The Bell Tolls for No One. Charles Bukowski

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СКАЧАТЬ like Villon I have to die there. My landlady drinks beer from the quart bottle and forces them upon me and takes ten bucks off the rent (a month) because I take out the tenants’ garbage cans and bring them back in. That’s more advantageous than a Great Writer’s Course.

      I got worried about the girls, though, they dance sexy with the cowboys at the local tavern and make big cow eyes at them; sun-tanned raw dudes who ain’t even read Swinburne yet . . . Nothing to do but drink beer, act stoical, indifferent, human, and literary.

      The little girl comes back:

      “Hi, Bukowski, dummy! Without no shirt on, without no shoes on, without no pants on, without no panties on, bare-naked typing outside . . . .”

      She’s 3 years old and drives a toy tractor by, stops, looks back again:

      “Hi, Bukowski, dummy! No pants on, no panties on, bare-naked typing in the sun . . . No hair on, bare-butt typing, drowning in the water . . . ”

      No hair on? The female, of course, is the eternal problem as long as that thing stands up. And living 50 years doesn’t bring a man any closer to solutions. Love still arrives 2 or 3 times in a lifetime for most of us, and the rest is sex and companionship, and it’s all problems and pain and glory . . .

      And here she comes across the dust, 31 years’ worth, cowboy boots, long red brown hair, dark brown eyes, tight blue pants, turtleneck sweater; she’s smiling . . .

      “Whatcha doin’, man?”

      “Writing . . . ”

      We embrace and kiss; her body folds into mine and those brown eyes reflect birds and rivers and sun; they are hot bacon, they are chili and beans, they are nights past and nights future, they are enough, they are more than enough . . . Where she learned to kiss I’ll never know. As we part, something stands out in front of me.

      “We’ll go to the track tomorrow,” she says.

      “Sure,” I say, “and how about this thing?”

      I look down.

      “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it,” she says.

      We walk about and lock again over by the rabbit pen. Appropriate.

      “You’re the horniest old man I ever met . . . ”

      I send her away soon so I can finish this column. I watch the movement of her ass as she walks across the desert toward the house. She bends over to pet a dog. Freud, this is what the wars are all about, you had some truth going there, even though it was slightly hyped . . .

      I stop another dog fight. This time 2 young girls walk through with a larger dog. The German police dog attacks. It is a good fight. I leap in with a stick, grab the large dog by the collar.

      “Thanks,” says one of the girls.

      She reminds me of one I knew, married wrong, who used to beat on my door for consolation . . .

      Charles Bukowski—his writing style . . .

      Well, he designed it by drinking beer from quart bottles, rolling Prince Albert in Zig Zag and interfering in dog fights . . .

      Now I see that I have fallen into one of my bad habits: I have written this in both the present and past tense. Instead of correcting it I will throw it at the editors to test their liberality . . . Now two kids come home from school and the boy throws me a ball. I’ve got all my sharp and catch it, wing it back with a deft and nonchalant accuracy . . . Ernie would have been proud. Now, I’d like to tell you something about Phoenix whorehouses . . . but that’s going to take a bit of research. A blind writer told me yesterday that it’s the 3rd largest dope center in the U.S. The blind writer also told me that he thought those (writers) who had lasted through the ages were badly chosen. I’ve had that thought for some time. Such boring fellows.

      Now if you think I’ve always stood out in the desert standing up by an overturned reel, mixing my tenses and clowning, you’re wrong, babies. I’ve starved in tiny ratfilled, roachfilled rooms without enough money for stamps. I used to lay down drunk in alleys waiting for trucks to run me over . . . Here are those two kids standing here . . .

      “We’ve come to bug you, man!”

      “Yeah? I say.

      “Do you like 7-UP?”

      “Hell no. I like hard liquor.”

      Now the young girl is climbing up on my precious reel, bugging me. But since the brought me some 7-UP I will tolerate their indecencies. Now the young boy gets up on my precious reel and dances. Now here comes two more kids. One gets up on the table.

      “What’s your name?” I ask.

      “Genie,” he says.

      “You guys do something exciting so I can write about it. Then GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

      They don’t do anything but bug, bug, bug . . . How would Ernie handle this? Who owns all these? There they go . . .

      There’s hardly enough sex to this column . . . I thought if I stayed in the desert I would get me some solitude. This is worse than Hollywood with all those drunks getting me out of bed at 11 a.m. to hear the sounds of their diminishing souls. I can’t recommend outdoor writing. At least the birds haven’t shit on me. One of those desert kids suggested that I wrote my next on horseback. Well, I tried Phoenix and Phoenix tried me. The sun’s going down now and my legs are immensely disgusted. I suppose it’s too obvious: Writing on an overturned reel in this place. I probably brought some Hollywood with me. If the races aren’t any better than this writing, then I’m a sure loser tomorrow. Meanwhile, it’s pack this machine back and sit down and listen to the ladies tell about screwing broom handles, cucumbers and the like . . . which reminds me of the guy who told me he stuck his into a vacuum cleaner . . . quack, quack, quack. I hear ducks. I whirl with this machine and stride toward that houseful of dirty female novelists . . .

      Iawakened in a strange bedroom in a strange bed with a strange woman in a strange town. I was up against her back and my penis was inserted into her cunt dog-fashion. It was hot in there and my penis was hard. I moved it a little and she moaned. She appeared to be asleep. Her hair was long and dark, quite long; in fact, a portion of it lay across my mouth—I brushed it away to breathe better, then stroked again. I felt hungover. I dropped out and rolled on my back and tried to reconstruct.

      I had flown into town a few days earlier and had given a poetry reading . . . . when? . . . the night before. It was a hot town. Kandel had read there 2 weeks earlier. And just before that the National Guard had managed to bayonet a few folk on campus. I liked an action town. My reading had gone all right. I had opened a pint and gone on through it. The regents and the English dept. had backed down at the last moment and I had to go on backed by student funds.

      After the reading there had been a party. Vodka, beer, wine, scotch, gin, whiskey. We sat on the rug and drank and talked. There had been one next to me . . . . long black hair, one tooth missing in the front when she smiled. That missing tooth had endeared me. That was it, and there I was.

      I got up to get a drink of water. Nice place. Large. I saw two babies crawling in a crib. No, it was one baby. One was in the crib, crawling. The other was outside walking around naked. A clock said 9:45 a.m. Well, it didn’t СКАЧАТЬ