Big Sur/Chapter 36
But dave’'s making the best of clomping up and down the cabin preparing the bag of cornmeal and starting the corn oil in the frying pan, Romana too she’s making an exquisite big salad with lots of mayonnaise and in fact poor Billie is mutely helping her setting the table and the little boy is crooning by the stove it’s almost like a happy domestic scene suddenly—Only I watch it from the porch with horrified eyes—Also because their shadows in the lamplight gone casting on the walls look huge and monsterlike and witch-like and warlock-like, I’m alone in the woods with happy ghosts—The wind is howling as the sun goes down so I go in, but I go out at once again madly to my creek, always thinking the creek itself will give me water that will clear away everything and reassure me forever (also remembering in my distress Edgar Cayce’s advice “Drink a lot of water”) but “There’s kerosene in the water!” I yell in the wind, nobody hearing—I feel like kicking the creek and screaming—I turn around and there’s the cabin with its warm interiors; the silent people inside all noticeably glum because they cant understand anyway what’s with the nut wandering in and out from cabin to creek, silent, wan faced, stupefacted, trembling and sweating like midsummer was on the roof and instead it’s even cold now—I sit in the chair with my back to the door and watch Dave as he lectures on bravely.
“What we’re having is a sacrificial banquet with all kinds of goodies you see laid in a regal spread around one little delicious fish so that we all have to pray to the fish and take tiny little bites, we only have about four bites apiece and there’s all kinds of parts of the fish where the bites are more significant—But beyond that the way to properly fry a fresh-caught fish is to be sure the oil is burning and furiously so when you lay the fish in it, not burning but real hot oil, well yeh even burning, hand me the spat, you then gently lay the fish into the oil and create a tremendous crackling racket” (which he does as Romana cheers) (and I glance at Billie and she’s thinking of something else like a nun in the corner) but Dave keeps on making jokes till he actually has us all smiling—While the fish is cooking, tho, Romana as she’s been doing all day is constantly handing me a bite to eat, some hors doevres or piece of tomato or other, apparently trying to help me feel better— “You've got to EAT” she and Dave keep saying but I dont want to eat and yet they’re always holding out bites to my mouth until finally now I begin to frown thinking “What’s all these bites they keep throwing at me, poison?—and what’s wrong with my eyes, they’re all dilated black like I’ve had drugs, all I’ve had is wine, did Dave put drugs in my wine or something? thinking it will help or something? or are they members of a secret society that dopes people secretly the idea being to enlighten them or something?” even as Romana is handing me a bite and I take it from her big brown hands and chew—She’s wearing purple panties and purple bras, nothing else, just for fun, Dave’s slappin her on the can joyfully as he cooks the supper, it’s some big erotic natural thing to do for Romana, she believes in showing her beautiful big body anyway—In fact at one point when Billie’s up leaning over a chair Dave goes behind Billie and playfully touches her and winks at me, but I’m not of all this like a moron and we could all be having fun such as soldiers dream the day away imagining, dammit—But the venoms in the blood are asexual as well as asocial and a-everything—“Billie’s so nice and thin, like I’m used to Romana maybe I should switch around here for variety,” says Dave at the sizzling frying pan—I look over my shoulder and see at first with a leap of joy but then with ominous fear an enormous full moon at full fat standing there between Mien Mo mountain and the north canyon wall, like saying to me as I look over my trembling shoulder “Hoo doo you.”
But I say “Dave, look, as if all this wasnt enough” and I point out the moon to him, there’s dead silence in the trees and also among us inside, there she is, vast lugubrious fullmoon that frights madmen and makes waters wave, she’s got one or two treetops silhouetted and’s got that whole side of the canyon lit up in silver—Dave just looks at the moon with his tired madness eyes (overexcited eyes, my mother’d said) and says nothing—I go out to the creek and drink water and come back and wonder about the moon and suddenly the four shadows in the cabin are all dead silent as tho they had conspired with the moon.
“Time to eat, Jack,” says Dave coming out on the porch suddenly—No one’s saying anything—I go in and sheepishly sit at the table like the useless pioneer who doesnt do anything to help the men or please the women, the idiot in the wagon train who nevertheless has to be fed—Dave stands there saying “Oh full moon, here is our little fish which we are now going to partake of to feed us so that we shall be stronger; thank you Fish people, thank you Fish god; thank you moon for making our light tonight; this is the night of the fullmoon fish which we now consecrate with the first delicate bite”—He takes his fork and opens the little fish carefully, it’s beautifully breaded and fried and centered in a dazzle of salads and vegetables and cornmeal johnnycakes, he opens a funny gill, goes under, removes a strange bite and projects it to my mouth saying “Take the first bite Jack, just a little bite, and be sure to chew very slowly”—I do so, oily delicious bite but nothing delicious any more in my tongue—Then the others take their little holy bites, little Elliott’s eyes shining with delight at this wonderful game that however has started to frighten me—For obvious reasons by now.
As we eat Dave announces that he and I are sick from too much drinking and by God we’re going to reform and see to it that we shape up, then he launches into stories as usual, ending in a talkative ordinary supper that I think will sorta straighten me out at first but after supper I feel even worse, “That fish has all the death of otters and mouses and snakes right in it or something” I’m thinking—Billie is quietly washing the dishes without complaint, Dave is gladly smoking after-dinner cigarettes on the porch, but here I am again mooning by the creek hiding from all of them each five minutes tho I cant understand what makes me do it—I HAVE to get out of there—But I have no right to STAY AWAY—So I keep coming back but it’s all an insane revolving automatic directionless circle of anxiety, back and forth, around and around, till they’re really by now so perturbed by my increasing silent departures and creepy returns they’re all sitting without a word by the stove but now their heads are together and they’re whispering—From the woods I see those three shadowy heads whispering me by the stove—What’s Dave saying?—And why do they look like they’re plotting something further?—Can it be it was all arranged by Dave Wain via Cody that I would meet Billie and be driven mad and now they’ve got me alone in the woods and are going to give me final poisons tonight that will utterly remove all my control so that in the morning I’ll have to go to a hospital forever and never write another line?—Dave Wain is jealous because I wrote 10 novels?—Billie has been assigned by Cody to get me to marry her so he’ll get all my money? Romana is a member of the expert poisoning society (I've heard her mention tree spirits already, earlier in the car, and she’s sung some strange songs the night before)—The three of them, Dave Wain in fact the chief conspirator because I know he does have amphetomine on his person and the needles in a little box, just one injection of a tomato, or of a portion of fish, or drops into a bottle of wine, and my eyes become mad wide and black like they are now, my nerves OO ouch, this is what I’m thinking—Still they sit there by the fire in dead silence, when I tromp into the cabin in fact they all start up again talking: sure sign—I walk out again, “I’m going down the road a ways—“Okay”—But the moment I’m alone on the path a million waving moony arms are thrashing around me and every hole in the cliffs and burnt out trees I’d calmly passed a hundred times all summer in dead of fog, now has something moving in it quickly—I hurry back—Even on the porch I’m scared to see the familiar bushes near the outhouse or down by the broken treetrunk—And now a babble in the creek has somehow entered my head and with all the rhythm of the sea waves going “Kettle blomp you’re up, you rop and dop, ligger lagger ligger” I grab my head but it keeps babbling.
Masks explode before my eyes when I close them, when I look at the moon it waves, moves, when I look at my hands and feet they creep—Everything is moving, the porch is moving like ooze and mud, the chair trembles under me—“Sure you dont wanta go to Nepenthe for a Manhattan Jack?—“No” (“Yeh and you’d dump poison in it” I think darkly but seriously hurt I could ever allow myself to think that about poor Dave)—And I realize the unbearable anguish of insanity: how uninformed people can be thinking insane people are “happy,” O God, in fact it was Irwin Garden once warmed me not to think the madhouses are full of “happy nuts,” “There’s a tightening around the head that hurts, there’s a terror of the mind that hurts even more, they’re so unhappy and especially because they cant explain it to anybody or reach out and be helped through all the hysterical paranoia they are really suffering more than anyone in the world and I think in the universe in fact,” and Irwin knew this from observing his mother Naomi who finally had to have a lobotomy—Which sets me thinking how nice to cut away therefore all that agony in my forehead and STOP IT! STOP THAT BABBLING!—Because now the babbling’s not only in the creek, as I say it’s left the creek and come in my head, it would be alright for coherent babbling meaning something but it’s all brilliantly enlightened babble that does more than mean something: it’s telling me to die because everything is over—Everything is swarming all over me.
Dave and Romana retire again by the creek for a night’s sweet sleep under the moon while Billie and I sit there gloomy by the fire—Her voice is crying: “It might make you feel better to just come in my arms”—“I’ve got to try something, Billie after all I’ve told you I cant make you see what’s happening to me, you dont understand”—“Come into our sleepingbag again like last night, just sleep”—We get in naked but now I'm not drunk I’m aware of the real tight squeeze in there and besides in my fever I’m perspiring so much it’s unbearable, her own skin is soaking wet from mine, yet our arms are outside in the cold—“This wont do!”—“What’ll you do?”—“Let’s try the cot inside” but maniacally I arrange the cot all screwy with a board on top of it forgetting to put sleepingbag pads underneath like I'd done all summer, I simply forget all that, Billie, poor Billie lies down with me on this absurd board thinking I’m trying to drive my madness away by self torturing ordeals—It’s ridiculous, we lie there stiff as boards on a board—I roll off and saying “We’ll try something else”—I try laying out the sleepingbag on the floor of the porch but the moment she’s in my arms a mosquito comes at me, or I burst out sweating, or I see a flash of lightning, or I hear a big roaring Hymn in my head, or imagine a thousand people are coming down the creek talking, or the roar of the wind is bringing flying treetrunks that will crush us—“Wait a minute,” I yell and get up to pace awhile and run down to drink water by the creek where Dave and Romana are peacefully entangled—I start cursing Dave “Bastard’s got the only decent spot there is to sleep in anyway, right there in that sand by the creek, if he wasnt here.I could sleep there and the creek would cover the noise in my head and I could sleep there, with Billie even, all night, bastard’s got my spot,” and I kick back to the porch—Poor Billie’s arms are outstretched to me: “Please Jack, come on, love me, love me”—“I CANT”—“But why cant you, if even well never see each other again let us our last night be beautiful and something to remember forever.”
“Like a big ideal memory for both of us, cant you give me just that?”—“I would if I could” I’m muttering around like a fussy old nut inside the cabin looking for a match—I cant even light my cigarette, something sinister blows it out, when it’s lit it mortifies my hot mouth anyway like a mouthful of death—I grab up another batch of bags and blankets and start piling myself up on the other side of the porch saying to Billie who’s sighing now realizing it’s hopeless “First I’ll try to take a nap by myself here then when I wake up I’ll feel better and come over to you”—So I try that, turning over rigidly my eyes wide open staring full fright into the dark like the time in the movie Humphrey Bogart who’s just killed his partner trying to sleep by the fire and you see his eyes staring into the fire rigid and insane—That’s just the way I’m staring—If I try to close my eyes some elastic pulls them open again—If I try to turn over the whole universe turns over with me but it’s no better on the other side of the universe—I realize I may never come out of this and my mother is waiting for me at home praying for me because she must know what’s happening tonight, I cry out to her to pray and help me—I remember my cat for the first time in three hours and let out a yell that scares Billie—“All right Jack?”—“Give me a little time”—But now she’s started to sleep, poor girl is exhausted, I realize she’s going to abandon me to my fate anyway and I cant help thinking she and Dave and Romana are all secretly awake waiting for me to die—“For what reason?” I’m thinking “this secret poisoning society, I know, it’s because I’m a Catholic, it’s a big anti-Catholic scheme, it's Communists destroying everybody, systematic individuals are poisoned till finally they’ll have everybody, this madness changes you completely and in the morning you no longer have the same mind—the drug is invented by Airapatianz, it’s the brainwash drug, I always thought that Romana was a Communist being a Rumanian, and as for Billie that gang of hers is strange, and Cody dont care, and Dave’s all evil just like I always figured maybe” but soon my thoughts arent even as “rational” as that any more but become hours of raving—There are forces whispering in my ear in rapid long speeches advising and warning, suddenly other voices are shouting, the trouble is all the voices are longwinded and talking very fast like Cody at his fastest and like the creek so that I have to keep up with the meaning tho I wanta bat it out of my ears—I keep waving at my ears—I'm afraid to close my eyes for all the turmoiled universes I see tilting and expanding suddenly exploding suddenly clawing in to my center, faces, yelling mouths, long haired yellers, sudden evil confidences, sudden rat-tat-tats of cerebral committees arguing about “Jack” and talking about him as if he wasnt there—Aimless moments when I'm waiting for more voices and suddenly the wind explodes huge groans in the million treetop leaves that sound like the moon gone mad—And the moon rising higher, brighter, shining down in my eyes now like a streetlamp—The huddled shadowy sleeping figures over there so coy—So human and safe, I’m crying “I'm not human any more and I'll never be safe any more, Oh what I wouldnt give to be home on Sunday afternoon yawning because I’m bored, Oh for that again, it’ll never come back again—Ma was right, it was all bound to drive me mad, now it’s done—What’ll I say to her?—Shell be terrified and go mad herself—Oh ti Tykey, aide mué—me who’s just eaten fish have no right to ask for brother Tyke again—”—An argot of sudden screamed reports ratles through my head in a language I never heard but understand immediately—For a moment I see blue Heaven and the Virgin’s white veil but suddenly a great evil blur like an ink spot spreads over it, “The devil!—the devil’s come after me tonight! tonight is the night! that’s what!”—But angels are laughing and having a big barn dance in the rocks of the sea, nobody cares any more—Suddenly as clear as anything I ever saw in my life, I see the Cross.