Tours of the Black Clock

44

MAKE THAT HERR KRONEHELM. He lives in a flat in Gramercy Park, and that’s the listing on his box. The whole hall seems to vibrate when I go up the stairs, and when Herr Kronehelm opens the door he seems to shrink before me, cowering. He’s a middleaged man with flesh so thin and translucent it barely covers anything. The vague blue innards of his head hint at themselves like the meat in a Chinese dumpling. He’s actually not that small but he walks and acts that way and speaks that way. He’s dressed in a red bathrobe and keeps his cigarette in a holder, and it doesn’t smell like American tobacco. We go into his flat which is very spacious and well furnished and would probably be very impressive if someone cleaned it now and then or pulled the curtains back from the windows once a month. Kronehelm sits on a sofa and gestures next to him, but I settle for a chair nearby, some little European piece that creaks with the burden of me. Kronehelm winces.

We get down to business. On the telephone I’ve already identified myself as the author of Maiden Voyage, Tunnel of Love and several other notable works of contemporary literature. He’s having a hard time, I can tell, matching me with these efforts. A fog seems to fill the space between us, across which I’ve been hurling words for some months now, only to be received and transformed by Herr Kronehelm on the other side. The fog’s now quickly lifting. I have to subject myself to a discursive quiz on my oeuvre before he’s willing to believe my manuscripts and I go together. “You must be a man of some wide experience?” Herr Kronehelm asks; his accent is Austrian and heavy. “But how many years are you anyway?”

I’m tired of being asked how old I am. I dispense with my usual smart answer and just ignore the question. “Look, Herr Kronehelm,” I begin, leaning forward in the little creaking chair. I explain the situation without tipping my hand too much, I’m trying to get a fix on his situation first. He’s surprisingly open about it, allowing that he buys the work from the man at Charles and Bleecker for six dollars a page. When I hint at how little of that has been coming my direction, he isn’t especially indignant about it, but after a while he starts to see what I’m getting at. He starts to see that if I deliver the manuscripts directly to him, he can pay me three and a half dollars a page, which is better for both of us. Kronehelm weighs the pros and cons of this. It’s a good business move on the face of it but he worries that it’ll get him in trouble with the man at Charles and Bleecker as well as, I guess, whatever other characters he’s dealing with in this matter. But then another aspect of the situation occurs to him, one of great appeal.

“This way,” he says, “we can specialize the work, one might say.”

“What?”

“This way,” he says, “we might customize, so to speak.”

So to speak, one might say … he means he wants me to tailor the stories to him and his tastes. And for a moment I almost think I’m not going to laugh about it anymore, for a moment I almost think I’m going to feel the dread again. I almost feel it knowing that somehow I’ve locked into the preferences and passions of this man who, the more and more I watch him, appears as a blotch of human tissue that still hasn’t completely formed, with an unfinished cranium and a cigarette holder in his unfinished mouth. I almost think I’m going to feel it … but there’s not a chance. No chance at all. I’m just going to laugh harder. I’m going to feel better than I’ve ever felt. I’m going to feel better than the night in my mother’s hut, I’m going to feel better than the time I threw the bum out of the door of the railroad car. I’m going to have the time of my fucking life. I may not be able to write a syllable, convulsed as I’ll be with the mirth of it all. I’m going to be in fucking stitches. “Why that’s fine, Herr Kronehelm,” I say, “that’s jake. We’ll specialize it. We’ll customize it.”

Kronehelm’s almost a little taken aback by my zeal. “Not that I would presume, please understand,” he interjects, “not that I would presume how to tell an artist.” He winces again like he did at the chair when I sat in it. “My English.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I assure him, “everything’s understood.” All that’s left are the details. We even arrange an advance of a hundred dollars, just for the sake of inspiration. Herr Kronehelm suggests we share a drink to seal the deal, but I beg off insisting that inspiration is rising to the boiling point at this very moment and I’ve got to be home when it spills over. I’m not halfway down the stairs before I’m splitting a gut over it. Molly and Herr Kronehelm, Amanda and Herr Kronehelm, Molly and Amanda and Herr Kronehelm. We’ll dress him up in a little uniform, with a little sword and some medals; he’ll be ecstatic. He’ll come all over himself just from the feel of the black leather boots on his feet and the little pointed hat on his fetus-dumpling head. There won’t be anything left of him for Molly and Amanda, he’ll be so spent with excitement. They’ll have to work him over just to get a little blurt of him. Don’t worry Molly, don’t worry Amanda; I’ll make it up to you. We’ll leave him passed out on the floor and it’ll be just the three of us.