Quiet Days in Clichy. Генри Миллер

Or take her for a walk. She’s easy to please. Teach her geography or something—she doesn’t know a thing. It’ll be good for you, Joey. You’ll improve your French . . . And don’t knock her up, if you can help it. I can’t think about money for abortions now. Besides, I don’t know anymore where my Hungarian doctor lives.”

      I listened to him in silence. Carl had a genius for getting involved in difficult situations. The trouble was, or perhaps it was a virtue, that he was incapable of saying No. Most people say No immediately, out of a blind preservative instinct. Carl alway said Yes, Sure, Certainly. He would compromise himself for life on the impulse of a moment, knowing deep down, I suppose, that the same preservative instinct which made others say No would become operative at the crucial moment. With all his warm, generous impulses, his instinctive kindliness and tenderness, he was also the most elusive fellow I have ever known. Nobody, no power on earth could pin him down, once he made up his mind to free himself. He was as slippery as an eel, cunning, ingenious, absolutely reckless. He flirted with danger, not out of courage, but because it gave him an opportunity to sharpen his wits, to practice jujitsu. When drunk he became imprudent and audacious. On a dare he would walk into a police station and shout Merde! at the top of his lungs. If he were apprehended he would apologize, saying that he must have been temporarily out of his mind. And he would get away with it! Usually he did these little tricks so fast that, before the astonished guardians of the peace could come to their senses, he would be a block or two away, perhaps sitting on a terrace, sipping a beer and looking as innocent as a lamb.

      In a pinch Carl always hocked his typewriter. In the beginning he could get as much as four hundred francs on it, which was no mean sum then. He took extremely good care of his machine because he was frequently obliged to borrow on it. I retain a most vivid image of him dusting and oiling the thing each time he sat down to write, and of carefully putting the cover over it when he had finished writing. I noticed too that he was secretly relieved whenever he put it in hock: it meant that he could declare a holiday without having a guilty conscience. But when he had spent the money, and had only time on his hands, he would become irritable; it was at such times, he swore, that he always got his most brilliant ideas. If the ideas became really burning and obsessive, he would buy himself a little notebook and go off somewhere to write it out in longhand, using the most handsome Parker pen I have ever seen. He would never admit to me that he was making notes on the sly, not until long afterwards. No, he would come home looking sour and disgruntled, saying that he had been obliged to piss the day away. If I suggested that he go to the newspaper office, where he worked nights, and use one of their machines, he would invent a good reason why such a procedure was impossible.

      I mention this business of the machine and his never having it when he needed it, because it was one of his ways of making things difficult for himself. It was an artistic device which, despite all evidences to the contrary, always worked out advantageously for him. If he had not been deprived of the machine at periodic intervals he would have run dry and, through sheer despondency, remained barren far beyond the normal curve. His ability to remain under water, so to speak, was extraordinary. Most people, observing him under these submerged conditions, usually gave him up as lost. But he was never really in danger of going under for good; if he gave that illusion it was only because he had a more than usual need of sympathy and attention. When he emerged, and began narrating his under-water experiences, it was like a revelation. It proved, for one thing, that he had been very much alive all the while. And not only alive, but extremely observant. As if he had swum about like a fish in a bowl; as if he had seen everything through a magnifying glass.