Crazy Cock by Henry Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

licorice boughs in the gray pigment of sky, frail saplings drooping like scholars overloaded with wisdom.
    As the days advanced a pall spread over the city; the wind roared through the deep gorges, whirling the dust and litter of the streets into choking spirals. The skyscrapers rose up with sepulchral gleam amid a haze of gray and rust. But in the cemeteries there was green, grass of resurrection, of life eternal. The rivers, too, were green, green as bile.
    Each day brought new faces to the Caravan: brokers back from the Riviera, artists who had done a little sketching in the provinces, actresses with fat contracts, buyers from the fashionable department stores who had picked up a few phrases of French and Italian during their sojourn abroad. All preparing to burrow in for the winter, resume again the nervous, unhealthy life in which they pretended to find release and exhilaration.
    Vanya practically lived at the Caravan. When Hildredappeared in the forenoon Vanya was already there waiting to have breakfast with her. They met each day as if they had been separated for years.
    Curiously enough, whenever Tony Bring dropped in they were gone. It was always the same story—Hildred has gone off somewhere
with her friend
. No mention was made of these visits until one day, just as Hildred was getting ready to leave the house, one of those tiffs occurred which were daily becoming more numerous. She accused him of spying on her. She knew only too well how often he had dropped in, the questions he launched, the sly insinuations. As a matter of fact, she had seen him herself now and then, pressing his nose against the windowpanes. God only knew where he didn’t poke his nose.
    Finally Vanya’s name popped up. Vanya . . . yes, she was the one who had started all the trouble.
    â€œYou’re jealous of her, that’s what the matter!” cried Hildred.
    â€œJealous of
her?”
For a moment he was at a loss to find an epithet low enough to convey the full measure of his disgust. A fine friend she was, trying to worm her way in here and there with a pinch of dope, hanging out with whores and syphilitic poets. “Do you expect me to take her seriously?” he yelled. “A genius, you call her. What has she to show for her genius? I mean something more than dirty fingernails!”
    Hildred heard him out in scorching silence. She was in the act of rouging her lips. Her face had a beautiful cadaverous glow; as she examined herself in the mirror she became intoxicated with her beauty—like an undertaker who perceives suddenly what a beautiful corpse he has under his hand.
    Tony Bring was enraged. “Stop it!” he yelled. “Don’t you see what you look like?”
    She peered at herself calmly in the mirror. “I suppose I look like a whore, is that what you mean?” she answered sweetly.
    Finally she was ready to go. At the door, her hand on the knob, she paused.
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t go yet,” he said. “I want to say something. . . .”
    â€œI thought you had finished.”
    He leaned against the door, squeezing her to him. He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her eyes, and the throbbing little pulse in her throat. There was a greasy taste in his mouth.
    Hildred pulled herself away, and as she dashed down the stairs, she flung back: “Get a grip on yourself!”
    M ORE THAN once during the course of the night he jumped up, tossed aside the heavy volume he was reading, and dashed to the subway station. He waited in the arcade while one train after another pulled in. He walked over to the bridge plaza and waited some more. Cabs rolled by lugubriously. Cabs loaded with drunks. Cabs loaded with thugs. No Hildred. . . .
    He went home and sat up the night. In the morning he learned that she had telephoned.
    â€œWhat did she say?” he asked.
    â€œShe said she wanted to talk to you.”
    â€œDidn’t she leave any message?”
    â€œNo, she just asked