out of the side of her mouth she whispered to me that we should leave. She broke through the crowd, walking fast, six feet ahead of me. I followed leisurely. Ho ho, and what did I care if I couldn't shoot a d.a.m.ned gun, and what did I care if those mugs had laughed, and that she had laughed, for which one of them, the b.o.o.bish swine, the lousy grinning Main Street dopes, which one of them could compose a story like The Long Lost Hills? Not a one of them! And so to h.e.l.l with their scorn.

The car was parked in front of a cafe. When I reached it she had already started the engine. I got in but she did not wait for me to get seated. Still sneering, she looked at me quickly, and let out the clutch. I was thrown against the seat, then against the windshield. We were jammed between two other cars. She banged into one, and then into the other, her way of letting me know what a fool I had been. When we finally broke from the kerb and swung into the street, I sighed and sat back.

'Thank G.o.d for that,' I said.

'You dry up!' she said.