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PARTISAN REVIEW
myself up to what is known familiarly as introspection. I looked into
myself, as the moralists say. But the stratum that solicited me with its
buried wealth was itself a symptom of the infirmity I attempted to
confront, a decoy.
I took to speaking to her. No matter if she did not answer. I
censored minimally. I even believe she wanted me to speak so she could
play at inquisitor. When the inquisitor speaks he is impervious to the
stench of the inquisitory. There was something comforting about
sentences at that time. When there was nothing more to think about.
Sentences are walking sticks in seasons of vertigo. I was deeply affected
by my unblemished spontaneity.
It
made me want to cry. I talked about
the canals, my satchels, the supervisor, his wife, Joe, the clerks
repairing to a small cafe at day 's end. Before she could understand one
sentence another was on its way, proleptic, to go against the grain of
her worst formulations, to prevent misinterpretations. But she was
being assaulted by so many sentences her only recourse was to misinter–
pretation. I pelleted her, the way a rodent pellets its comrades with its
shit in times of fear. But I did not leave after all. Another woman
entered my life. Was it Lydia or Livia. To
L.
I was able to express my
n eeds, to invent them. With Mrs. Fall I was unable. To muddle
through we crave contrasts. I must believe
L.
was different from F.
Perhaps part of my success with
L.
was due to the fact I kept my
occupation a secret. No need for outpourings and then rectifications
for what wasn't heard anyway. I tried, as I had with Mrs. Fall, to
monopolize all infirmities in advance. I could not allow they were not
my infirmities per se but infirmities of the organism that was our
relation. Relation not relationship, detestable word, chimera of the
lady novelists and the professional samaritans. Decorum greeted me
daily from the top of the stairs. As I ate and drank decorum plucked me,
part chicken, part clavichord. Clavichord of the fields and graceless
fowl , abject melange, that was me. But half-breed appealed to
L.
She
was artistic and liked to exploit the schisms in others. She made me
contend with her imperfections. She did not let me remain so blinded
by my own.
She was to the manor born . There was much fog at night. There
were bridges, faltering handmaidens of the fog. From my zone of
shadow I migrated toward her, slowly, slowly, as if to suck her dry. But
in the end it was she who marooned me, suffused me with the sap of her
prowess. Suffused and marooned, I welcomed both, or so it seemed to
me. I was helpless but inventive, invented new ways to be helpless. But
I swerved in time from the ultimate helpl essness whose ambush I
