Doctor Sax (12 page)

But Joe never had anything to do with that alley of tragedy harpo marx hurrying by greasepaint Variety oldprint brown crackly, with masks on a shiny ballroom in the menu,— Nights of 1922 when I was born, in the glittering unbelievable World of Gold and Rich Darkness of the Lowell of my prime father, he would escort my mother Tilly the Toiler of his weekly theatrical column (with whom he argued in verbose slang about the quality of the shows) (“Boy O boy, next Wednesday we gets to see
The Big Parade,
with Karl Dane, Dead Hero John Gilbert—”) —escort my mother to the show among the black cardboard throngs of long ago in 1920’s of U.S.A., the grawky sad loop of the City Hall clock illuminating or staring sadly at penyons of real endeavor in another air, another time-different outcries on the street, different feelings, other dusts, other lace–other funnies, other drunk lamp posts– the inconceivable joy that creams up in my soul at the thought of the little kid in the funnies under his blanket quilt at midnight New Year’s when thru the blue sweetness of his window in comes the bells and hom cries and honks and stars and slams of Time and Noises, and the blue fences of the quilt night are dewy in the moon, and
strange Italian rooftops of parliament tenements in Courts that are in old funnies–the redbrick alley where my father in big strawhat walked, with B.F. Keith’s circuit ads sticking out of his pocket, smoking a cigar, not a smalltime businessman in a smalltown, a man in a straw hat hurrying in a redbrick alley of Eternity.

Beyond, the back railroad tracks of the Warehouse, some switch tracks to the cotton mills, the Canal, the Post Office to the right across it–rampy lots, box crate heats of afternoon, the dark dank rich redbrick Georgian alley street like a great street in self-interior Chinatown between wholesale offices and printing plants–my father swung his groaning old Plymouth of the Kraw Time around the little corner, tooting–coming to the inky darkness of the warehouse of his plant, where on a Saturday night in a dream-tragic holdups or moldups are taking place and my father’s busy with one of his interminable aides at some huge hassel of the crock, there’s no telling what it is I really see in that dream–into the future really. Dreams are where participants in a drama recognize one another’s death–there is no illusion of lif e in this Dream–

Long long ago before tot-linoleums of Lupine Road and even Burnaby Street there was, and will be, inconceivable rich red softnesses in the consistency of the air on going-to-the-show nights. (One of those nameless little bugs, so small you don’t know what they are, so tiny, flew by my face.)

Some kind of brown tragedy it was, in the plant,—the spectral canal flows by in its own night, brown gloom of midnight cities presses the windows in, dull lamps as
of poker games illuminate the loneliness of my father-just as in Centralville he’s completely unavailable in the Lakeview Avenue night of old–O the silence of this–he had a gymnasium there, with boxers, real life fact– When W.C. Fields has boarded the destiny train, for sooty miles to Cincinnati, my father hurries in the B.F. Keith alley opens the door, goes in on lost endeavors wined from the Canal of sperms and oil that flows between the mills, under the bridge– The mystery of the Lowell night extends to the heart of downtown, it lurks in the shadows of the redbrick walls– Something in old musty records in the City Hall–an old, old book in the library files, with prints of Indians–a nameless laugh by the purities of the wave mist on the river bank, at dead of March or April night–and empty winds of winter night under the Moody Bridge, around the corner of Riverside and Moody, sand grit blowing, here comes old Gene Plouffe in the dawn grim cold headed for work in the mills, he’s been sleeping in his shroud and brown night in the old house of Gershom, the moon’s whipped to one side, cold stars gleam, shine down on empty Vinny Bergerac tenement court where now the washlines creak, The Shadow creeps,—the ghosts of W.C. Fields and my father emerge together from the redbrick alley, straw be-hatted, headed for the ht-up blackwalls of the night of the cross eyed cat, as Sax grins…

AND NOW THAT TRAGIC HALO,
half gilt, half hidden–the night the
M
an with the watermelon died–should I tell— (Oh Ya Ya Yoi Yoi)-how he died, and O’Curlicued on the planks of the bridge, pissing death, staring at the dead waves, everybody’s already dead, what a horror to know —the sin of life, of death, he pissed in his pants his last act.

It was a baneful black night anyway, full of shrouds. My mother and I walked Blanche home to Aunt Clementine’s house. This was a dreadful drear brown house in which Uncle Mike was dying these past five, ten, fifteen years,
worse—
next door to a garage for hearses leased by one of the undertakers around the corner on funereal Pawtucket Street and had a storage room for–coffins-

Gad, I had dreams rickety and strange about that bam garage–hated to go to Mike’s for that reason, it was Godawful the scene of marijuana-sheeshkabob cigarettes he smoked for his asthma, Cu Babs– The thing that got Proust so all-hung-out–on his frame of greatness– Right Reference Marcel–old Abyssinian Bushy Beard-Uncle Mike
bliazasting legal medical tea in his afternoons of gloom-special meditation–brooding by brown window drapes, sadness– He was an extremely intelligent man, remembered whole spates of history, talked at great length with his melancholy rasping breath about the beauties of the poetry of Victor Hugo (Emil his brother always extolled the
novels
of Victor Hugo), Poet Mike was the saddest Duluoz in the world–that is very sad. I saw him cry countless times–
“O mon pauvre Ti Jean si tu sava tout le trouble et toute les larmes epuis les pauvres envoyages de la tite au sein, pour la douleur, la grosse douleur, impossible de cette vie ou ons trouve daumi a la mort–pourquoi pour-quoi pourquoi–seulement pour suffrir, comme ton pere Emil, comme ta tante Marie–lor
nothing, my boy, for nothing,—
mon enfant pauvre Ti Jean, sais tu mon âme que tu est destinez d’être un homme de grosses douleurs et talent–ca aidra jamais vivre ni mourir, tu va souffrir comme les autres, plus” —
(Saying: “Oh my poor Ti Jean if you know all the trouble and all the tears and all the sendings of the head to the breast, for sadness, big sadness, impossible this life where we find ourselves doomed for death–why why why–just to suffer, like your father Emil, like your aunt Marie–for nothing–my child poor Ti Jean, do you know my dear that you are destined to be a man of big sadness and talent–it’ll never help to live or die, you’ll suffer like the others,
more”—

“Napoleon était un homme grand. Aussie le General Montcalm a Quebec tambien quil a perdu. Ton ancestre, Thonorable soldat, Baron Louis Alexandre L&bris de Duluoz,
un
grandpere–a marriez Tlndienne, retourna a
Bretagne, le pere la, le vieux Baron, a dit, criant a pleine tète, ‘Retourne toi a cette femme–soi un homme honnete et d’honneur’ Le jeune Baron a retournez au Canada, a la Riviere du Loup, il avais gagnez de la terre alongez sur cette fleu–il a eux ces autres enfant avec sa femme. Cette femme la etait une Indienne–on ne sais pas rien d’elle ni de son monde– Toutes les autres parents, mon petit, sont cent pourcent Frangais–ta mère, ta belle tite mire Angy, voyons donc s’petite bonfemme de coeur,—c’etait une L’Abbé tout Frangais au moin quun oncle avec un nom Anglais, Gleason, Pearson, quelque chose comme ca, il y a longtemp–deux cents ans—”

Saying: “Napoleon was a great man. Also the General Montcalm at Quebec even though he lost. Your ancestor, the honorable soldier, Baron Louis Alexandre Lebris de Duluoz, a grandfather–married the Indian woman, returned to Brittany, the father there, the old Baron, said, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Return to that woman–be an honest man and a man of honor’. The young Baron returned to Canada, to Riviere du Loup (Wolf River) he had been granted land along that river–he had his other children with his wife. That woman was an Indian–we know nothing about her or her people– All the other parents, my little one, are one hundred percent French–your mother, you. pretty little mother Angy, poor little goodlady of the heart–she was a L’Abbé, all French except for one uncle with an English name, Gleason, Pearson, something like that, it’s a long time ago–two hundred years—”

And then:—he would always finish with his weeping and woe–terrible agonies of the spirit—“O
les pauvres Duluozes
meur toutes!—enchain£es par le Bon Dieu pour la peine– peut Stre XenjerV—’Uikel weyons doner

Saying: “O the poor Duluozes are all dying!—chained by God to pain–maybe to hell!”—”Mike! My goodness!”

So I says to my mother
“J’ai peur moi allez sur mononcle Mike
(Im scared me of going to Uncle Mike’s …).” I couldn’t tell her my nightmares, how one dream had it that one night in our old house on Beaulieu when somebody was dead Uncle Mike was there and all his Brown relatives (by Brown I mean all gree-darkened in the room as in dreams)— But he was horrible, porcine, fat, sickfaced, bald, and green. But she guessed I was a slob with fear concerning nightmares,
“he monde il meur, le monde il meur
(If people die, people
die)”
is what she said—”Uncle Mike has been dying for ten years–the whole house and yards smell of death—”

“Especially wit de coffins.”

“Yeh, especially wit de coffins and you gotta remember honey Aunt Clementine has suffered all these many years trying to keep ends together… With your Uncle sick and lost his grocery store–remember the big barrels of pickles in his grocery store in Nashué–the sawdust, the meat– what with having to bring up Edgar and Blanche and Roland and Viola
pauvre tite honfemme–Ecoute, Jean, ai pas peur de tes parents–tun n’ara plus jamais des parents un bon jour.
(… and Viola poor little woman–Listen, Jean, don’t be afraid of your parents–you won’t have any more parents one fine day.)”

So one night, from the Phebe house, we walked Blanche (who later in such a walk insisted on bringing my dog
Beauty because she’s afraid of the dark and as the little beast escorted her home it rushed out and got run over by Roger Carrufel of Pawtucketville who was somehow driving an Austin tinycar that night and the low bumper killed it, previously on Salem Street at Joe’s lawn door it got run over by an ordinary car but rolled with the wheels and never got hurt–I heard the news of its death at precisely that moment in my life when I was lying in bed finding out that my tool had sensations in the tip–they yelled it up to me thru the transom, “Ton
chien est mort!
(Your dog is dead!)” and they brought it home dying–on the kitchen floor we and Blanche and Carrufel with hat in hand watch Beauty die, Beauty dies the night I discover sex, they wonder why I’m mad—)—So now Blanche (this is before Beauty was bom, 2 years earlier) wants me and Ma to walk her home, so we go, a beautiful soft summer night in Lowell. The stars are shining in the deep,—millions. We cross the great darknesses of Sarah Avenue by the park, with hugetree sighs above; and the baleful flickering dark of Riverside Street and the Textile ironpicket shrouds and on to Moody and across the Bridge. In the summer-dark, far below, the soft white horses of the thrush-foam over rocks are surging in a Nightly Tryst with Mystery and Mists that Crash off Rocks, in a Gray Anathema Void, all raw-roar-roo … a wild Ionian sight and frightening– we turn at Pawtucket and move up past the gray tenement and the Hospital St. Joseph’s where my sister had appendicitis and the Funeral homes of the dark Flale there after you pass the curve of gooky rickety Salem curvacue-ing in–huge mansions appear, solemn, sitting in state on
lawns, all behung with signs- “R.K.G.W.S.T.N. Droux, Funeral Director”–with hearses, lacy windows, warm rich interiors, dank chauffeur like hearse garages, shrubs around the lawn, the great slopes of the river and the canal falling away from the black lawn to grand darkness and lights of foam and night–ha river! My mother and Blanche are discussing astrology as they walk under the stars. Sometimes they lapse into philosophy—”Isn’t it a perfectly beautiful night Angy? Oh my
fate!—
” sighing–Blanche had tried to commit suicide from the Moody Bridge–she had told us among gloomy pianos–she played piano and told her moods, she was an elegant visitor to our house that sometimes my father found infuriating especially because she was teaching us so well–explaining Rachmaninoff’s
Rustle of Spring
and playing it–a beautiful blonde woman, well preserved–old Shammy had his eye on her, he lived in that old white house on Riverside across Textile iron-pickets under an immense 1776 tree and we always talked about Shammy as we passed at night the house where he lived with his wife (Sad Harmonies of Love Night Lowell)—

The Grotto–it Hugely Mooked ahead of us, to the right … that baleful night. It belonged to the orphanage on the corner of Pawtucket Street and School Street at the head of the White Bridge–a big Grotto is their backyard, mad, vast, rehgious, the Twelve Stations of the Cross, little individual twelve altars set in, you go in front, kneel, everything but incense in the air (the roar of the river, mysteries of nature, fireflies in the night flickering to the waxy stare of statues, I knew Doctor Sax was there flowing in the back
darks with his wild and hincty cape)—culminating, was the gigantic pyramid of steps upon which the Cross itself poked phalhcally up with its Poor Burden the Son of Man all skewered across it in his Agony and Fright–undoubtedly this statue moved in the night— … after the … last of the worshippers is gone, poor dog. Before seeing Blanche in home to the horrible brown glooms of her dying father’s house–we go to this Grotto, like we often do, to get some praying in.
“Wishing,
I’d call it more,” Blanche said. “Oh Angy, if I could only find my ideal man.”

“What’s the matter with Shammy, he’s an ideal man.”

“But he’s married.”

“If you love him that ain’t his fault–you gotta take the bad with the worse.” My mother had a great secret love for Shammy–she told him and everybody so–Shammy reciprocated with great kindness and charm– When he wasn’t at the Club bowling or shooting pool, or home sleeps, or driving his bus, he was at our house having big parties with Blanche and my father and mother and sometimes a Textile student Tommy Lockstock and my sister —Shammy had a real affection for Blanche–