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By Root 6131 0

of the law, he had wrestled with the cops. They had forced him into a strait jacket. He had had diarrhea in the police wagon as they rushed him to Bellevue. They were trying to cope, to do something with a poet. What did the New York police know about poets! They knew drunks and muggers, they knew rapists, they knew women in labor and hopheads, but they were at sea with poets. Then he had called me from a phone booth in the hospital. And I had answered from that hot grimy flaking dressing room at the Belasco. And he had yelled, “This is life, Charlie, not literature!” Well, I don’t suppose the Powers, Thrones and Dominions, the Archai, the Archangels and the Angels read poetry. Why should they? They are shaping the universe. They’re busy. But when Humboldt cried, “Life!” he didn’t mean the Thrones, Exousiai, and Angels. He only meant realistic, naturalistic life. As if art hid the truth and only the sufferings of the mad revealed it. This was impoverished imagination?

We arrived and Cantabile and I were separated. They kept him at the desk, I went inside.

Anticipating the job I had cut out for me in purgatory, I didn’t find it necessary to take jail too seriously. What was it, after all? A lot of bustle, and people who specialized in giving you a hard time. They photographed me, front and sides. Good. After these mug shots I was fingerprinted too. Very well. Following this, I expected to go into the lockup. There was a fat domestic-looking policeman waiting to take me to the slammer. Inside duties make these cops obese. There he was, housewifely, in a coat sweater and slippers, with belly and gun, a big pouting lip, and fat furrows at the back of his head. He was steering me in when someone said, “You! Charles Citrine! Outside!” I went back into the main corridor. I wondered how Szathmar had gotten here so fast. But it wasn’t Szathmar who was waiting for me, it was Stronson’s young receptionist. This beautiful girl said that her employer had decided to drop the case against me. He was going to concentrate on Cantabile.

“And did Stronson send you over?”

She explained, “Well, I really wanted to come. I knew who you were. As soon as I found out your name, I did. So I explained it to my boss. He’s been like in shock these days. You can’t exactly blame Mr. Stronson, when people come and say he’s going to be murdered. But I finally got him to understand that you were a famous person, not a hit man.”

“Ah, I see. And you’re a dear girl as well as a beautiful one. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Talking to him couldn’t have been easy.”

“He really was scared. Now he’s mostly depressed. Why are your hands so dirty?” she said.

“Fingerprinting. The ink they used.”

She was upset. “My God! Imagine fingerprinting a man like you!” She opened her purse and began to moisten paper tissues and to rub my stained fingertips.

“No, thank you. No, no, don’t do that,” I said. Such attentions always get to me, and it seemed a dreadfully long time since anyone had done me any intimate kindness like this. There are days when one wants to go to the barber, not for a haircut (there’s not much hair to cut) but just for the sake of the touch.

“Why not?” said the girl. “I feel that I’ve always known you.”

“From books?”

“Not books. I’m afraid I never read any of your books. I understand they’re history books and history has never been my bag. No, Mr. Citrine, through my mother.”

“Do I know your mother?”

“Since I was a kid, I’ve heard you were her school-days sweetheart.”

“Your mother isn’t Naomi Lutz!”

“Yes, she was. I can’t tell you how thrilled she and Doc were when they ran into you at that bar downtown.”

“Yes, Doc was with her.”

“When Doc passed away, Mother was going to call you. She says now you’re the only one she can talk old times with. There are things she wants to remember and can’t place. Just the other day she couldn’t recall the name of the town where her Uncle Asher lived.”

“Her Uncle Asher lived in Paducah, Kentucky. Of course I’ll call her. I loved your mother, Miss . . .”

“Maggie,” she said.

“Maggie. You’ve inherited