Plexus Read online

  This grandfather, Valentin Nieting, was a man whom everybody respected and admired. He had spent ten years in London as a master tailor, had acquired a beautiful English accent there, and always spoke affectionately of the English. He said they were a civilized people. All his life he retained many English mannerisms. His crony, whom he met on Saturday nights at a saloon on Second Avenue, run by my Uncle Paul, was a skinny, fiery sort of man named Mr. Crow, an Englishman from Birmingham. No one in our family liked Mr. Crow, except grandfather. The reason was that Mr. Crow was a Socialist. He was always making speeches, too, and full of vitriol. My grandfather, whose memory extended back to the days of ’48, relished and applauded these speeches. He too was against the “bosses.” And of course against the military. It’s strange, when I think back, what an unholy fear the word Socialism inspired in those days. None of our family would have anything to do with a man calling himself a Socialist; he was worse than a Catholic or a Jew. America was a free country, the land of opportunity, and it was one’s duty to become successful and rich. My father, who hated his own boss—“a bloody, blimy Englishman,” he always called him—was soon to become a boss tailor himself. My grandfather had to accept work from my father. But he never lost that dignity, that assurance and integrity which always made him a trifle superior to my father. Before long all the “boss tailors” were to become woefully impoverished, forced to band together to share expenses, to keep in steady employment a small crew of workmen. The wages of the workmen—cutter, bushelman, coatmaker, pantsmaker—would continue to rise, would represent more per week than the boss’s own share. Eventually—last act in the drama—these little workmen, all foreigners, usually despised, but envied too sometimes, would be lending the bosses money in order to keep their businesses going. Maybe all this was the result of those pernicious Socialist doctrines which agitators like Mr. Crow had sponsored. Maybe not. Maybe there was something inherently disastrous in that “get-rich-quick” Walling-ford doctrine with which the young men of my generation had been innoculated.

  My grandfather died before the First World War broke out. He left a sizeable estate, as did the other émigrés in that old neighborhood, all of whom had come to America at the same time and from all parts of Europe. They did far, far better in this glorious land of the free than did their sons and daughters. They had started from scratch, like that butcher boy from Germany, my namesake—Henry Miller “the cattle king”—who ended by owning an enormous slice of California. It’s true, there may have been more opportunity in those days, but there was also the fact that these men were made of sterner stuff, that they were more industrious, more persevering, more resourceful, more disciplined. They began in some humble trade—butcher, carpenter, tailor, shoemaker—and the money they saved they earned by the sweat of their brow. They lived modestly always, and quite comfortably, despite the absence of all the comforts, all the labor-saving devices now deemed indispensable. I remembered the toilet in my grandfather’s home. First it was just an outhouse in the yard; later he had a cubbyhole built in upstairs. But even after gas had been introduced there was no illumination in that toilet except for a little taper floating in sweet oil. My grandfather would never have considered it of importance to have a gaslight in the toilet. His children ate well and were clothed; they were taken to the theater occasionally, they went with him to outings and picnics—glorious affairs!—and they sang with him when he attended the reunions of the Saengerbund. A simple, wholesome life, and far from dull. In winter, when the snow and ice came, he would sometimes take them for a ride in an open sleigh drawn by horse. He himself would go iceboating occasionally. And in summer there would be those unforgettable trips, by excursion boat, to places like Glen Island, for example, or New Rochelle. I can think of nothing offered the child today which can rival those outings. Nor can I think of anything to rival the magical festival grounds of Glen Island. The only thing approaching it is the atmosphere of certain paintings of Renoir and Seurat. Here again we have that golden ambience, that gaiety and ripeness, that plushy, carnal opulence so characteristic of the somnolescent, yawning, indolent period between the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the outbreak of the First World War. Undoubtedly it was a bourgeois efflorescence, infected with the taint of a rotting order, but the men who epitomized it, the men who glorified it in word and pigment, were not tainted. I can never think of my grandfather as being tainted, nor can I think of Renoir and Seurat in that way. I think that my grandfather, in his way of life, had more affinities with Seurat and Renoir than with the new American way of life which was then germinating. I think he would have understood these men and their art, had he been permitted. My parents never. Nor the boys I grew up with in the street.

  I ramble on, touched by memories of old. It was thus my mind wandered as I made the rounds of the old haunts. No wonder the days were so full, so savory. Starting out for Glendale I would finish up in “the old neighborhood.” Couldn’t resist walking by the old ancestral house again. Wouldn’t dream, however, of calling on my relatives, who still lived there. On the other side of the street I would take a stand—look up to the third floor where we once lived, try to re-create the image of the world I had known as a boy of five or six. That front window, where I used to sit, will go with me into the beyond, will frame the memories which I shall relive while waiting to be born into a new body. I recall the panic and terror that invaded me when my mother first forced me to wash the windows for her; sitting on the sill, my body hanging outside, three stories from the pavement—an immense height to a child of seven or eight—my knees gripping the sill for dear life. The window rested on my legs like a leaden weight. Fear of raising the window, fear of losing my grip. My mother insisting that there were still some specks of dirt to be washed off. (Later, when quite grown up, my mother would tell me how I loved to wash the windows for her. Or how I loved to hang the awnings. How I loved this, how I loved that.… All bloody lies!)

  Standing there in a deep reverie, I wonder to myself if perhaps I hadn’t been a bit of a sissy in those days. No boy in the neighborhood was better dressed than I. No one had better manners. No one was more alert and intelligent. I won all the prizes, got all the applause. So certain were they that I knew how to take care of myself, it never dawned on my parents that my playmates were already steeped in sin and vice. Even the fondest mother should have been able to detect in little Johnnie Ludlow the makings of a criminal. Even the most negligent parent should have been able to discern that little Alfie Betcha was already a gangster and a hoodlum. The pride of the Sunday school, such as I was, always chose for his boon companions the worst urchins in the neighborhood. Wasn’t my darling mother aware of this? Able to recite the catechism backwards, intelligent little monkey that I was, I had also, when with my comrades, a tongue that could reel off such filth, abuse and malediction as would do honor to a gallows bird. It was the older boys who instructed us, to be sure. Not overtly or deliberately either. We were always hanging about, listening in on their arguments and disputes. They were not so much older than us, either, when I think of it. Twelve years of age at the most, they were. But words like whore, bitch, cocksucker, bastard, shitass, fuck, prick, and so forth were constantly on their lips. When we younger ones employed these words they would laugh hilariously. I remember one day, elated by some new vocable I had acquired, going up to a girl of fifteen or so, and calling her vile names. When she got hold of me to spank me I swore at her like a trooper. I probably bit her hand too, and kicked her in the shanks. At any rate, I remember that she was boiling with rage and mortification. “I’ll teach you, you little brat,” she said, and with that she took me by the ear and dragged me to the police station around the corner. Led me right up the big steps, opened the door, and shoved me into the center of the room. There I was, a tiny urchin, facing the desk sergeant seated high above me, only his head visible above the desk top.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” His stern, thundering voice scared the wits out of me.

&nb
sp; “Tell him,” commanded the girl. “Tell him what you called me!”

  I was too terrified to open my mouth. I just gasped.

  “I see,” said the sergeant, raising his bushy black eyebrows and glaring at me threateningly. “He’s been using dirty language, has he?”

  “Yes, your honor,” said the girl.

  “Well, we’ll see about that.” He rose from his throne and made as if to descend.

  I began to whimper, then to bellow.

  “He’s really a good boy,” said the girl, coming over to me and patting my head affectionately. “His name is Henry Miller.”

  “Henry Miller?” said the sergeant. “Why I know his father and his grandfather. You don’t mean to tell me this little shaver is using bad language?”

  With this he came down from his high place and, stooping over me, he took me by the hand. “Henry Miller,” he said, “I’m surprised at you. Why…”

  (The mention of my name in this public place, in the police station of all places, had a tremendous effect upon me. I already regarded myself as a criminal, saw my name being heralded all over the street, printed in headlines five feet tall. I trembled to think what my parents would say when I got home, for I surmised that the news would have traveled ahead of me. Perhaps the sergeant had already detailed a man to inform my mother of the predicament. Perhaps she would have to come to bail me out. Together with such fears and forebodings there was a certain pride, too, in hearing my name ring out in that empty police station. I had a status now. No one had ever called me by both names at once. I was always just Henry. Now I had become Henry Miller, a full-fledged personage. The man would write my name and address down in the big book. They would have a record of me.… I grew ten years older in that fearful moment.)

  A few minutes later, safe on my own street, the girl having released me with a promise never to use such words again, I felt heroic. I sensed that it was all a game, that no one had any intention of prosecuting me, or even of telling my parents. I was ashamed of myself for bawling like a sissy in front of the sergeant. The fact that he was such a good friend of my father and grandfather meant that he would never do me harm. Instead of thinking of him as someone to be feared, I began to look upon him as my protector and confidential ally. It had impressed me enormously that my family was in good standing with the police, perhaps on intimate terms with them. Then and there I developed a contempt for the powers that be.…

  Before tearing myself away from the old haunts I just had to sneak through the hall and out into the backyard where the outhouse had once stood. On the side where the old smoke house used to be was a figure—painted on the fence—of a woman leading a little dog. It had been done in black paint and tar. It was almost obliterated now. This crude piece of art haunted me as a child. It was, so to speak, my private Egyptian tomb painting. (Curiously, later on, when I myself took up painting, I often made figures which reminded me of this stark delineation. Instinctively my hand traced the same stiff outline; for years, it seemed, I could never do anything full on, but always in this same archaic profile. My heads always had a hawk- or witchlike expression; people thought I was deliberately trying to be nightmarish but I wasn’t, it was the only way I could represent the human figure.)

  Returning to the street I involuntarily raised my eyes, as if to greet Mrs. O’Melio, who used to harbor all the stray cats of the neighborhood on her flat roof. There were over a hundred which she fed twice daily. She lived alone, and my mother always hinted that she must be cracked. Such Gargantuan solicitude was beyond my mother’s comprehension.

  I walk slowly towards the South Side where I will catch the cross-town trolley for home. Every store front is rich with memories. After twenty-five years, despite all the changes, all the work of demolition, the old dwellings are still there. Faded, ill-kept, crumbling, like sturdy old teeth they still “do their work.” The light that once animated them, the radiance they once shed, are gone. It was in summer that they were especially redolent; they actually perspired, like human beings. The owners felt a pride in keeping their homes neat and trim; the glow of fresh paint, the deep shadows thrown by the awnings, were the reflections of their own humble spirits. The homes of the physicians were always a little better than the others, a little more pretentious. In the summer one entered the doctor’s office through beaded curtains which tinkled as one swished through. The doctor always seemed to be a connoisseur of art; on the walls there were usually somber oil paintings framed in heavy gilt. The subject matter of these paintings was thoroughly alien to me. We had nothing like these on our walls; our pictures were given us by tradesmen at holiday times, bright, vile chromos which we looked at every day and forgot instantly. (Whenever my mother felt obliged to give something away to some poor neighbor she always chose a picture from the wall. “Thank God we’re rid of that,” she would murmur. Sometimes I would run to her with an offering of my own, a bright new toy, a pair of boots, a drum, because I too was surfeited with possessions. “Oh, no Henry, not that!” I can hear her say. “That’s too new!” “But I don’t want it any more,” I would insist. “Don’t talk that way,” she would answer, “or God will punish you.”)

  Passing the old Presbyterian Church. At two o’clock the Sunday school class used to meet. How delightfully cool it was down there in the basement where we congregated! Outside the heat danced from the pavement. Big flies buzzed away, darting in and out of the shadows. When I think of what summer then meant to me, the tangible, earthborn summer which shimmered and vibrated throughout the long, festive days, I think of Debussy’s music. Was he a lion of the Midi, I wonder? Did he have an African strain in his blood? Or were those plangent melodies studded with clustered chords an expression of yearning for a sun he had never known?

  Every joyous period I have known seems to be connected with the sun. Thinking of Mr. Roberts, our Sunday school superintendent, I think not only of that blazing orb in the sky but of the celestial warmth which this queer old Englishman radiated. His long flowing moustache, the color of corn, his cheery, ruddy face, what health and confidence they imparted! He always appeared in the same cutaway suit with grey spats and an ascot under his chin. Like the minister and the deacons of the church, he was a wealthy man. They ought to have moved to better quarters long ago, but they were attached to the old neighborhood and, besides, they enjoyed patronizing the poor and humble. At Christmas time they were truly bountiful with their gifts. My mother was frightfully impressed by this largesse; it was probably on this account that I grew up a Presbyterian instead of a Lutheran.

  That evening, rehearsing my boyhood days with Mona, it suddenly occurred to me that it would be a good touch to send the old minister, who was still alive, a sample of my work. I thought it might make him feel good to know that one of his “little boys” was now a writer. God knows what it was I sent him but it had anything but the desired effect. Almost by return mail I received my manuscript back together with a letter couched in impeccable English, telling me of his sorrow and bewilderment. That I, who had been nurtured in the shelter of the fold, should descend to such crude, realistic means of expression, pained him. There was something in his letter about the garbage can, I remember. That riled me. Without wasting time, I sat down and replied in the most abusive terms, informing him that he was a fool and a dotard, that my one aim in life was to live down the stupid nonsense he had tried to implant. I added something about our Lord and Saviour which, though apt, was intended to upset him still more. As a crowning insult, I advised him to clear out of the old neighborhood, which he did not and never had belonged to. I added that I hoped to see the Star of David supplanting the Cross next time I passed the venerable old edifice. (My wish, incidentally, was soon thereafter gratified. The place did become a synagogue! And the rectory, where our dear minister once lived, was taken over by an aged rabbi with a flowing white beard.)

  After I sent the letter I was of course repentant. What a silly thing to do! Still playing “the bad boy.” It was just like me, t
hough to revere the past and to spit on it. I was doing the same thing with friends—and with authors. I accepted and cherished out of the past only what I could convert to creative ends.…

  Did I mention Van Gogh whose Letters I was then reading and recently reread after a lapse of twenty years? What excited me was Vincent’s flaming desire to live the life of an artist, to be nothing but the artist, come what may. With men of his stripe art becomes a religion. Christ long dead to the church is born again. The passionate Vincent redeems the world through the miraculous use of pigment. The despised and forsaken dreamer re-enacts the drama of crucifixion. He rises from his grave to triumph over the unbelievers.