Ask the Dust Read online

  Dear Mother, I used to write home to Colorado, Dear Mother, things are definitely looking up. A big editor was in town and I had lunch with him and we have signed a contract for a number of short stories, but I won’t try to bore you with all the details, dear mother, because I know you’re not interested in writing, and I know Papa isn’t, but it levels down to a swell contract, only it doesn’t begin for a couple of months. So send me ten dollars, mother, send me five, mother dear, because the editor (I’d tell you his name only I know you’re not interested in such things) is all set to start me out on the biggest project he’s got.

  Dear Mother, and Dear Hackmuth, the great editor—they got most of my mail, practically all of my mail. Old Hackmuth with his scowl and his hair parted in the middle, great Hackmuth with a pen like a sword, his picture was on my wall autographed with his signature that looked Chinese. Hya Hackmuth, I used to say, Jesus how you can write! Then the lean days came, and Hackmuth got big letters from me. My God, Mr. Hackmuth, something’s wrong with me: the old zip is gone and I can’t write anymore. Do you think, Mr. Hackmuth, that the climate here has anything to do with it? Please advise. Do you think, Mr. Hackmuth, that I write as well as William Faulkner? Please advise. Do you think, Mr. Hackmuth, that sex has anything to do with it, because, Mr. Hackmuth, because, because, and I told Hackmuth everything. I told him about the blonde girl I met in the park. I told him how I worked it, how the blonde girl tumbled. I told him the whole story, only it wasn’t true, it was a crazy lie—but it was something. It was writing, keeping in touch with the great, and he always answered. Oh boy, he was swell! He answered right off, a great man responding to the problems of a man of talent. Nobody got that many letters from Hackmuth, nobody but me, and I used to take them out and read them over, and kiss them. I’d stand before Hackmuth’s picture crying out of both eyes, telling him he picked a good one this time, a great one, a Bandini, Arturo Bandini, me.

  The lean days of determination. That was the word for it, determination: Arturo Bandini in front of his typewriter two full days in succession, determined to succeed; but it didn’t work, the longest siege of hard and fast determination in his life, and not one line done, only two words written over and over across the page, up and down, the same words: palm tree, palm tree, palm tree, a battle to the death between the palm tree and me, and the palm tree won: see it out there swaying in the blue air, creaking sweetly in the blue air. The palm tree won after two fighting days, and I crawled out of the window and sat at the foot of the tree. Time passed, a moment or two, and I slept, little brown ants carousing in the hair on my legs.

  Chapter Two

  I was twenty then. What the hell, I used to say, take your time, Bandini. You got ten years to write a book, so take it easy, get out and learn about life, walk the streets. That’s your trouble: your ignorance of life. Why, my God, man, do you realize you’ve never had any experience with a woman? Oh yes I have, oh I’ve had plenty. Oh no you haven’t. You need a woman, you need a bath, you need a good swift kick, you need money. They say it’s a dollar, they say it’s two dollars in the swell places, but down on the Plaza it’s a dollar; swell, only you haven’t got a dollar, and another thing, you coward, even if you had a dollar you wouldn’t go, because you had a chance to go once in Denver and you didn’t. No, you coward, you were afraid, and you’re still afraid, and you’re glad you haven’t got a dollar.

  Afraid of a woman! Ha, great writer this! How can he write about women, when he’s never had a woman? Oh you lousy fake, you phony, no wonder you can’t write! No wonder there wasn’t a woman in The Little Dog Laughed. No wonder it wasn’t a love story, you fool, you dirty little schoolboy.

  To write a love story, to learn about life.

  Money arrived in the mail. Not a check from the mighty Hackmuth, not an acceptance from The Atlantic Monthly or The Saturday Evening Post. Only ten dollars, only a fortune. My mother sent it: some dime insurance policies, Arturo, I had them taken up for their cash value, and this is your share. But it was ten dollars; one manuscript or another, at least something had been sold.

  Put it in your pocket, Arturo. Wash your face, comb your hair, put some stuff on to make you smell good while you stare into the mirror looking for grey hairs; because you’re worried Arturo, you’re worried, and that brings grey hair. But there was none, not a strand. Yeah, but what of that left eye? It looked discolored. Careful, Arturo Bandini: don’t strain your eyesight, remember what happened to Tarkington, remember what happened to James Joyce.

  Not bad, standing in the middle of the room, talking to Hackmuth’s picture, not bad, Hackmuth, you’ll get a story out of this. How do I look, Hackmuth? Do you sometimes wonder, Herr Hackmuth, what I look like? Do you sometimes say to yourself, I wonder if he’s handsome, that Bandini fellow, author of that brilliant Little Dog Laughed?

  Once in Denver there was another night like this, only I was not an author in Denver, but I stood in a room like this and made these plans, and it was disastrous because all the time in that place I thought about the Blessed Virgin and thou shalt not commit adultery and the hard-working girl shook her head sadly and had to give it up, but that was a long time ago and tonight it will be changed.

  I climbed out the window and scaled the incline to the top of Bunker Hill. A night for my nose, a feast for my nose, smelling the stars, smelling the flowers, smelling the desert, and the dust asleep, across the top of Bunker Hill. The city spread out like a Christmas tree, red and green and blue. Hello, old houses, beautiful hamburgers singing in cheap cafes, Bing Crosby singing too. She’ll treat me gently. Not those girls of my childhood, those girls of my boyhood, those girls of my university days. They frightened me, they were diffident, they refused me; but not my princess, because she will understand. She, too, has been scorned.

  Bandini, walking along, not tall but solid, proud of his muscles, squeezing his fist to revel in the hard delight of his biceps, absurdly fearless Bandini, fearing nothing but the unknown in a world of mysterious wonder. Are the dead restored? The books say no, the night shouts yes. I am twenty, I have reached the age of reason, I am about to wander the streets below, seeking a woman. Is my soul already smirched, should I turn back, does an angel watch over me, do the prayers of my mother allay my fears, do the prayers of my mother annoy me?

  Ten dollars: it will pay the rent for two and a half weeks, it will buy me three pairs of shoes, two pair of pants, or one thousand postage stamps to send material to the editors; indeed! But you haven’t any material, your talent is dubious, your talent is pitiful, you haven’t any talent, and stop lying to yourself day after day because you know The Little Dog Laughed is no good, and it will always be no good.

  So you walk along Bunker Hill, and you shake your fist at the sky, and I know what you’re thinking, Bandini. The thoughts of your father before you, lash across your back, hot fire in your skull, that you are not to blame: this is your thought, that you were born poor, son of miseried peasants, driven because you were poor, fled from your Colorado town because you were poor, rambling the gutters of Los Angeles because you are poor, hoping to write a book to get rich, because those who hated you back there in Colorado will not hate you if you write a book. You are a coward, Bandini, a traitor to your soul, a feeble liar before your weeping Christ. This is why you write, this is why it would be better if you died.

  Yes, it’s true: but I have seen houses in Bel-Air with cool lawns and green swimming pools. I have wanted women whose very shoes are worth all I have ever possessed. I have seen golf clubs on Sixth Street in the Spalding window that make me hungry just to grip them. I have grieved for a necktie like a holy man for indulgences. I have admired hats in Robinson’s the way critics gasp at Michelangelo.

  I took the steps down Angel’s Flight to Hill Street: a hundred and forty steps, with tight fists, frightened of no man, but scared of the Third Street Tunnel, scared to walk through it—claustrophobia. Scared of high places too, and of blood, and of earthquakes; otherwise, quite fearless, ex
cepting death, except the fear I’ll scream in a crowd, except the fear of appendicitis, except the fear of heart trouble, even that, sitting in his room holding the clock and pressing his jugular vein, counting out his heartbeats, listening to the weird purr and whirr of his stomach. Otherwise, quite fearless.

  Here is an idea with money: these steps, the city below, the stars within throwing distance: boy meets girl idea, good setup, big money idea. Girl lives in that grey apartment house, boy is a wanderer. Boy—he’s me. Girl’s hungry. Rich Pasadena girl hates money. Deliberately left Pasadena millions ’cause of ennui, weariness with money. Beautiful girl, gorgeous. Great story, pathological conflict. Girl with money phobia: Freudian setup. Another guy loves her, rich guy. I’m poor. I meet rival. Beat him to death with caustic wit and also lick him with fists. Girl impressed, falls for me. Offers me millions. I marry her on condition she’ll stay poor. Agrees. But ending happy: girl tricks me with huge trust fund day we get married. I’m indignant but I forgive her ’cause I love her. Good idea, but something missing: Collier’s story.

  Dearest Mother, thanks for the ten dollar bill. My agent announces the sale of another story, this time to a great magazine in London, but it seems they do not pay until publication, and so your little sum will come in handy for various odds and ends.

  I went to the burlesque show. I had the best seat possible, a dollar and ten cents, right under a chorus of forty frayed bottoms: some day all of these will be mine: I will own a yacht and we will go on South Sea Cruises. On warm afternoons they will dance for me on the sun deck. But mine will be beautiful women, selections from the cream of society, rivals for the joys of my stateroom. Well, this is good for me, this is experience, I am here for a reason, these moments run into pages, the seamy side of life.

  Then Lola Linton came on, slithering like a satin snake amid the tumult of whistling and pounding feet, Lola Linton lascivious, slithering and looting my body, and when she was through, my teeth ached from my clamped jaws and I hated the dirty lowbrow swine around me, shouting their share of a sick joy that belonged to me.

  If Mamma sold the policies things must be tough for the Old Man and I shouldn’t be here. When I was a kid pictures of Lola Lintons used to come my way, and I used to get so impatient with the slow crawl of time and boyhood, longing for this very moment, and here I am, and I have not changed nor have the Lola Lintons, but I fashioned myself rich and I am poor.

  Main Street after the show, midnight: neon tubes and a light fog, honky tonks and all night picture houses. Secondhand stores and Filipino hance halls, cocktails 15¢, continuous entertainment, but I had seen them all, so many times, spent so much Colorado money in them. It left me lonely like a thirsty man holding a cup, and I walked toward the Mexican Quarter with a feeling of sickness without pain. Here was the Church of Our Lady, very old, the adobe blackened with age. For sentimental reasons I will go inside. For sentimental reasons only. I have not read Lenin, but I have heard him quoted, religion is the opium of the people. Talking to myself on the church steps: yeah, the opium of the people. Myself, I am an atheist: I have read The Anti-Christ and I regard it as a capital piece of work. I believe in the transvaluation of values, Sir. The Church must go, it is the haven of the booboisie, of boobs and bounders and all brummagem mountebanks.

  I pulled the huge door open and it gave a little cry like weeping. Above the altar sputtered the blood-red eternal light, illuminating in crimson shadow the quiet of almost two thousand years. It was like death, but I could remember screaming infants at baptism too. I knelt. This was habit, this kneeling. I sat down. Better to kneel, for the sharp bite at the knees was a distraction from the awful quiet. A prayer. Sure, one prayer: for sentimental reasons. Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche? Ah, such a book! Almighty God, I will play fair in this. I will make You a proposition. Make a great writer out of me, and I will return to the Church. And please, dear God, one more favor: make my mother happy. I don’t care about the Old Man; he’s got his wine and his health, but my mother worries so. Amen.

  I closed the weeping door and stood on the steps, the fog like a huge white animal everywhere, the Plaza like our courthouse back home, snowbound in white silence. But all sounds traveled swift and sure through the heaviness, and the sound I heard was the click of high heels. A girl appeared. She wore an old green coat, her face molded in a green scarf tied under the chin. On the stairs stood Bandini.

  “Hello, honey,” she said, smiling, as though Bandini were her husband, or her lover. Then she came to the first step and looked up at him. “How about it, honey? Want me to show you a good time?”

  Bold lover, bold and brazen Bandini.

  “Nah,” he said. “No thanks. Not tonight.”

  He hurried away, leaving her looking after him, speaking words he lost in flight. He walked half a block. He was pleased. At least she had asked him. At least she had identified him as a man. He whistled a tune from sheer pleasure. Man about town has universal experience. Noted writer tells of night with woman of the streets. Arturo Bandini, famous writer, reveals experience with Los Angeles prostitute. Critics acclaim book finest written.

  Bandini (being interviewed prior to departure for Sweden): “My advice to all young writers is quite simple. I would caution them never to evade a new experience. I would urge them to live life in the raw, to grapple with it bravely, to attack it with naked fists.”

  Reporter: “Mr. Bandini, how did you come to write this book which won you the Nobel Award?”

  Bandini: “The book is based on a true experience which happened to me one night in Los Angeles. Every word of that book is true. I lived that book, I experienced it.”

  Enough. I saw it all. I turned and walked back toward the church. The fog was impenetrable. The girl was gone. I walked on: perhaps I could catch up with her. At the corner I saw her again. She stood talking to a tall Mexican. They walked, crossed the street and entered the Plaza. I followed. My God, a Mexican! Women like that should draw the color line. I hated him, the Spick, the Greaser. They walked under the banana trees in the Plaza, their feet echoing in the fog. I heard the Mexican laugh. Then the girl laughed. They crossed the street and walked down an alley that was the entrance to Chinatown. The oriental neon signs made the fog pinkish. At a rooming house next door to a chop suey restaurant they turned and climbed the stairs. Across the street upstairs a dance was in progress. Along the little street on both sides yellow cabs were parked. I leaned against the front fender of the cab in front of the rooming house and waited. I lit a cigaret and waited. Until hell freezes over, I will wait. Until God strikes me dead, I will wait.

  A half hour passed. There were sounds on the steps. The door opened. The Mexican appeared. He stood in the fog, lit a cigaret, and yawned. Then he smiled absently, shrugged, and walked away, the fog swooping upon him. Go ahead and smile. You stinking Greaser—what have you got to smile about? You come from a bashed and a busted race, and just because you went to the room with one of our white girls, you smile. Do you think you would have had a chance, had I accepted on the church steps?

  A moment later the steps sounded to the slick of her heels, and the girl stepped into the fog. The same girl, the same green coat, the same scarf. She saw me and smiled. “Hello, honey. Wanna have a good time?”

  Easy now, Bandini.

  “Oh,” I said. “Maybe. And maybe not. Whatcha got?”

  “Come up and see, honey.”

  Stop sniggering, Arturo. Be suave.

  “I might come up,” I said. “And then, I might not.”

  “Aw honey, come on.” The thin bones of her face, the odor of sour wine from her mouth, the awful hypocrisy of her sweetness, the hunger for money in her eyes.

  Bandini speaking: “What’s the price these days?”

  She took my arm, pulled me toward the door, but gently.

  “You come on up, honey. We’ll talk about it up there.”

  “I’m really not very hot,” said Bandini. “I—I j
ust came from a wild party.”

  Hail Mary full of grace, walking up the stairs, I can’t go through with it. I’ve got to get out of it. The halls smelling of cockroaches, a yellow light at the ceiling, you’re too aesthetic for all this, the girl holding my arm, there’s something wrong with you, Arturo Bandini, you’re a misanthrope, your whole life is doomed to celibacy, you should have been a priest, Father O’Leary talking that afternoon, telling us the joys of denial, and my own mother’s money too, Oh Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee—until we got to the top of the stairs and walked down a dusty dark hall to a room at the end, where she turned out the light and we were inside.

  A room smaller than mine, carpetless, without pictures, a bed, a table, a wash-stand. She took off her coat. There was a blue print dress underneath. She was bare-legged. She took off the scarf. She was not a real blonde. Black hair grew at the roots. Her nose was crooked slightly. Bandini on the bed, put himself there with an air of casualness, like a man who knew how to sit on a bed.

  Bandini: “Nice place you got here.”

  My God I got to get out of here, this is terrible.

  The girl sat beside me, put her arms around me, pushed her breasts against me, kissed me, flecked my teeth with a cold tongue. I jumped to my feet. Oh think fast, my mind, dear mind of mine please get me out of this and it will never happen again. From now on I will return to my Church. Beginning this day my life shall run like sweet water.

  The girl lay back, her hands behind her neck, her legs over the bed. I shall smell lilacs in Connecticut, no doubt, before I die, and see the clean white small reticent churches of my youth, the pasture bars I broke to run away.