Crazy Cock by Henry Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

if you were home.”
    â€œThat’s all?”
    â€œShe said she wanted to talk to you.”
    A S A reason for her absence Hildred explained that her mother had been taken ill.
    O.K.
    It was only several days later that he realized there were flaws in her story. When, acting on the impulse, he decided to telephone her mother he learned to his amazement that mother and daughter hadn’t seen each other for over a year, that furthermore her mother didn’t even know that her daughter was married.
    When, several nights later while lying in each other’s arms, he repeated word for word the conversation with her mother she commenced to laugh, she laughed as if her heart would burst.
    â€œSo my mother really said that?” Another gale of laughter. “And you swallowed it!” More laughter, slaughterhouse mirth. Then suddenly, abruptly, it was exhausted. He drew her to him. Her body was all atremble, dripping with perspiration. She tried to speak but there was only a gurgling in her throat. He lay very still and pressed her to him.
    When she had grown very quiet he suddenly grasped her by the shoulders and shook her. “Why would your mother lie to me?” he demanded. “Why? Why?”
    She commenced to laugh again, to laugh as if her heart would burst.

2
    A FEW nights later he was called to the telephone. It was Hildred. Vanya had been taken ill and she thought she ought to stay with her. “Do you mind if I don’t come home?” she asked.
    â€œYes, I do,” he answered. “However, do as you think best.”
    A pause ensued during which he caught the remnants of a gabfest between two operators who had been on a bust the night before. When her voice floated over the wire again there was a strange quiver in it. “I’m coming home,” she said. “I’m coming right away. . . .”
    â€œHildred!” he called. “Listen . . . listen!”
    No answer. A buzzing in his ears mingled with the confusion in his brain. Just as he was about to hang up there came a faint, questioning
y-e-es?
    â€œHildred, listen to me. . . . You go ahead and stay with her. . . . Don’t worry about me.”
    â€œYou’re sure, dear? You’re sure you won’t feel badly?”
    â€œOf course not! You know me . . . I’m just a big clown. Don’t think about it anymore. It’s all O.K. with me.” As he hung up he added: “Have a good time!”
    When he got back to the room he felt as if his guts weredropping out. “I knew it!” he murmured. “I knew it was going to be something like that.”
    T HE NIGHT seemed endless. Every few minutes he awoke and stared at the vacant pillow. Toward morning he fell into a fitful sleep. Dreams came in kaleidoscopic fashion; between pulse beats they came and went. Some he dreamed over and over, one particularly in which he saw her rolled up on a horsehair sofa, her face decomposing. How could a human being sleep so soundly when the face was decomposing? But then he perceived that her slumber was only a sort of thick pea soup, which made everything right again. . . . There was another dream in which he lived with an old Jew who shuffled about all day in his carpet slippers. He wore a patriarchal beard that floated in majestic waves over his sunken chest; beneath the beard there were jewels, a thick cluster of them, arranged like those in the breastplate of the high priest. When they caught the light the beard took fire and the flesh burned away to the skull. . . . Finally he dreamed that he was in Paris. The street on which he stood was deserted, except for a pair of streetwalkers and a gendarme who followed them like a pimp. At the foot of the street, where there was a sprinkle of lights, he could make out a carousel under a striped awning and a patch of green studded with marble fauns. Under the awning the lions and tigers stood rigid, their backs enameled in gold and ivory. Immobile they