Stanley Elkin - Boswell

It was a formidable list of experiences not to have had.

What was happening? As I watched the Cadillac disappear, I saw clearly and with a sudden sense of massive, infinite privation, that I would never do or have most of these things — further, I should have to do without. Even if I started now, rolled up my sleeves, tightened my belt, went to work, pitched in, buckled down, hoed the row, held the line, went the distance, I could not hope to make more than a dent in those glittering abundances. It was like trying to tunnel through to China: it was like the feeling you got sometimes in museums — angry that you didn’t own anything there. I felt overmatched. My three-score-and-ten, even if I could be sure of them, seemed as paltry as loose change. And how many of those years had I already used up? How many were left which could be enjoyed in health? Already the pains began, the summer colds, the mysterious backaches, the malaise in parts that yesterday gave no trouble; already the hair began to catch in the comb, the food in the throat; already there was aspirin in the toilet kit, a prescription I carried in my wallet. Even giving myself the best of it, granting health (as if it were some premise I could demolish later in the argument), granting more — granting luck — how much could a man hold in his hands anyway, how much could he grab? How much could he touch, smell, taste, see, hear? And of what use was it? How much could he keep? That was the important thing; was it possible to keep anything? Was it possible to keep one single solitary thing? Never mind the money in the bank, the good looks, the health— could you keep your fingernails?

Suddenly everything I saw was the enemy. The silk scarves, the smooth-handled canes, the expensive umbrellas in the warm window. The tall buildings named for a single man. The cars that passed in the dusk, their dashboards glowing like Christmas lights. The girls who went by me in the street. I felt a quick powerful stirring of lust, greater than any I had ever known. I stared at the girls ravenously, so frankly that they looked away. I saw their legs shiny in the nylons. I saw the behinds, the cunts, the breasts, the ears, the nostrils, the mouths, all cleavages, all openings. I stood in the street like a rapist. Under my coat I held myself. I knew the rapist’s desperation, his singleness beyond mere loneliness, his massive urgency greater than any legitimate need, greater even than the convention and morality and law that forbade its satisfaction. It was a confirmation of what I already knew about the uselessness of the senses. It was as if I had already abandoned them and was pressing, like some mute seeking his voice, toward a sixth sense, as yet unevolved; of containment, possession, the ability to know final things finally.

I stopped behind a girl who had paused to look in a window. It was a travel agency, and the whole window had been made over into a kind of crêche. Whoever had designed it had been very clever; it was very real. Oddly mature dolls lolled on some sunny, idyllic shore. In a toy sea, blue as ink, small boats bobbed. The sand around the edges of the sea was as white and fine as powdered sugar. Close to the shore tiny waves lapped perpetually at the knees of bending bathers. On the shore the dolls lay on colored pocket handkerchiefs while little white-coated waiters leaned over them with trays of drinks. Inside the miniature glasses the liquid shone like colored apothecary waters. Cabañas of vaguely biblical fabrics, like the thick- striped garments of Old Testament heroes, dotted the beach. In the background a model of a hotel, white and smooth as a pebble, shaped like some cement scroll, rose over the frontier of beach like a monument. No advertisement intruded; the place was not identified. It was Nassau, South America, Miami, Puerto Rico, one of the Rivieras. It was elsewhere and it was very real. It was only here that was not anywhere.

By watching the girl’s reflection in the glass I could see that she was having my insight — or at least part of it, a fraction of an inch of it. As she stared at the scene the corners of her mouth edged down in an unconscious, piecemeal bitterness and her nostrils flared in a brief flutter of desire. She turned away from the window protectively, as if she might escape the implications of what she had learned. ‘

“It’s a big boulevard, miss,” I said. “There are windows everywhere.”

She moved by me cautiously, downlooking. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing her, taking her to my hotel, holding her prisoner there.

It was true. Here wasn’t anywhere. Sunk in my finite body, things were helplessly reversed for me. I might have been a stone at the bottom of a well, dust in the corner of some closet. A cat who could look at a king. Big deal!

It was doom to know so much. As if I had just been told by some doctor who was never wrong that I had so many days to live. I knew what men rarely knew: the exact dimensions of the insuperable odds against them. Nor did this make me brave, as hopelessness sometimes does. It was disastrous. Now I would have to live always as though in the presence of some overwhelming fact of nature, like some primitive on the edge of the jungle, the vast desert.

Suddenly, however, as quickly as it had come, my lust began to subside. The knowledge that had caused it remained, but I could no longer see it in detail. All that was left was all that was ever left: a renewed desire, a controlled lust, a heightened hope. I continued down the boulevard, past the expensive shops, against the grain of the evening traffic, lascivious, dangerous, capable of heroic crime.

“We are the jet set,” Angel Farouk, the filling- station heiress, announced to the waiter.

“Ready, jet set, go,” Astarte Morgan, the central- heating heiress, said.

“Whee-ee-ee,” said Angus Sinclair, the contour-chair scion.

“Whee-ee-ee the people,” said Wylia De Costa, the miracle-drug widow.

“Let ’em eat cake,” said Rudy Lip, the international playboy and rat.

“Nobody knows the truffles I’ve seen,” Buster Bird, the white-paint tycoon, sang softly. “Nobody knows the truffles.”

“I say,” the general said, “I’m hungry.”

Angus Sinclair clapped his hands. “Caviar. Caviar for the general.”

The waiter presented a bottle smartly to Marvin Rilroyl, the wax-paper magnate. “Thirty-eight,” Marvin Rilroyl said. “A very good year.”

“The Nazis were in the Sudetenland,” the general said wistfully.

“I don’t know,” Astarte Morgan said, “Rome’s changed.”

“My God, what hasn’t?” asked Rudy Lip.

“Africa’s not the same,” Buster Bird said. “When I was on safari there last, I thought I was in some kind of zoo. They’ve spoiled Africa.”

“The Côte d’Azur isn’t azur any more,” Angus Sinclair put in.

“They’ve spoiled the world,” Angel Farouk said. “It’s not like it was in Grandad’s time.”

“Her granddad was a baron,” Angus Sinclair explained. “A robber baron.”

“I think I’ve planned my last campaign,” the general said.

“Ars longa, dolce vita breve,” said Wylia De Costa.

K.O. Bellavista, the movie starlet, turned to Marvin Rilroyl. “How much are you worth, Marvin?” she asked.

“Depends upon the market,” Marvin said. “My cotton is down, my land is up. My steels are mixed, my utilities off. My glamour stocks, of course—”

“Kiss me, darling,” K.O. said, “your glamour stocks are glamorous.”

“I know,” Astarte Morgan said, “let’s fly to Bombay.”

“Bombay Away,” the general said, and chuckled.

“People don’t talk like this,” I said.

“The best people do,” Angel Farouk said.