see, I’ve really got plenty of money, big sales of manuscripts and all that, but I was doing a yarn about a fellow who steals a quart of milk, and I wanted to write from experience, so that’s what happened, fellows. Watch for the story in the Post, I’m calling it ‘Milk Thief’. Leave me your address and I’ll send you all free copies.
But it would not happen that way, because nobody knows Arturo Bandini, and you’ll get six months, they’ll take you to the city jail and you’ll be a criminal, and what’ll your mother say? and what’ll your father say? and can’t you hear those fellows around the filling station in Boulder, Colorado, can’t you hear them snickering about the great writer caught stealing a quart of milk? Don’t do it, Arturo! If you’ve got an ounce of decency in you, don’t do it!
I rose from the chair and paced up and down. Almighty God, give me strength! Hold back this criminal urge! Then, all at once, the whole plan seemed cheap and silly, for at that moment I thought of something else to write in my letter to the great Hackmuth, and for two hours I wrote, until my back ached. When I looked out of my window to the big clock on the St Paul Hotel, it was almost eleven. The letter to Hackmuth was a very long one – already I had twenty pages. I read the letter. It seemed silly. I felt the blood in my face from blushes. Hackmuth would think me an idiot for writing such puerile nonsense. Gathering the pages, I tossed them into the wastebasket. Tomorrow was another day, and tomorrow I might get an idea for a short story. Meanwhile I would eat a couple of oranges and go to bed.
They were miserable oranges. Sitting on the bed I dug my nails into their thin skins. My own flesh puckered, my mouth was filled with saliva, and I squinted at the thought of them. When I bit into the yellow pulp it shocked me like a cold shower. Oh Bandini, talking to the reflection in the dresser mirror, what sacrifices you make for your art! You might have been a captain of industry, a merchant prince, a big league ball player, leading hitter in the American League, with an average of .415; but no! Here you are, crawling through the days, a starved genius, faithful to your sacred calling. What courage you possess!
I lay in bed, sleepless in the darkness. Mighty Hackmuth, what would he say to all this! He would applaud, his powerful pen would eulogize me in well-turned phrases. And after all, that letter to Hackmuth wasn’t such a bad letter. I got up, dug it from the wastebasket, and re-read it. A remarkable letter, cautiously humoured. Hackmuth would find it very amusing. It would impress upon him the fact that I was the selfsame author of The Little Dog Laughed. There was a story for you! And I opened a drawer filled with copies of the magazine that contained the story. Lying on the bed I read it again, laughing and laughing at the wit of it, murmuring in amazement that I had written it. Then I took to reading it aloud, with gestures, before the mirror. When I was finished there were tears of delight in my eyes and I stood before the picture of Hackmuth, thanking him for recognizing my genius.
I sat before the typewriter and continued the letter. The night deepened, the pages mounted. Ah, if all writing were as easy as a letter to Hackmuth! The pages piled up, twenty-five, thirty, until I looked down to my navel, where I detected a fleshy ring. The irony of it! I was gaining weight: oranges were filling me out! At once I jumped up and did a number of setting-up exercises. I twisted and writhed and rolled. Sweat flowed and breathing came hard. Thirsty and exhausted, I threw myself on the bed. A glass of cool milk would be fine now.
At that moment I heard a knock on Hellfrick’s door. Then Hellfrick’s grunt as someone entered. It could be no one but the milkman. I looked at the clock: it was almost four. I dressed quickly: pants, shoes, no socks, and a sweater. The hallway was deserted, sinister in the red light of an old electric bulb. I walked deliberately, without stealth, like a man going to the lavatory down the hall. Two flights of whining, irritable stairs and I was on the ground floor. The red and white Alden milk-truck was parked close to the hotel wall in the moon-drenched alley. I reached into the truck and got two full quart bottles firmly by their necks. They felt cool and delicious in my fist. A moment later I was back in my room, the bottles of milk on the dresser table. They seemed to fill the room. They were like human things. They were so beautiful, so fat and prosperous.
You Arturo! I said, you lucky one! It may be the prayers of your mother, and it may be that God still loves you, in spite of your tampering with atheists, but whatever it is, you’re lucky.
For old times’ sake, I thought, and for old times’ sake I knelt down and said grace, the way we used to do it in grade school, the way my mother taught us back home: Bless us, Oh Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy most bountiful hands, through the same Christ, Our Lord, Amen. And I added another prayer for good measure. Long after the milkman left Hellfrick’s room I was still on my knees, a full half hour of prayers, until I was ravenous for the taste of milk, until my knees ached and a dull pain throbbed in my shoulder blades.
When I got up I staggered from cramped muscles, but it was going to be worthwhile. I took the toothbrush from my glass, opened one of the bottles, and poured a full glass. I turned and faced the picture of J. C. Hackmuth on the wall.
‘To you, Hackmuth! Hurray for you!’
And I drank, greedily, until my throat suddenly choked and contracted and a horrible taste shook me. It was the kind of milk I hated. It was buttermilk. I spat it out, washed my mouth with water, and hurried to look at the other bottle. It was buttermilk, too.
Down on Spring Street, in a bar across the street from the secondhand store. With my last nickel I went there for a cup of coffee. An old style place, sawdust on the floor, crudely drawn nudes smeared across the walls. It was a saloon where old men gathered, where the beer was cheap and smelled sour, where the past remained unaltered.
I sat at one of the tables against the wall. I remember that I sat with my head in my hands. I heard her voice without looking up. I remember that she said, ‘Can I get you something?’ and I said something about coffee with cream. I sat there until the cup was before me, a long time I sat like that, thinking of the hopelessness of my fate.
It was very bad coffee. When the cream mixed with it I realized it was not cream at all, for it turned a greyish colour, and the taste was that of boiled rags. This was my last nickel, and it made me angry. I looked around for the girl who had waited on me. She was five or six tables away, serving beers from a tray. Her back was to me, and I saw the tight smoothness of her shoulders under a white smock, the faint trace of muscle in her arms, and the black hair so thick and glossy, falling to her shoulders.
At last she turned around and I waved to her. She was only faintly attentive, widening her eyes in an expression of bored aloofness. Except for the contour of her face and the brilliance of her teeth, she was not beautiful. But at that moment she turned to smile at one of her old customers, and I saw a streak of white under her lips. Her nose was Mayan, flat, with large nostrils. Her lips were heavily rouged, with the thickness of a negress’s lips. She was a racial type, and as such she was beautiful, but she was too strange for me. Her eyes were at a high slant, her skin was dark but not black, and as she walked her breasts moved in a way that showed their firmness.
She ignored me after that first glance. She went on to the bar, where she ordered more beer and waited for the thin bartender to draw it. As she waited she whistled, looked at me vaguely and went on whistling. I had stopped waving, but I made it plain I wanted her to come to my table. Suddenly she opened her mouth to the ceiling and laughed in a most mysterious fashion, so that even the bartender wondered at her laughter. Then she danced away, swinging the tray gracefully, picking her way through the tables to a group far down in the rear of the saloon. The bartender followed her with his eyes, still confused at her laughter. But I understood her laughter. It was for me. She was laughing at me. There was something about my appearance, my face, my posture, something about me sitting there that had amused her, and as I thought of it I clenched my fists and considered myself with angry humiliation. I touched my hair: it was combed. I fumbled with my collar and tie: they were clean and in place. I stretched myself to the range of the bar mirror, where I saw what was certainly a worried and sallow face, but not a funny face, and I was very angry.
I