The Tenants by Bernard Malamud Read Free Book Online

of him.
    “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
    After a tense minute she softened, then quickly
kissed him. “Now don’t take on personally. I have to set my mind up for sex, that’s how I am. Just be like nice and I’ll be nice to you. Okay now?”
    Harry offered her an artificial violet from a pitcherful on the windowsill. Mary took the flower, looked for where to pin it on her dress, then dropped it into her purse on the daybed.
    He apologized once more.
    “Don’t hold it against yourself, Harry. I like you fine.”
    “Then what’s this smell you mentioned?”
    “Like you smell white is all I mean.”
    “How does white smell?”
    “No smell at all.”
    “So I won’t worry.”
    “Don’t,” she said. “Life is too short, okay now?”
    Sam glared into the room, and Mary, taking her purse, went to him. Lesser warned himself not to let his poor party turn into a bad scene.
     
     
    Harry requests to borrow a strawberry-papered joint from Willie.
    Willie offers to share his. They sit crosslegs on the small kitchen floor, shoulder to shoulder, passing a rumpled wet cigarette back and forth.

    This here is part Lebanon hashish. Don’t smell it, boy, suck it in your gut.
    Lesser holds the sweet-burning smoke down till the room turns radiant and grand. Arches soar, the rose window flushes deep rose. Bells bong in a drowned chapel.
    Now this cathedral is a floating island smelling of forest and flowers after summer rain. The roots of a thousand trees trail in the yellow water. We’re alone on this floating island, Willie, full of evergreens and wild purple roses. We’re moving with the current. Bells toll in the deep woods. People on both shores of the river are waving as we sail by. They wave red white and black flags. We have to bow, Willie. I’m bowing on this side. They’re cheering and I’m bowing. You better bow, too.
    Thanks, folks, my next will be my best.
    Who are those cats, brothers or ofays?
    Black cats with white hats and white ones with black hats. They’re hip hip hooraying because we’re good writers. We confess the selves we pretend to know. We tell them who they are and why. We make them feel what they never knew they could. They cry at our tears and laugh to hear us laugh, or vice versa, it makes no difference.
    What’s your book about, Lesser?
    Love, I guess.

    Willie titters, rowing calmly, steadily, his muscles flashing as the water ripples.
    It’s about this guy who writes because he has never really told the truth and is dying to. What’s yours about, Willie?
    Me.
    How’s it coming?
    On four feet, man, in a gallop. How’s yours?
    On one. Clop.
    I’m gon win the fuckn Noble Prize. They gon gimme a million bucks of cash.
    After me, Willie. I’ve worked since the ice age and tomorrow is another day.
    Willie rows coolly, sighting ahead in the swift shifting current of the broadening river, watching out for snags and sandbars and the hulks of wrecked ships.
    What’s more I’m writing my best book. I want all the good people on both shores waving their little paper flags, all those grays and blacks, to admit Harry Lesser is King David with his six-string harp, except the notes are words and the psalms fiction. He is writing a small masterpiece though not too small. How small are the psalms?
    Lesser gives three clops for Harry Lesser.
    Pile it on, man. Pile on the shit. Pile on the coal and let’s see the smoke. Pile on the bread. You can have the noise they makin but I gon shovel up the bread.
    It’s only money, Willie. What of remembrance in future time, a small immortality? Consider the human condition and how soon gone.
    I want green power. I want money to stuff up my black ass and white bitch’s cunt. I want to fuck her with money.
    Think of this sacred cathedral we’re in, Willie, with lilting bonging iron bell. I mean this flower-massed, rose-clustered, floating island. I guess what I mean is what about art?
    Don’t talk flippy. I worry about it gives me cramps in my