Storm for the Living and the Dead Read online

  back to L.A.

  both of them standing there

  on the platform

  looking at me and smiling

  as I looked back from my

  seat by the window.

  it was . . .

  embarrassing . . .

  finally the train started

  to slowly roll

  and I waved and they

  waved

  and then as I was

  nearly out of sight

  the Great Editor

  jumped up and down

  like a little boy,

  still waving . . .

  I walked back to the bar

  car and decided to stay

  my trip

  there.

  it was some stops and

  some hours later

  when the porter came

  back there:

  “HENRY CHINASKI! IS THERE

  A HENRY CHINASKI HERE?”

  “here my good man,”

  I said.

  “damn, man,” he said, “I’ve

  been looking all over this

  train for you!”

  I tipped him and opened the

  telegram:

  “YOU’RE STILL A S.O.B. BUT

  WE STILL LOVE YOU . . .

  Jon and Louise . . .”

  I motioned the porter over

  ordered a double scotch

  on the rocks

  then I had it

  and I held it up a moment

  toasted them an almost

  lyrical blessing

  then drank it down

  as the train

  rolled and swayed

  swayed and rolled

  working me further and further

  away

  from those magic

  people.

  the way it goes

  he died one Sunday afternoon

  and the funeral was on a Wednesday;

  the crowd was small: his wife, his

  sons, related family members, a couple

  of screenwriters plus 3 or 4 others;

  he was discovered by H. L. Mencken

  in the 30’s;

  he wrote a clear simple line

  a passionate line,

  fine short stories and novels;

  he was stricken late in life,

  became blind, had both legs

  amputated, and they kept cutting

  at him, operating again and

  again.

  in the hospital

  he stayed in that bed for years;

  he had to be turned, fed, bed-

  panned,

  but while there

  he dictated a total new novel

  to his wife.

  he never quit: that novel was

  published.

  one day when I was visiting

  him

  he told me, “you know, Hank,

  when I was all right, I had all

  these friends, then . . . when this

  happened, they dropped me, it was

  like I had leprosy . . .”

  and he smiled.

  there was a breeze moving through

  the window

  and there he was

  the sunlight moving

  half across him.

  those friends didn’t

  deserve him.

  a great writer

  and a greater human.

  John, the crowd will never have

  the love of the few—

  as if I would have to tell

  you.

  alone in a time of armies

  I was 22 in that roominghouse in Philadelphia and I was starving and

  mad in a prosperous world at war

  and one night sitting at my window I saw in the room across the

  way in another Philadelphia roominghouse

  a young lady grab a young man and kiss him with great joy and

  passion.

  it was then that I realized the depraved corner I had worked myself

  into:

  I wanted to be that young man at that moment

  but I didn’t want to do the many things he had probably done to get

  where he had arrived.

  yet worse, I realized that I could be wrong.

  I left my room and began walking the streets.

  I kept walking even though I had not eaten that

  day.

  (the day has eaten you! sang the chorus)

  I walked, I walked.

  I must have walked 5 miles, then I

  returned.

  the lights in the room across the way were

  out.

  mine were too.

  I undressed and went to bed.

  I didn’t want to be what they wanted me to

  be.

  and then

  like them

  I slept.

  going modern

  I drank more than usual tonight, got some writing out of

  it but here I had this IBM electric typewriter and both

  tapes ran out at once: the typing tape and the erasing tape

  and I can usually replace these

  but tonight I was too drunk:

  it was a battle of the soul to get the typing tape in but

  when it came to the erasing tape I ran out of

  soul: the sticky strip stuck against things it

  shouldn’t, it twisted pretzel-like and I threw it out and

  tried another.

  it must have been ten minutes before I got it

  right.

  meanwhile—I got into another bottle, then I looked down at

  the box on the floor: I was down to one typing tape and one

  erasing tape so I went to the Instruction Booklet and dialed the

  800 number which I think was in Maryland or South Dakota and

  was surprised to get an answer: it was 3:30 A.M. in

  Los Angeles.

  I told the lady what I needed but she didn’t quite understand,

  she kept demanding an order #.

  I had Richard Wagner on full bombast on the radio and I told her

  that I didn’t have a god damned order #.

  she

  hung up on me and I dialed again and this time I got a nice young

  man and he said, “that’s great music you’re listening to . . .” but

  the nice young man also demanded an order #.

  I drained off a full glass of wine, said, “listen, I didn’t have an

  order # the first time I phoned . . .”

  “but, sir, the second time you phone the rule is that you must have

  an order #.”

  “you mean, I can’t get my tapes? I’m a fucking writer, how am I

  going to make it? would you cut the horns off a bull?”

  “do you have your last bill before you,

  sir?”

  “yes, yes . . .”

  “the order # must be on the bill,

  sir . . .”

  “I tell you, there’s nothing here to indicate an order

  #!”

  “well, sir . . .”

  “NO, NO, NO!”

  I drained another glass of

  wine, “listen, let’s pretend that this is the first time I’ve ever phoned

  you and let’s begin at the beginning?”

  “all right, sir . . . now, can you read me off what you

  wish?”

  “thank YOU! I want 18 lift off tapes, item # 1136433 and I want 12

  cassettes, black, item # 1299508.”

  then I read him off my American Express card # which I won’t

  include

  here.

  “you’ll have all your materials within 8 to ten days, sir . . .”

  “THANK YOU!”

  then, as I hung up, I noticed a line on my past bill, it said ORDER

  NUMBER 11101—this and that and dash this and that.

  it had been there all th
e

  time.

  NOW I was READY to type again, help was on the way, my mind was

  free, I leaned a bit forward and began to type:

  frsyj mrbrt ,syyrtrf sd ,ivj sd yjsy dytuhhlr yo dysy

  slibr s,pmh yjr %rp%;r smf om d%oyr pg yjs

  %rp%;r.

  frsyj eo%% mr yjr rsdody %sty.

  it doesn’t always work

  I knew a writer once

  who always tried to tighten his lines

  like he’d write:

  an old man in a green felt hat walked down the

  street.

  change to:

  old man in green walked down street.

  change to:

  old green man walked street.

  change to:

  green man walked.

  change to:

  green walked.

  finally this writer said,

  shit, I can’t fart,

  and he blew his brains

  out.

  blew brains out.

  blew brains.

  blew.

  I have this room

  I have this room up here where I sit alone and it’s much

  like my rooms of the past—bottles and papers, books,

  belts, combs, old newspapers, various trash spread about.

  my disorder was never chosen, it just arrived and it

  stayed.

  in the time of each there’s never enough time to place

  all things right—there is always breakdown, loss, the

  hard mathematic of

  confusion and

  weariness.

  we are harangued with immense and trivial tasks

  and times arrive of stoicism or of horror when it becomes

  impossible to pay a gas bill or to even answer the threat

  from the IRS or termites or the papal doom of serving

  your soul up for self-surveillance.

  I have this room up here and it’s much the same as always:

  the failure to live grandly with the female or the

  universe, it gets so stuffy, all rubbed raw with self-

  complaint, attrition, re-

  runs.

  I have this room up here and I’ve had this same room in

  so many cities—the years shot suddenly away, I still

  sit feeling no different than in my youth.

  the room always was—still is—best at night—

  the yellowness of the electric light while sitting and

  drinking—all we’ve ever needed was a minor retreat

  from all the galling nonsense:

  we could always handle the worst if we were sometimes

  allowed the tiniest of awakenings from the nightmare,

  and the gods, so far, have allowed us

  this.

  I have this room up here and I sit alone in the floating,

  poking, crazy ultimates, I am lazy in these fields of pain

  and my friends, the walls, embrace this once-gamble—

  my heart can’t laugh but sometimes it smiles

  in the yellow electric light: to have come so far to

  sit alone

  again

  in this room up here.

  a man for the centuries

  all in all, drinking here into the early morning hours and

  taking what the radio gives me: many of the composers of

  the ages have entered, have left, but all in all, sucking at this

  lovely wine and listening, I have come up with Bach: he

  tastes the laughter of joy before death, each note like a wild

  bean, I am saddened that he braced his life with God,

  although I understand that this is sometimes necessary, but

  it’s not so much what a man believes as what he does and

  Bach did it so well, listening to him in this small room he

  makes me feel like a hero just to be alive, to have arms, legs,

  a head, all the various parts as I sit listening, ingesting the

  sound while sucking at this lovely wine

  a dead man has become such a friend

  I hope he found God

  he deserves God

  and God

  if He is there

  deserves

  Bach

  and we do too:

  we winos

  we agnostics:

  those notes jumping like wild

  beans.

  dear old dad

  one of the most fortunate things

  to have happened to me

  was to have a cruel and sadistic

  father.

  after him

  the worst things that the Fates

  have thrown upon me

  have hardly seemed as

  terrible—

  things that would cause other

  men

  anger, despair, disgust,

  madness, thoughts of suicide

  and

  so forth

  have only had a minor effect

  upon me

  due to my

  upbringing:

  after my father

  almost anything else looked

  good.

  I should really be

  thankful to that

  old fuck

  so long dead

  now

  he readied me

  for all the numerous

  hells

  by getting me there

  early

  on time

  through the inescapable

  years.

  peace and love

  back in the 60’s

  I wrote a column for a hippie

  newspaper.

  I wasn’t a hippie (I was in

  my 40’s) but I thought it was

  nice of the paper

  to allow me to state my

  errant

  views

  once a

  week.

  for each of these works of

  genius

  I was given

  $10 (sometimes).

  now

  there was another hippie

  newspaper

  bidding for my

  services.

  they were offering me

  $15 for each

  column.

  not wanting to appear

  the deserter

  I was asking for

  $20.

  so

  I was over at the other

  paper

  quite often

  haggling with the

  editor

  about the 5-buck

  difference

  over a couple of

  6-packs.

  nice thing about that

  hippie paper

  when I walked in

  everybody started

  hollering my

  name:

  “Hey, Chinaski!”

  “Chinaski!”

  I liked that, it

  made me feel like a

  star.

  and they also

  hollered,

  “PEACE AND LOVE!”

  “PEACE AND LOVE!”

  lots of young little chicks

  hollered this at

  me

  and I liked

  that

  although I never

  returned the

  salutations

  except for a slight

  smile

  and an almost

  invisible

  wave of the left

  hand

  to go in to see the

  editor and tell

  him, “listen, nice place

  you’ve got here, we’ve got to

  work something

  out . . .”

  yet

  we couldn’t seem

  to

  but I decided to

  keep working at

  it . . .

  so,

  there was
this one week

  when I walked down

  there

  and the whole place was

  closed down: nobody, no-

  thing

  in

  there . . .

  well, I thought, maybe they

  moved, maybe they found

  a

  cheaper place.

  so

  I moved away from there

  and walked along

  and as I did

  I looked into this cafe

  and the strangest of

  longshots

  occurred:

  there was the editor

  sitting at this

  table

  so

  I walked in

  and he saw me

  coming up

  and said, “sit down,

  Chinaski.”

  I did

  and asked

  him:

  “what happened?”

  “it’s sad, we had to

  fold just when we were

  picking up on circulation

  and

  ads.”

  “yeah? and?”

  “well, 4 or 5 of them

  had no place to stay so

  I told them they could

  stay at the office at

  night as long as they kept

  it quiet and dark . . . so

  they brought in their water

  beds, their pipes, their acid,

  their guitars, their grass, their

  Bobby Dylan albums and

  it seemed all

  right . . .”

  “yeah? and?? . . .”

  “they used the telephones at

  night. long distance to many places,

  some of them like

  France, India and China

  but

  most of them

  were

  U.S. based

  but wherever they called

  it was always for a long

  time, anywhere between 45

  minutes and 3 and one-half

  hours . . .”

  “Christ . . .”

  “yeah, we couldn’t pay the bill,

  hence no phones, collection agency

  after us, we had to

  fold . . .”

  “sorry, man . . .”

  “it’s all

  right . . .”

  “I’ve got a little bit of

  green,” I told him, “let’s

  go find a

  bar . . .”