Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer: An Amusement by Kenneth Patchen

Author:Kenneth Patchen [Patchen, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary
ISBN: 9780811214117
Google: InLszGMpjmoC
Amazon: 0811214117
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1945-01-14T14:00:00+00:00

DOES THE

FAMOUS DETECTIVE KNOW THAT LOVE IN A MIST IS ONLY THE GREAT WHITE WHALE GOING DOWN FOR THE FULL COUNT IN THAT OLD SEVENTH ROUND?

Donald Wan was dying.

The house was waiting and quiet.

His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright-hot with fever.

He raised himself from the bank of pillows.

"Albert," he said softly, "I haven't long."

I took his hand in mine. It burned with a dry fire.

"I shall never know how my next-to-last injection works. This is what I have tried to do—I have tried to defeat all obstacles of time and space—I have tried to…. . well, you shall see—" He coughed. It hurt him terribly. The cloth he put to his lips came away vividly stained. "First you will be-come what will please you most in the world to be. Next, what the people in our house have voted as the most exciting thing anyone could be. Next, their second choice. And finally, your good friend The Diver's—" A spell of coughing took all the color out of his face, leaving his eyes like coals which have been blowed upon.

"The first you know," he said with great effort.

I thought I heard crying in the hall.

"Next you will become a little wild flower.

"Third, a great whale.

"And last, a boxer knocking out Joe Louis."

"Why didn't you choose something, Mr. Wan?"

"I have," he said. "But I hope you never have occasion to know what it is—"

Coughing stained his mouth again.

"My last injection is in this needle," he went on. And he handed me a little leather case. "If ever you have a trouble so great that there seems to be nothing whatever you can do to meet it, then—and only then—I want you to use it." (I put it away in an inside pocket.)

"Never allow it out of your hands.

"If events work out well for you, destroy it.

"It is a terrible and beautiful thing, Albert.

"And since if you do use it it will be after I am dead, there will be no way for you to ever go back to what you were—"

The violence of his coughing made him gasp for breath.

"This is my way of saying good-bye, Albert," he said, poising the next-to-last needle over my arm. "Please don't be sad. I have never consciously hurt anyone, and I am eager to see the other world—"

"Good-bye, Mr. Wan," I said. "I'll come to you there."

His eyes filled with tears.

"Never lose that faith, my dear friend," he said.

And he moved the needle into place and sent its charge into me.

2

"There are some people waiting to see you, Chief," Stella Discreet said, closing the door and leaning her trim shoulders back against it.

"What do they want?" I asked, returning the receiver to its cradle and quickly signing a stack of letters which required my signature.

Then the door was flung open, flinging Stella crazy-legged over my desk.

"What do you want?" I asked them without looking up.

"Are you Mr. Chasen?" a grim voice—whose owner was trying to suppress laughter—said.

"Yes, I am Berry Chasen," I answered easily.

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