Boswell (30 page)

“
‘Prego, signor,’
she tells me, ’there is the child Here, under the table, touch my organs.’

“Look, it’s no secret. I’m oversexed. And I particularly like big women. My third wife was an African princess six feet two inches tall, two hundred pounds and strong as an ox. But I didn’t want a thing from this woman, you understand—for me it was just another futile gesture against an endless regime of human misery. But she couldn’t understand this. She sat beside me and ate my lunch with one hand and squeezed my prick with the other. I wanted to get away, but I couldn’t move. I had a hard-on that big. ‘Please,
signora,
that isn’t necessary.’ She wouldn’t stop. That hard gypsy hand was all over me. Well, it happened. I’m a man—jerk me and I come. She finished me and my lunch at the same time.

“What are you laughing at? Do you think this is a funny story? What are you laughing at?

“So she took the kid which she had put down on an empty chair beside her—she never once fed that baby a thing—and she got up to go.
‘Signora,’
I said,
‘please.
I’ve given you all my money. You’ve eaten my lunch. You’ll have to pay the check.’ Well, she didn’t listen to me any more than the others had listened to her. She just got up and got the hell out of there. In the end I had to run off without paying. What are you laughing at? All right, I can see the joke, too, but please try to understand the point. Be adults, for God’s sake.

“That night, without being invited by anyone, I made my first speech. In the open air, in the Piazza di Spagna. Then, the next day, I made the same speech in St. Peters’—in four languages, Italian, French, German and English. I was a guest of the government, you understand. I was there as an exchange professor at the University of Rome, and it wasn’t for me, but everywhere I went until they threw me out of the country I made that speech. Later I dropped the French and German and English because I realized I wasn’t there to put on a show, but to get things done. The trench coats! Everywhere you looked. I tell you, whenever I see trench coats I know that Fascism is the next step!

“My speech was as follows:

“‘My Italian friends. There is poverty in your country. That is not my concern. In all countries there is poverty. What troubles me rather is your indifference to it. I have seen beggars ignored.
Ignored.
As well to cause poverty, to bring about another’s misfortune oneself, as to ignore it when it happens. You are a morally culpable people. So advanced is the brutalization in your society that the poor themselves have become brutalized. I have seen beggars ignored, but what is perhaps worse, I have seen the giver ignored by the beggar. I do not blame him—it is you who have caused this.

“‘I demand a change.

“‘You think there is safety in indifference; there is none. You think there is forgetfulness in the turned back; there is none. Or, if you are one of the few who give, you think there is remission in alms; there is none. There is none. In the altered condition only, in the revolutionized circumstance only, in the new beginning only is there the chance for grace. I address the remnant of your Catholicism—I mean to stir
that.

“‘Revolt! Revolt!

“‘In Africa, among the Rafissi people, there is a tradition. When there is a crime, it is the chief who is punished. He is dragged from his king’s hut to be humiliated and dismembered. Modern intelligences balk at this practice. How barbarous, they think! And yet I hasten to assure you that there is no lack of candidates for chieftain. There, among the Rafissi people, evil is a risk they run. Though I do not advocate
indiscriminate
violence, I see in this practice a wise deal. Who is to blame for a crime if not the father? All kings are fathers. Why, the very texture of their reign is determined by primogeniture, by the ability to make heirs. If there is crime those heirs are not well made.

“‘Italians. Throw off your chains. Begin again.
Reform! Reject! Revolt!’

“I told them that—in St. Peter’s, in my classes, everywhere. Until I was stopped.

“Well, in Nebraska, in 1933, I was worse. I was a firebrand, not a cautious person. And it didn’t help that my chairman was a jealous man. We split a section. Mine had a larger enrollment than his and he found out through his network of classroom spies that I wasn’t sticking to the syllabus—
his
syllabus, I might add. Well, why should I? What was anthropology in 1933? The tolerance level of an Ur-culture toward its missionaries? Artifacts? Snapshots of people with bones in their noses? How many serious people were there in the business in 1933? So, to my eternal credit, in 1933 I taught my classes what I had experienced myself about mankind and about life.
That
was the syllabus.

“Now, though I was a Communist in those days, I believed in God. The God I believed in was a Jewish-Brahmin-Zen-Buddhist mystic who wore a
yarmulke
and squatted in a room filled with art treasures, telling his beads. You prayed to this God and he turned a deaf ear. He was supposed to, you understand. Acceptance of fucking suffering was what he taught. He bled in four colors over the art treasures and posed crazy riddles. He answered all questions with questions. Revelation was when he said, ‘The meaning of life is as follows,’ and he’d pick his nose with his little finger. Profound? Bull- crap, my young friends who still believe in such a God, a tongue-tied God who is not so much indifferent as bewildered by life. Go ask him questions? Go talk to walls. You can’t give in to him—give in to him and you’re
dead.
I wish I had them here now, those old students from Nebraska in 1933. I would take back everything I told them.
Everything.
I would use the chairman’s syllabus, rotten as it was.”

In the dim light I tried to watch Morty’s eyes. In the dark, smoky room they seemed singed, unable to focus. “Marry six wives,” he was saying. “Take women in adultery! Spin theories! Write articles! Write books! Win through!

“I’m not like that God I told you about. I’ll
tell
you what it all means. I’m fifty-six years old and I’m a dying Jewish anthropologist and the other day one of our leading philanthrophists called me a little Yid and threw me out of his house and I
know
what it’s all about. It’s mistakes! It’s learning not to accept. Accept nothing— there’s no such thing as a gift. It’s learning to make mistakes. Make lulus. Make lulus
only.
Don’t crap around with errors, don’t waste your time on
faux pas.
Go for the lulus. And if you’ve got to believe in God, you young people who have got to believe in God, try to picture him as some all-fucking-out lulu maker who wouldn’t have your heart on a silver platter.”

Suddenly Morty stopped, and rubbed his hand across his forehead. What had seemed like freckles on his thin young face appeared as liver spots on the backs of his old man’s hands.

“What about the chairman of the department, Morty, and the network of spies?” someone asked.

“What about him?” Morty said, revived. “The chairman of the department hated my mystic-Eastern-Bolshevik-Jewish guts, and his network of spies were two kids, one a moronic football player from Omaha, the other a fantastically busted coed from a farm outside Benton, Nebraska. She appears in my book,
The Flatlands,
if you care to know further what she was like. She and the football player kept a perfect stenographic record of everything I ever said in that class. As a matter of fact, they did me a favor; two thirds of my book came from those notes. The girl herself told me what they were up to when I had the class over for coffee once. I think she had fallen in love with me. I think she liked me a lot. Well, it made me sick to find out about it, just sick. What was it, Hitler Germany? Anyway, I wasn’t rehired for the second term, and by the time I found out what was happening it was too late to get back into the Columbia night school, so those bastards out there cost me a half of a year. Seriously, the State of Nebraska is a very bad place.”

Two of the dancers had sat down and were embracing in one corner of the room. Billie Holliday was singing “Sophisticated Lady.” When she came to my favorite part I sang along with her softly.

I was propped against a wall, my legs out in front of me, like someone sitting up in bed. A girl beside me kept filling my glass. My hand was in her lap, though neither of us seemed conscious of this.

“Those are stupendous lyrics,” I said to the girl. “Is that what you really want?” I sang. “Stupendous.” I chuckled to myself. I jiggled my behind forward a few inches and leaned back lower against the wall. Above me the last dancers moved dreamily to the music. My face was beginning to get that stunned, flushed feeling it always has when I’m drunk. As the couple danced by I could see the girl’s garter straps. I watched these happily until her partner suddenly turned her and moved her back toward the other end of the room.

“This bottle is empty,” the girl next to me said. “There’s another in the pocket of my coat. I’ll go get it.”

“Sophisticated lady,” I said.

The girl stood up a little clumsily and moved off toward the bedroom. I got up and followed her. She had to step carefully over and around several people lying about on the floor. She was like someone crossing a stony road barefoot, and it was very pleasant to watch the look of intense, almost deadpan concentration on her face. We went into the bedroom and she snapped on the light.

“Oh, look,” she said excitedly. “Look at all the hats and overcoats on the bed. Look at them all. I think that’s the most wonderful sight.” Bending down she scooped them in her arms and held them against her face. She put them down very gently.

“I really think that’s the most wonderful sight. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“When I was little and my parents had company, they’d put their hats and overcoats down on the bed that very way.”

“Yes,” I said, kissing her. “I love you.”

When I let her go she looked at me curiously for a moment and shrugged. “Let’s find that bottle,” she said.

After she found her coat and took out the bottle we went back to the living room and took up our old positions against the wall. Morty was still talking but I had stopped listening to him, though I still heard the pleasant rumble of his Eastern-Jewish-Bolshevik voice. I put my hand back in the girl’s lap. There was a boy sleeping somewhere near my left shoe. He sat up suddenly and turned to us. “What’s he been saying?” he asked us.

The girl shrugged, and he turned to a somewhat older student who had been sitting in a deep easy chair all evening long. “What’s he been saying?” he asked.

“He’s been explaining how Ohio is essentially an immoral state.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” the boy said, turning back to us. “That’s really rich. He’s been explaining how Ohio is essentially an immoral state. Morty’s a regular moralist. He can tell you the relative moral positions of the states the way some people can name the capitals.”

The kid hadn’t bothered to lower his voice and Morty heard him. “I can,” he said. “I can. What do you think, culture isn’t reflected in morality? What would be the point? What would be the point? I’m a professional anthropologist,” Morty said. “I know these things.”

“He says that per capita North Dakota is the most virtuous state in the Union,” my girl said.

“Not now,” I whispered. “I don’t care about that now.”

“He says people from Connecticut are the least virtuous,” the girl with garter straps said. “I’m from Connecticut,” she said, lifting her dress. “Whee.”

“Tell us about the Empty-Seat Principle, Morty,” someone said. Most of the people in the room laughed.

“What are you laughing? Don’t laugh. What are you laughing?” Morty said, smiling himself. “It’s perfectly scientific.” He popped some pills into his mouth. “After one ride on a rush-hour bus I can tell you the precise moral position of a culture.”

“Oh, Christ,” somebody said.

Silently I agreed.

“I can. I’ve done it. Take two cities of comparable size. Take Philadelphia and São Paolo, Brazil. Now, I tell you that Philadelphia is infinitely morla, morl moral, more
moral
—”

“Eugene Pallette,” I said.

“—
more moral
than São Paolo. No, I take that back. ‘Infinitely’ is not a scientific term. Philadelphia is precisely five times more moral than São Paolo.”

“That’s ridiculous,” someone said.

“Who’s the anthropologist here? Who has the Nobel Prize?” Mort said angrily.

It was true; I had forgotten about that. He had begun to bore me. He lived a dangerous life full of enormous, self-imposed risks. I thought of Harold Flesh, who for all the violence in his life was like a baby in a crib compared to Morty. Morty, I thought, suddenly fond of him, please be careful.

“In large cities,” Morty was saying, “the buses are designed to handle rush-hour crowds. The engineers create standing room in the buses by putting in a relatively small number of seats. Now, remember the thing we’re measuring is awareness of others. That’s what morality is, finally. Now, in São Paolo I’ve noticed that during a busy hour those people who are standing do not rush to take up the vacant seats when people who have been sitting down start to get off the bus. Often I’ve seen a bus full of empty seats and people standing in the aisles. It’s a question of scanty awareness of others. Those people who remain standing simply aren’t aware of the others. Now I say that Philadelphia is five times more moral than São Paolo because the ratio of occupied to empty seats averages out to about five to one.”

“Empty seats,” the boy at my shoe said.

“It’s a gauge. It’s a gauge,” Morty said. “I’ve checked it against police statistics. The crime rate in Philadelphia is a little less than five times what it is in São Paolo.”

“That’s really impressive,” I said to the girl.

“Make a fist,” she said.

I made a fist and my knuckles sprayed into the soft flesh of her thighs. She sighed.

“This is some way to make love,” I said.

“Who’s making love?” she said.

“Would you like to dance with me?” she asked after a while.

I got up and helped her to her feet. In a few moments I had to sit down. I had become excited and I was embarrassed. I put my hand back in her lap and made a fist.