Moise and the World of Reason Read Free Page A

Lance comforted me by thrusting his hot tongue into the ear into which he had whispered huskily those words of dreadful wisdom.
    Oh, I know that you know by this time why I am a failed writer and are shocked at my presumption in calling myself a distinguished one, but here an incomplete sentence is coming at you.
    They say that O’Neill the playwright referred to it all as Pipe Dreams and sometimes they put him down for it, but if it obsessed him, as apparently it did, I think it was brave of him to repeat it that much: I thought of that because thinking of myself as both failed and distinguished in my vocation is one of those illogical premises to which we must cling for a sufferable lifetime.
    Now Moise had turned to me. She was saying, “Someday you are going to wake up, little man, and remember that someone with angelic wisdom once said that ripeness is all.”
    â€œNow, Moise, honey, why do you say that to me?”
    â€œBecause you are here and you understand English and just don’t bug me no more, as Lance would say, about things that concern only me and the possible exception of my last resource in this world, which is Tony Smith in South Orange, New Jersey, and his wife Janie.”
    Then there was a long stretch of tense silence and to break it I said to her, “Charlie has the flu and the fever makes him silly.”
    â€œIt must be a constant fever. Let him have it at your place on his own time, and to expose my guests to his flu is a little too much even for the latitude of my tolerance which is wide as the Nebraska plains which I hail from!”
    â€œNow you’re beginning to sound more like yourself.
    â€œI don’t know what you mean by that remark and I am entirely capable of standing on my feet without your arm about me.”
    But she didn’t move away and I didn’t remove my arm.
    Her body, thin as a whippet’s, was now trembling violently and I did believe that if I released her she would drop to the floor.
    No one having closed and bolted the door as Moise had directed, the curious event of the “party” was now under way. Charlie had gone out and returned with paper cups for the Gallo. The first half hour was unnaturally subdued for any kind of social occasion that I had ever attended. It was now dark through the windows and the room lighted only by a thick yellow aromatic candle which had burned down to half an inch from extinction.
    I said to Moise, “Honey, that candle is not going to last much longer. Have you got another?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen let me run over to the Italian Kitchen on the corner and ask them to lend us one.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBut, Moise, dear, it will be totally dark in here when that candle goes out!”
    She trembled even more in the crook of my supporting arm.
    â€œThe announcement,” she said, “is pertinent to darkness, and anyhow—”
    (That is a sentence which Moise did not complete, not an incomplete sentence of my own doing.)
    It seemed to me that her voice was as close to expiration as the guttering tallow which filled the large room with a faint, pleasantly sorrowful musk. I think of the word “patchouli” and I throw it in simply because it sounds right.
    â€œNow, Moise, if you are really intending to make an announcement to this strange collection of guests, I think you should do it at once, for when the room is totally dark nobody will know for sure who is speaking even if they can hear you.”
    â€œNo. Will you please be still. I’m now going to make the announcement.”
    She did not seem able to lift her voice enough to be heard by anyone much further from her than me in the crowded room, and nevertheless she was making the announcement, and it was obviously intended for everyone present.
    â€œThings have become untenable in my world.”
    She repeated this statement twice like a judge calling for order in a courtroom. Probably no one heard