When eventually I go to the landing outside and stood embracing her for the last time, she whispered that she needed money for the rent, begged me to bring it to her on the morrow. And then, as I was about to descend the stairs, she pulled me back, her lips glued to my ear. «He won't last another week!» These words came to me as if through an amplifier. Even to-day, as I repeat them to myself, I can hear the soft whistling rush of air that accompanied the sound of her almost inaudible voice. It was as if my ear were a dandelion and each little thistle an antenna which caught the message and relayed it to the roof of my brain where it exploded with the dull splash of a howitzer. «He won't last another week!» I said it all the way home, a thousand times or more. And every time I commenced this refrain I saw a photogenic image of fright—the head of a woman sawed off by the frame of the picture just below the scalp. I saw it always the same—a face looming out of darkness, the upper part of the head caught as if in a trap door. A face with a calcium glow about it, suspended by its own dream-like effort above an indistinguishable mass of writhing creatures such as infest the swampy regions of the mind's dark fears. And then I saw Georgie being born—just as she had related it to me once. Born on the floor of the outhouse where she had locked herself in to escape the hands of his father who was blind with drink. I saw her lying huddled on the floor and Georgie between her legs. Lying that way until the moon flooded them with mysterious platinum waves. How she loved Georgie! How she clung to him! Nothing was too good for her Georgie. Then north on the night train with her little black sheep. Starving herself to feed Georgie, selling herself in order to put Georgie through school. Everything for Georgie. «You were crying,» I would say, catching her unawares. «What is it—has he been treating you badly again?» There wasn't any good in Georgie: he was full of black pus. «Hum that tune,» he would say sometimes, the three of us sitting in the dark. And they would begin to hum and croon, and after a time Georgie would come over to her, put his arms around her, and weep like a child. «I'm no god-damned good,» he would say, over and over. And then he would cough and the coughing never stopped. Like hers, his eyes were large and black; they peered out from his hollowed face like two burning holes. Then he went away—to a ranch—and I thought maybe he would get well again. A lung was punctured, and when that healed the other one was punctured. And before the doctors had finished their experiments I was like a bundle of malignant tumors, rearing to explode, to break the chains, to kill his mother if necessary, anything, anything, only no more heartaches, no more misery, no more silent suffering. When had I ever truly loved her? When? I couldn't think. I had been searching for a cosy womb and I had been caught in the out-house, had locked myself in, had watched the moon come and go, had seen one bloody pulp after another fall from between her legs. Phoebus! Yes, that was the place! Near the Old Soldiers' Home. And he, the father and seducer, was safely behind the bars in Fortress Monroe. He was. And then, when no one any longer mentioned his name, he was a corpse lying in a coffin a few blocks away and before I ever realized that they had shipped his body north, she had buried him—with military honors! Christ! What all can happen behind one's back—while you're out for a walk or going to the library to look up an important book! One lung, two lungs, an abortion, a still-birth, milk legs, no work, boarders, hauling ash cans, hocking bicycles, sitting on the roof watching pigeons: these phantasmal objects and events fill the screen, then pass like smoke, are forgotten, buried, thrown in the ash can like rotted tumors, until.... two lips pressed against the waxen ear explode with a deafening dandelion roar, whereupon August Angst, Tracy le Crevecoeur and Rigor Mortis sail slantwise through the roof of the brain to hang suspended in a sky shimmering with ultra-violet.

The day after this episode I do not go back to her with the money, nor do I appear ten days later at the funeral. But about three weeks later I feel compelled to unburden myself to Maude. Of course I say nothing about the whispering fuck on the floor that night, but I do confess to escorting her to her rooms. To another woman I might have confessed everything, but not to Maude. As it is, with only a thimbleful spilled out, she's already as stiff as a frightened mare. She's not listening any more—just waiting for me to conclude so that she can say with absolute finality—NO!

To be fair to her, it was a bit mad to expect her to consent to my suggestion. It would be a rare woman who would say yes. What did I want her to do? Why, to invite Carlotta to live with us. Yes, finally I had come to the extraordinary conclusion that the only decent thing to do would be to ask Carlotta to share her life with us. I was trying to make it plain to Maude that I had never loved Carlotta, that I had only pitied her, and that therefore I owed her something. Queer masculine logic! Dingo! Absolutely dingo. But I believed every word I uttered. Carlotta would come and take a room and live her own life. We would treat her graciously, like a fallen queen. It must have sounded terribly hollow and false to Maude. But as I listened to the reverberations of my own voice I had the distinct sensation of hearing those sound waves quell the horrible gurgle of the toilet box. Since Maude had already made up her mind, since no one was listening except myself, since the words bounced back like egg plants ricocheting against a gourd, I continued with my transmission, growing more and more earnest, more and more convinced, more and more determined to have my way. One wave on top of another, one rhythm against another: quell against beat, surge against gush, confession against compulsion, ocean against brook. Beat it down, sink it, drown it, drive it below the earth, set a mountain on top of it! I went on and on, con amore, con furioso, con connecti-busque, con aboulia, con aesthesia, con Silesia... And all the while she listened like a rock, fire-proofing her little camisoled heart, her tin cracker-box, her meat-loafed gizzard, her fumigated womb.

The answer was No! Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow —NO! Positively no! Her whole physical, mental, moral and spiritual development had brought her to that great moment when she could answer triumphantly: NO! Positively No!

If she had only said to me: «Listen, you can't ask me to do a thing like that! It's mad, don't you see? How would we get along, the three of us? I know you'd like to help her—so would I... but....»

If she had spoken that way I would have gone to the mirror, taken a long cool look at myself, laughed like a broken hinge and agreed that it was utterly mad. Not that only, but more... I would have given her credit for really desiring to do something which I knew her meagre spirit was incapable of imagining. Yes, I'd have chalked up a white mark for her and topped it off with a quiet insane fuck a la Huysmans. I'd have taken her on my lap, as her father in heaven used to do, and cooing and billing, and pretending that 986 plus 2 makes minus 69 I'd have delicately lifted her organdy cover-all, and put the fire out with an ethereal fire extinguisher.

However, and instead of which, pissing in vain against a wall of fire-proofed sheet metal, I got so infuriated that I burst out of the house in the middle of the night and started walking to Coney Island. The weather was mild and when I got to the boardwalk I sat down on a ramp and began to laugh. I got to thinking of Stanley, of the night I met him after his release from Fort Oglethorpe, of the open barouche we hired and the beer bottles piled up on the seat opposite. After four years in the cavalry Stanley was a man of iron. He was tough inside and out, as only a Pole can be. He would have bitten my ear off, if I had dared him to, and perhaps spat it in my face. He had a couple of hundred dollars in his pocket and he wanted to spend it all that night. And before the night was over I remember that we had just enough between us to share a room together in some broken-down hotel near Borough Hall. I remember too that he was so stinking drunk that he wouldn't get out of bed to relieve his bladder—just turned over and pissed a steady stream against the wall.