Barbary Shore by Norman Mailer Read Free Book Online Page A

had been a best seller.
    “N-n-no. I don’t remember the titles, but there were you know things about American fellows and girls. The real stuff though. You know the way we feel.”
    I mentioned several of the major novels which had been written by Americans between the two wars. This seemed to satisfy Hollingsworth. He made a list very carefully, writing each title into a little notebook he carried in his hip pocket. When he was finished, he asked, “Do you know where I could get them?”
    “I can loan you one or two,” I offered.
    “Oh, I’d appreciate that. It’s awfully neighborly.” He had sat down in the chair by his desk, and was fingering the crease in his pants. “And there’s lots of real things in them, isn’t there? I mean, you know,… 
foolish
girls, and boys who are willing to … to take a chance.” He grinned.
    “You’ll probably find some.”
    “I’m really surprised they print things like that. I wonder if they should allow it. Atheistic things, and the Bolshevists, I understand, write for them a lot.”
    “For what?”
    “Oh, for them, you know.” He picked up another can of beer and offered it to me.
    I had decided he annoyed me. “No, I think I’d better get back to my room and work.”
    “Do you make things there?”
    “No. I …?” I realized that he had forgotten. “No, I write.”
    “Oh, well that’s a clever occupation.” He followed me toward the door, and stood talking to me in the hall.
    “I’ve been in New York for two months,” he said suddenly, “and do you know I haven’t found any of the evil quarters. Iunderstand that Harlem is quite something, although they say that the tourists have ruined it, isn’t that true?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It takes all kinds to make a world, I suppose.”
    “Yes.”
    He leered at me suddenly. “I’ve had some interesting experiences with the lady downstairs. Mrs. Guinevere. She’s a fine lady.” The leer was shocking.
    “I’ve heard a lot about her,” I said.
    “Oh, yes. She’s an experience. Something to put into one’s memoirs as they say.”
    “Mmm.” I shuffled a step or two away. “Well, back to work for me.”
    “Oh, yes, I understand,” he said in his soft voice. “One has to work, doesn’t one?” He sipped his beer reflectively. “Sometime I’d like to talk over my experiences with you, would you mind?”
    “No.”
    “It’s been very enjoyable having this little discussion.” He retreated almost completely into his room. As I left, he said one last thing. “You know that Mrs. Guinevere?”
    “Yes.”
    “An extremely colorful person. Typical of New York, so I’ve heard.”
    I had no idea at all what to think of Hollingsworth.

SIX
    I F I was a very lonely young man in New York that summer, it could be only my fault. Outside the rooming house I had not many acquaintances, but still there were people I could have visited. Yet as time went by, a week and then another, the tenuous circle of my acquaintances withered and fell apart. Entering Dinsmore’s room with the intention to see no one until I had completed some work, I did not realize that actually I was feeding a wish, and in effect making it more difficult to break the bonds I fashioned myself.
    This may sound extreme, and in fact it was. I did not have to disappear so completely, nor was I obliged to feel an insuperable weight at the prospect of seeing some indifferent friend for a few hours. A man in such a pass is hardly interesting, and there is no need to recount the hours I spent imagining a series of rebuffs and insults. In my mind I would telephone to somebody and he would invite me to his house, but from the moment I entered I would know it had been a mistake. Conversation would languish, I would stammer, I would be in an agony to depart. And so, in thinking of those people I knew in the city, I would discard them one by one, convinced as I considered each person that he was without interest, or without