The Cosmological Eye by Henry Miller

Author:Henry Miller [Miller, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811201100
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1961-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

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* Surrealism, by Herbert Read (Faber and Faber Ltd.).

Via Dieppe-Newhaven

THE THING WAS that I wanted to be among English-speaking people again, for a little while at least. I had nothing against the French; on the contrary, I had at last made a bit of a home for myself in Clichy and everything would have been swell if it hadn’t been for the fact that I had just gone through a crisis with my wife. She was living in Montparnasse and I was living with my friend Fred, who had taken an apartment, in Clichy just outside the Porte. We had agreed to separate; she was going back to America as soon as the money arrived for the boat fare.

So far so good. I had said good-bye to her and I thought everything was finished. Then one day when I walked into the grocer’s the old woman informed me that my wife had just been in with a young man and that they had taken away a good supply of groceries which they had charged up to my account. The old woman seemed a bit perplexed and a little worried too. I told her it was O. K. And it was O.K. too, because I knew my wife didn’t have any money, and after all a wife has to eat just like any other person. About the young man, that was O. K. too: he was just a fairy who felt sorry for her and I supposed he had put her up for the time being in his apartment. In fact, everything was O.K. except that she was still in Paris, and when in Christ’s name was she going to beat it, that’s what I was wondering about.

A few more days passed and then she dropped in one late afternoon to have dinner with us. Why not? We could always scrape up a bit of food whereas in Montparnasse among the riff-raff she was obliged to hang out where food was almost unobtainable. After the dinner she got hysterical: she said she was suffering from dysentery ever since she had left me and that it was my fault, that I had tried to poison her. I walked her to the Metro station at the Porte without saying a word. I was sore as hell, so god-damned sore that I couldn’t talk. She was sore too, sore because I refused to argue the matter with her. I thought to myself, walking back, well this is the last straw, she surely won’t come back again. I poisoned her. Good, if she wants to think that way let her! That ought to settle the issue.

A few days later I had a letter from her asking for a little cash with which to meet the rent. Seems she wasn’t living with the fairy at all, but in a cheap hotel back of the Gare Montparnasse. I couldn’t give her the money immediately as I didn’t have any myself so I let a few days intervene before going to her hotel and settling the bill.

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