The Menagerie of Babel

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I was living then in a cottage behind a ramshackle house in the Berkeley hills. Most of my ready cash had gone for three months' rent in advance. I could have had the basement for less, but when I saw it I balked. Half the floor was dirt, the other half worm-eaten boards. Through one filthy window fell the glaucous light of a Manhattan airshaft at dawn. It was a tomb. I knew that my asceticism was not equal to it. And I wanted at most three months. So I took the cottage. It was one room fifteen feet on a side, without electricity or plumbing.

My landlord lived in the main house. He was a law-school dropout with an overbearing manner that collapsed the moment I resisted it. Then he was almost unctuous. His name was Peter Fraser. He rented the house, and sublet rooms in it. I guessed that because of his manner he had trouble filling them. In a week, competition for housing among returning students would be desperate, and he could have named his price, but he chose to take my cash. We smoked a joint on it, and between lies I told him some harmless truths about myself. My luck was running well then in areas I did not care about.

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