Black Spring by Henry Miller

Author:Henry Miller [Miller, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2010-08-19T06:37:00+00:00

Jabberwhorl Cronstadt

This man, this skull, this music …

He lives in the back of a sunken garden, a sort of bosky glade shaded by whiffletrees and spinozas, by deodars and baobabs, a sort of queasy Buxtehude diapered with elytras and feluccas. You pass through a sentry box where the concierge twirls his mustache con furioso like in the last act of Ouida. They live on the third floor behind a mullioned belvedere filigreed with snaffled spaniels and sebaceous wens, with debentures and megrims hanging out to dry. Over the bell-push it says: “JABBERWHORL CRONSTADT, poet, musician, herbologist, weather man, linguist, oceanographer, old clothes, colloids.” Under this it reads: “Wipe your feet and blow your nose!” And under this is a rosette from a second-hand suit.

“There’s something strange about all this,” I said to my companion whose name is Dschilly Zilah Bey. “He must be having his period again.”

After we had pushed the button we heard a baby crying, a squeaky, brassy wail like the end of a horseknacker’s dream.

Finally Katya comes to the door-Katya from HesseKassel-and behind her, thin as a wafer and holding a bisque doll, stands little Pinochinni. And Pinochinni says: “You should go in the drawing room, they aren’t dressed yet.” And when I asked would they be very long because we’re famished she said, “Oh no! They’ve been dressing for hours. You are to look at the new poem father wrote today-it’s on the mantelpiece.”

And while Dschilly unwinds her serpentine scarf Pinochinni giggles and giggles, saying oh, dear, what is the matter with the world anyway, everything is so behindtime and did you ever read about the lazy little girl who hid her toothpicks under the mattress? It’s very strange, father read it to me out of a large iron book.

There is no poem on the mantelpiece, but there are other things-The Anatomy of Melancholy, an empty bottle of Pernod Fils, The Opal Sea, a slice of cut plug tobacco, hairpins, a street directory, an ocarina … and a machine to roll cigarettes. Under the machine are notes written on menus, calling cards, toilet paper, match boxes … “meet the Cuntess Cathcart at four” … “the opalescent mucus of Michelet” … “deflux-ions … cotyledons … phthisical” … “if Easter falls in Lady Day’s lap, beware old England of the clap” .. . “from the ichor of which springs his successor” … “the reindeer, the otter, the marmink, the minkfrog.”

The piano stands in a corner near the belvedere, a frail black box with silver candlesticks; the black keys have been bitten off by the spaniels. There are albums marked Beethoven, Bach, Liszt, Chopin, filled with bills, manicure sets, chess pieces, marbles, and dice. When he is in good humor Cronstadt will open an album marked “Goya” and play something for you in the key of C. He can play operas, minuets, schottisches, rondos, sarabands, preludes, fugues, waltzes, military marches; he can play Czerny, Prokofief or Granados, he can even improvise and whistle a Provencal air at the same time.

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