Jack Kerouac - The Subterraneans

In the red bulblight parlor in fact I see Jones alone with Mardou questioning, as if interviewing her, I see that he’s grinning and saying to himself ‘Old Percepied’s got himself another amazing doll’ and I inside yearn to myself, “Yeah, for how long”—and he’s listening to Mardou, who, impressed, forewarned, understanding everything, makes solemn statements about bop, like, “I don’t like bop, I really don’t, it’s like junk to me, too many junkies are bop men and I hear the junk in it.”—“Well,” Mac adjusting glasses, “that’s interesting.”—And I go up and say, “But you never like what you come from” (looking at Mardou).—“What do you mean?”—“You’re the child of Bop,” or the children of bop, some such statement, which Mac and I agree on—so that later when we all the whole gang troop out to further festivities of the night, and Mardou, wearing Adam’s long black velvet jacket (for her long) and a mad long scarf too, looking like a little Polish underground girl or boy in a sewer beneath the city and cute and hip, and in the street rushes up from one group to the one I’m in, and I reach out as she reaches me (I’m wearing Carmody’s felt hat straight on my head like hipster for joke and my red shirt still, now defunct from weekends) and sweep her littleness off her feet and up against me and go on walking carrying her, I hear Mac’s appreciative “Wow” and “Go” laugh in the background and I think proudly “He sees now that I have a real great chick—that I am not dead but going on—old continuous Percepied—never getting older, always in there, always with the young, the new generations—.” A motley group in any case going down the street what with Adam Moorad wearing a full tuxedo borrowed from Sam the night before so he could attend some opening with tickets free from his office—trooping down to Dante’s and Mask again—that Mask, that old po mask all the time—Dante’s where in the rise and roar of the social and gab excitement I looked up many times to catch Mardou’s eyes and play eyes with her but she seemed reluctant, abstract, brooding—no longer affectionate of me—sick of all our talk, with Bromberg re-arriving and great further discourses and that particular noxious group-enthusiasm that you’re supposed to feel when like Mardou you’re with a star of the group or even I mean just a member of that constellation, how noisome, tiresome it must have been to her to have to appreciate all we were saying, to be amazed by the latest quip from the lips of the one and only, the newest manifestation of the same old dreary mystery of personality in Kaja the great—disgusted she seemed indeed, and looking into space.

So later when in my drunkenness I managed to get Paddy Cordavan over to our table and he invited us all to his place for further drinking (the usually unattainable social Paddy Cordavan due to his woman who always wanted to go home alone with him, Paddy Cordavan of whom Buddy Pond had said, “He’s too beautiful I can’t look,” tall, blond, big-jawed somber Montana cowboy slowmoving, slow talking, slow shouldered) Mardou wasn’t impressed, as she wanted to get away from Paddy and all the other subterraneans of Dante’s anyway, whom I had just freshly annoyed by yelling again at Julien, “Come here, we’re all going to Paddy’s party and Julien’s coming,” at which Julien immediately leaped up and rushed back to Ross Wallenstein and the others at their own booth, thinking, “God that awful Per-cepied is screaming at me and trying to drag me to his silly places again, I wish someone would do something about him.” And Mardou wasn’t any further impressed when, at Yuri’s insistence, I went to the phone and spoke to Sam (calling from work) and agreed to meet him later at the bar across from the office—“We’ll all go! we’ll all go!” I’m screaming by now and even Adam and Frank are yawning ready to go home and Jones is long gone—rushing around up and down Paddy’s stairs for further calls with Sam and at one point here I am rushing into Paddy’s kitchen to get Mardou to come meet Sam with me and Ross Wallenstein having arrived while I was in the bar calling says, looking up, “Who let this guy in, hey, who is this? how’d you get in here! Hey Paddy!” in serious continuation of his original dislike and “are-you-a-fag” come-on, which I ignored, saying, “Brother I’ll take the fuzz off your peach if you don’t shut up,” or some such putdown, can’t remember, strong enough to make him swivel like a soldier, the way he does, stiff necked, and retire—I dragging Mardou down to a cab to rush to Sam’s and all this wild world swirling night and she in her little voice I hear protesting from far away, “But Leo, dear Leo, I want to go home and sleep.”—“Ah hell!” and I give Sam’s address to the taxidriver, she says NO, insists, gives Heavenly Lane, “Take me there first and then go to Sam’s” but I’m really seriously hung-up on the undeniable fact that if I take her to Heavenly Lane first the cab will never make it to Sam’s waiting bar before closing time, so I argue, we harangue hurling different addresses at the cab driver who like in a movie waits, but suddenly, with that red flame that same red flame (for want of a better image) I leap out of the cab and rush out and there’s another one, I jump in, give Sam’s address and off he guns her—Mardou left in the night, in a cab, sick, and tired, and me intending to pay the second cab with the buck she’d entrusted to Adam to get her a sandwich but which in the turmoil had been forgotten but he gave it to me for her—poor Mardou going home alone, again, and drunken maniac was gone.

Well, I thought, this is the end—I finally made the step and by God I paid her back for what she done to me—it had to come and this is it—ploop.

Isn’t it good to know winter is coming— and that life will be a little more quiet—and you will be home writing and eating well and we will be spending pleasant nights wrapped round one another—and you are home now, rested and eating well because you should not become too sad—and I feel better when I know you are well.

and

Write to me Anything.

Please stay well

Your Freind

And my love

And Oh

And Love for You

MARDOU

Please

BUT THE DEEPEST premonition and prophesy of all had always been, that when I walked into Heavenly Lane, cutting in sharply from sidewalk, I’d look up, and if Mardou’s light was on Mardou’s light was on—“But some day, dear Leo, that light will not shine for you”—this a prophesy irrespective of all your Yuris and attenuations in the snake of time.—“Someday she won’t be there when you want her to be there, the light’ll be out and you’ll be looking up and it will be dark in Heavenly Lane and Mardou’ll be gone, and it’ll be when you least expect it and want it.”—Always I knew this—it crossed my mind that night when I ran up, met Sam in the bar, he was with two newspapermen, we bought drinks, I spilled money on the floor, I hurried to get drunk (through with my baby!), rushed up to Adam and Frank’s, woke them up again, wrestled on the floor, made noise, Sam tore my T-shirt off, bashed the lamp in, drank a fifth of bourbon as of old in our tremendous days together, it was just another big downcrashing in the night and all for nothing … waking up, I, in the morning with the final hangover that said to me, “Too late”—and got up and staggered to the door through the debris, and opened it, and went home, Adam saying to me as he heard me fiddle with the groaning faucet, “Leo go home and recuperate well,” sensing how sick I was tho not knowing about Mardou and me—and at home I wandered around, couldn’t stay in the house, couldn’t stop, had to walk, as if someone was going to die soon, as if I could smell the flowers of death in the air, and I went in the South San Francisco railyard and cried.