THE HAND THAT FED ME
31
he has been utterly humiliated, he observes that he has touched bot–
tom; having reached bottom, he knows there's no lower he can fall.
There's a comfort, a perpetual cushion in certain kinds of misery–
you rest on it, just as a contented man rests at the top of his career.
Top or bottom, either way- but no struggling in the middle!
J?oes this succeed in explaining myself to you? Most likely not.
I feel you must learn something about the way in which I live, in
order to understand why, after three years have passed, I shower you
with letters, to which I expect no answer.
I live in what I consider to be a state of exile. Among the friends
I have at present is a certain Zampechini, an Italian refugee, and a
certain Lutzek, a German refugee. I have told them, "Boys, we are
in exile together. Not from our separate countries,-but from history."
But why proceed in this fashion, at this level, away over your head?
It
is
enough to state briefly the following conditions:
1. I am alone.
4. The last six women I approached unconditionally turned
me down.
2. There is a war on and I am out of it on all fronts; neither
losing nor profiting by it, and not even employed.
3. I live in a rooming house, on the allowance my father very
grudgingly gives me.
5. Ever since WPA folded up,
f
but never mind the rest.
I was going to tell you more. I wanted, first, to tell you every–
thing; then, a little; now, nothing. Ah, what's the difference? I can–
not bear to tell you what I have suffered, because I am proud of it,
and it would only bore you. Enough. Let this be a last effort at expla–
nation in a letter full of abortive efforts.
As
a man who, quite confi–
dently, has touched bottom, both
in
what he has suffered and in per–
sonal esteem, I feel nothing I do can injure me. Your rebuffs are
not,
definitely not
a further humiliation. I understand myself too well.
I am of the brotherhood of paupers who endure everything at their
own expense. And so, if I go out of my way and out of my time to
reach after a promised happiness of three years back, this, too, a
deliberate delusion, is also at my own expense. And perhaps even the
