PARTISAN REVIEW
221
ing breath and all. "You know what?" he turned, incidentally bar–
ring the entrance to his place, "You know whom you remind me of?
Ah? - Ah?" His red-filmed eyes winked at me horribly and he poked
his
fingers into my stubbly cheek. "You're ready - ah?" I fled.
Uncanny! The face that looked at me in the mirror was hollow,
yellow like a lemon. What right had I to look like that? Seeing I was
the author of those brilliant articles on "Abstractionism," etc.? Hadn't
I eaten all the toads on offer, hadn't I walked through the dirt with
splayed feet like a sow's? I wasn't the genius. I was just - what?
Now then, let's be precise - or "concrete" as our betters would put
it! What exactly was
I?
Nothing, of course, well, practically nothing.
A bit of unsavory ways and means, sewagewise (who had flushed
Zerin's poems down the lavatory?), perhaps, with luck, let's
say,
a
murky channel that had surfaced and brought to light - what? I
blinked at myself, pushing my mouth up Catar-wise to give weight
to my deliberations. (How our enemies creep into and debase our
very grimaces!) Surely this thing, this ugly mug, couldn't have
brought to light, all right, to life (makes no difference in
this
wintry
climate) the pure glory of poetry? The idea made me guffaw. Then
I began to laugh, neigh, whinny, with pleasure, at the thought of
the coup I had brought off, at the enonnity I had committed. I, the
Mole, had, in this cemetery of hope, singlehanded, singlepawed,
if
you like, resurrected the dead!
This
being so, I thought I'd better
kiss
my reflection in the mirror good-hye.
I knew then that I'd let them have every one
of
Zerin's poems
and that I'd have to act with speed and circumspection. I remem–
bered the critic in X, who had objected to "my" first published
poerr..
being called "Swallows" and who,
in
his
far-away place,
couldn't possibly have heard about me no longer being the darling of
the Catars. I took the night train. All through the journey I sat
in
the
dark compartment chuckling and giggling. The other passengers must
have thought me insane. (Oh, no, don't
try
to get me on that one!)
In the morning, face to face with the little chap, a provincial editor
not without ambition, who, on beholding me, more or less went
down on
his
knees (and why shouldn't he?), I deployed a couple
of the old Mole tricks, flattered, coaxed, gave to understand that I
had felt an irresistible urge to get out at
his
station as he had been the
only one perceptive enough . . . etc.; I agreed (wholeheartedly) that
