NORMAN MAILER
11
of penniless young men like Malaquais and their sentiments on
reading his words. To the letter, Gide pinned a bill , something like ten
pre-World War II francs . Let us say the sum might bring back twenty
dollars worth of groceries today. Malaquais tore up the money and
mailed the scraps back to Gide. " Do not think, " he wrote, "that you
can buy a postage stamp for your soul. If you wish to do something for
me , do something real , give me a job! Do not throw me crumbs! "
Now came another letter. Would Malaquais come and visit?
3
" C'est toi , Malaquais? " asked Gide on the day he appeared .
" Oui , c' est moi . C'est toi , Gide? "
Could fifty years have gone by since a younger man had said ' ' toi"
to him? Still , it was the period of Gide 's growing sympathy for the
USSR. How characteristic to be intrigued therefore with a young Pole
who was both an intellectual and a worker, not only a Marxist, but–
perverse prize to esteem-a species of rare Marxist from some rarefied
splinter group , the absolute antithesis , therefore, of all those Soviet
bureaucrats with whom Gide was now trying to find tillable intel–
lectual ground . All the more intoxicating to listen then to the con–
centrated polemic of a Marxist who was altogether anti-Soviet-that
was in the grain for Gide . He could hardly move toward atheism
without encouraging the friendship of every cleric he knew.
So began an intellectual relationship which would continue
intermittently for years . If Gide was to absorb little of Marx from
Malaquais (which may have been Gide's fault!) the new secretary was
to
learn a great deal about writing from the master.
4
A decade and a
half later during the winter and spring of 1949 while Malaquais was
translating
The Naked andthe Dead
and we became friends despite his
aforesaid abomination of my writing (with which I secretly agreed-
3"G. pinned to his letter a postal order for 100.00 francs (20.00 doll . is about right). I mailed it back,
telling him he couldn 't buy himself a piece of real estate in patadise at my expense. Not that I was beyond
bnbery. Had he sent 1.000.00 francs, I might have considered . But for 100.00 francs I'd rather have him stay in
hell. That's when he wrote, would I come and visit."
4 " I was not G's secretary or otherwise in his pay. He did ask me from time to time to do this or that for
him-read and comment upon the hundredsof letters (mostly insulting) he had received as a sequel
to
his rwo
bookson Russia; or he'd want me
to
put some order in his voluminous atchives; or calI on me at any odd hour
for a game of chess ; or drag me along the streets through lengthy aimless errands; or drop in my lap a
manuscript ofhis and out ofthe corners ofhis eyes watch me as I sniffed over it ; and so on. But there was never a
question of employment or salary. Yet, it is true that he gave me a helping hand . He had me examined by his
doctor, saw
to
it that I puton a few badlyneeded poundsofflesh , that I be taken cateofwhen in the hospital, in
shott possiblykept me from spitting my lungs. And he suppotted me intermittentlywhen I was writing my first
book, and it was he who secured for Galy and myself the Mexican visa which saved our hides."
