Or the World Will Die

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It began two weeks after I closed up the New York apartment and went up to the house in Connecticut. Early May of 1949. It began then, and it isn’t finished yet. Maybe it never will be. Maybe it is too late for anything except hasty patches and promises — emergency measures for our world which is pasted together with trickery and spit — and a bit of blood.

My house boy, James, of the coal-black face, the incomprehensible Tamil from Bombay, was delighted to get back to the country. He tells me that his feet get soft in New York. He was so glad to get back, that for a time the seed of revolt in him lay dormant, and he smiled at me with actual friendliness. James is a trophy. One night in ’43, on the Bombay docks, he caught a knife that was meant for me. He intends to spend the rest of his life making certain that I appreciate the extent of his sacrifice, even though it was unintentional. He sneers at my habits, deplores the fact that I live without a woman, is contemptuous of the fact that I make a living by talking into the mouthpiece of a black machine which clicks. As each one of my books is published, I faithfully inscribe one copy and hand it to him. He can’t read. He keeps them under his bed.

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