A young cunt doesn’t have to have any brains. They’re better without brains. But an old cunt, even if she’s brilliant, even if she’s the most charming woman in the world, nothing makes any difference. A young cunt is an investment; an old cunt is a dead loss. All they can do for you is buy you things. But that doesn’t put meat on their arms or juice between the legs. She isn’t bad, Irene. In fact, I think you’d like her. With you its different. You don’t have to fuck her. You can afford to like her. Maybe you wouldn’t like all those dresses and the bottles and what not, but you could be tolerant. She wouldn’t bore you, that I can tell you. She’s even interesting, I might say. But she’s withered. Her breasts are all right yet – but her arms! I told her I’d bring you around some day. I talked a lot about you… I didn’t know what to say to her. Maybe you’d like her, especially when she’s dressed. I don’t know…"
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"Listen, she’s rich, you say? I’ll like her! I don’t care how old she is, so long as she’s not a hag…"
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"She’s not a hag! What are you talking about? She’s charming, I tell you. She talks well. She looks well too… only her arms…"
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"All right, if that’s how it is, I’ll fuck her – if you don’t want to. Tell her that. Be subtle about it, though. With a woman like that you’ve got to do things slowly. You bring me around and let things work out for themselves. Praise the shit out of me. Act jealous like… Shit, maybe we’ll fuck her together… and we’ll go places and we’ll eat together… and we’ll drive and hunt and wear nice things. If she wants to go to Borneo let her take us along. I don’t know how to shoot either, but that doesn’t matter. She doesn’t care about that either. She just wants to be fucked that’s all. You’re talking about her arms all the time. You don’t have to look at her arms all the time, do you? Look at this bedspread! Look at the mirror! Do you call this living? Do you want to go on being delicate and live like a louse all your life? You can’t even pay your hotel bill… and you’ve got a job too. This is no way to live. I don’t care if she’s seventy years old – it’s better than this…"
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"Listen, Joe, you fuck her for me… then everything’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll fuck her once in a while too… on my night off. It’s four days now since I’ve had a good shit. There’s something sticking to me, like grapes…"
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"You’ve got the piles, that’s what."
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"My hair’s falling out too… and I ought to see the dentist. I feel as though I were falling apart. I told her what a good guy you are… You’ll do things for me, eh? You’re not too delicate, eh? If we go to Borneo I won’t have hemorrhoids any more. Maybe I’ll develop something else… something worse… fever perhaps… or cholera. Shit, it’s better to die of a good disease like that than to piss your life away on a newspaper with grapes up your ass and buttons falling off your pants. I’d like to be rich, even if it were only for a week, and then go to a hospital with a good disease, a fatal one, and have flowers in the room and nurses dancing around and telegrams coming. They take good care of you if you’re rich. They wash you with cotton batting and they comb your hair for you. Shit, I know all that. Maybe I’d be lucky and not die at all. Maybe I’d be crippled all my life… maybe I’d be paralyzed and have to sit in a wheelchair. Bu then I’d be taken care of just the same… even if I had no more money. If you’re an invalid – a real one – they don’t let you starve. And you get a clean bed to lie in… and they change the towels every day.
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This way nobody gives a fuck about you, especially if you have a job. They think a man should be happy if he’s got a job. What would you rather do – be a cripple all your life, or have a job… or marry a rich cunt? You’d rather marry a rich cunt, I can see that. You only think about food. But supposing you married her and then you couldn’t get a hard on any more – that happens sometimes – what would you do then? You’d be at her mercy. You’d have to eat out of her hand, like a little poodle dog. You’d like that, would you? Or maybe you don’t think of those things? I think of everything. I think of the suits I’d pick out and the places I’d like to go to, but I also think of the other thing. That’s the important thing. What good are the fancy ties and the fine suits if you can’t get a hard on any more? You couldn’t even betray her – because she’d be on your heels all the time. No, the best thing would be to marry her and then get a disease right away. Only not syphilis. Cholera, let’s say, or yellow fever. So that if a miracle did happen and your life was spared you’d be a cripple for the rest of your days. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about fucking her any more, and you wouldn’t have to worry about the rent either.
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She’d probably buy you a fine wheelchair with rubber tires and all sorts of levers and what not. You might even be able to use your hands – I mean enough to be able to write. Or you could have a secretary, for that matter. That’s it – that’s the best solution for a writer. What does a guy want with his arms and legs? He doesn’t need arms and legs to write with. He needs security… peace… protection. All those heroes who parade in wheelchairs – it’s too bad they’re not writers. If you could only be sure, when you go to war, that you’d have only your legs blown off… if you could be sure of that I’d say let’s have a war tomorrow. I wouldn’t give a fuck about the medals – they could keep the medals. All I’d want is a good wheelchair and three meals a day. Then I’d give them something to read, those pricks."
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The following day, at one thirty, I call on Van Norden. It’s his day off, or rather his night off. He has left word with Carl that I am to help him move today.
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I find him in a state of unusual depression. He hasn’t slept a wink all night, he tells me. There’s something on his mind, something that’s eating him up. It isn’t long before I discover what it is; he’s been waiting impatiently for me to arrive in order to spill it.
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"That guy," he begins, meaning Carl, "that guy’s an artist. He described every detail minutely. He told it to me with such accuracy that I know it’s all a goddamned lie… but I can’t dismiss it from my mind. You know how my mind works!"
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He interrupts himself to inquire if Carl has told me the whole story. There isn’t the least suspicion in his mind that Carl may have told me one thing and him another. He seems to think that the story was invented expressly to torture him. He doesn’t seem to mind so much that it’s a fabrication. It’s the "images" as he says, which Carl left in his mind, that get him. The images are real, even if the whole story is false. And besides, the fact that there actually is a rich cunt on the scene and that Carl actually paid her a visit, that’s undeniable. What actually happened is secondary; he takes it for granted that Carl put the boots to her. But what drives him desperate is the thought that what Carl has described to him might have been possible.
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"It’s just like that guy," he says, "to tell me he put it to her six or seven times. I know that’s a lot of shit and I don’t mind that so much, but when he tells me that she hired a carriage and drove him out to the Bois and that they used the husband’s fur coat for a blanket, that’s too much. I suppose he told you about the chauffeur waiting respectfully… and listen, did he tell you how the engine purred all the time? Jesus, he built that up wonderfully. It’s just like him to think of a detail like that… it’s one of those little details which makes a thing psychologically real… you can’t get it out of your head afterward. And he tells it to me so smoothly, so naturally… I wonder, did he think it up in advance or did it just pop out of his head like that, spontaneously? He’s such a cute little liar you can’t walk away from him… it’s like he’s writing you a letter, one of those flowerpots that he makes overnight. I don’t understand how a guy can write such letters… I don’t get the mentality behind it… it’s a form of masturbation… what do you think?"
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But before I have an opportunity to venture an opinion, or even to laugh in his face, Van Norden goes on with his monologue.
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"Listen, I suppose he told you everything… did he tell you how he stood on the balcony in the moonlight and kissed her? That sound banal when you repeat it, but the way that guy describes it… I can just see the little prick standing there with the woman in his arms and already he’s writing another letter to her, another flowerpot about the roof tops and all that crap he steals from his French authors. That guy never says a thing that’s original, I found that out. You have to get a clue like… find out whom he’s been reading lately… and it’s hard to do that because he’s so damned secretive.
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Listen, if I didn’t know that you went there with him, I wouldn’t believe that the woman existed. A guy like that could write letters to himself. And yet he’s lucky… he’s so damned tiny, so frail, so romantic looking, that women fall for him now and then… they sort of adopt him… they feel sorry for him, I guess. And some cunts like to receive flowerpots… it makes them feel important… But this woman’s an intelligent woman, so he says. You ought to know… you’ve seen her letters. What do you suppose a woman like that saw in him? I can understand her falling for the letters… but how do you suppose she felt when she saw him?
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"But listen, all that’s beside the point. What I’m getting at is the way he tells it to me. You know how he embroiders things… well, after that scene on the balcony – he gives me that like an hors d’?uvre, you know – after that, so he says, they went inside and he unbuttoned her pajamas. What are you smiling for? Was he shitting me about that?"
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"No, no! You’re giving it to me exactly as he told me. Go ahead…"
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"After that" – here Van Norden has to smile himself, – "after that, mind you, he tells me how she sat in the chair with her legs up… not a stitch on… and he’s sitting on the floor looking up at her, telling her how beautiful she looks… did he tell you that she looked like a Matisse?… Wait a minute… I’d like to remember exactly what he said. He had some cute little phrase there about an odalisque… what the hell’s an odalisque anyway? He said it in French, that’s why it’s hard to remember the fucking thing… but it sounded good. It sounded just like the sort of thing he might say. And she probably thought it was original with him… I suppose she thinks he’s a poet or something. But listen, all this is nothing… I make allowances for his imagination. It’s what happened after that that drives me crazy. All night long I’ve been tossing about, playing with these images he left in my mind. I can’t get it out of my head. It sounds so real to me that if it didn’t happen I could strangle the bastard. A guy has no right to invent things like that. Or else he’s diseased…
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"What I’m getting at is that moment when, he says, he got down on his knees and with those two skinny fingers of his he spread her cunt open. You remember that? He says she was sitting there with her legs dangling over the arms of the chair and suddenly, he says, he got an inspiration. This was after he had given her a couple of lays already… after he had made that little spiel about Matisse. He gets down on his knees – get this! – and with his two fingers… just the tips of them, mind you… he opens the little petals… Squish squish… just like that. A sticky little sound… almost inaudible. Squish squish!