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"The Notebooks of Michael Mabius" - Prolog

Susan;
I am sending you all the notebooks, written by Michael, concerning the last days of his life, exactly as he sent them to me. When you read them, you’ll notice that he addresses me by name somewhere toward the end once or twice. I don’t think, however, that he meant to write all of this for me. I seem to have been an afterthought, or some such thing. I have no idea why he wrote any of it, actually, or why he chose to dwell so much on those aspects of his life that all who loved him, as we did, will agree led to his destruction, but these were his choices. Susan; you may have been the cause of these books. It looks like he started the first notebook around the time you returned to New York, and you were on his mind, and then he saw you again.
The choice of what should be done with this, and of who should see it, I leave to you. I have kept a xerox for myself, and sent one to his father, of course.
By the way, don't be taken in by all that overpouring of emotionality in July. They say at the end he never spoke except to bite somebody's head off.
My love to your growing family.

-- Jack





THE NOTEBOOKS OF MICHAEL MABIUS.

Book I.


May 8. Tuesday. 5:03 A.M.

A xerox of the shroud of Turin is taped to the wall above the non-working and not decorative fireplace. An ambulance siren travels across fifteenth street, from 6th Ave., heading for 7th, not turning. Why not? It's stopping one block away.

I have just returned from the living room, where I looked out the window for the ambulance. Saw nothing but beautiful trees, leaves, fences, red window panes filled with sunbeams across the street. Breathed.

I would like to write a book, to save myself, as soon as possible. I have to think of it, do it, finish it, get it typed.
After I do it, I don't care what happens. I will happily give up. But just once, starting now, at 5:12, let me make that effort I have always known I must finally make - or not be myself - the one effort that represents the victory of my former ambitions, formed in the heart of a young child, for no known reason and therefore, I believe, pure, honest and powerful, over my present constraints, dependencies, and general weakness.

6:17 A.M.

Ate instant waffles.

6:22 - 6:23 - 6:24

Looking at the digits fall. AM. PM. White numerals on little black cards, the cards divided latitudinally in their middles - The mechanism starts to whirr about 45 seconds after the minute has begun. It whirrs until it clicks, clears its throat, then exerts the sigh of great effort toward which all its whirring has been leading - it pushes the next black card up, drops the old minute into the dead pile beneath visibility and drops the new minute into view. This time of night, when there are no other sounds, except the occasional garbage truck, the gears of the clock, though soft, fill all the space of hearing.

I have returned to the city of my birth, after six years away in the West, and now I have been here one full year, and this is the closing of the second year here. My 32nd, or 31st birthday soon approaches. When I left this city, I had so much, I didn't even need hope. When I came back, I had hope but not much else. Currently, I feel much excitement, but none of it pointed. Not that it worries me. I was looking for a vacation from hope.

Weds. May 9. 5:44 A.M.

There is talking in the courtyard. The digital clock clicks off another minute. The sky has light but no color. The I Ching is resting at the head of the bed, after several gruelling hours of my importuning. I am reading Tropic of Cancer, and it occurred to me last night on the way from the University Bar to the Blue Parrot, that Henry Miller, like Jack Kerouac, does the kind of writing that should be done. Just write whatever is going on, and forget it.

I am unable to go to sleep. I'm afraid of going to the dentist tomorrow.
Interesting, if frustrating, encounter with the I Ching this evening ... Pressed down with despair about the fate of "I Track Down Freaks" just having lost the agent for that book because of something the I Ching told me to do, I said to it: "Are all your pieces of advice about my book leading toward its ultimately being published?" to which it answered, "No." That sent a chill down my spine. I've been relying on this I Ching creature for every action taken in regard to the final draft, the xeroxing of the manuscript, who to send it to, when to mail it, whether or not to call this or that person to find out if he's read it yet ;
I tried to remain calm. I have, in the past, become so angry at the I Ching that I have thrown it across the room, or out the window, or spit on it tearing the pages out and jumping on them, or setting pages on fire, then asking "What do you think of that, Fuckhead?" ... However, I had resolved never to do anything like that again, always to remain calm, realizing that the paradoxical answers of the I Ching would ultimately resolve themselves to me. Most, in the past, have. Although not all. There are a number of former answers of the Ching's I still remember some after years as having been totally wrong and having cost me something. I am still brooding over some old betrayals. "Who are you? Who is speaking through these coins?" Are they spirits, demons? God Himself, hiding, yet speaking? Are the answers it gives derived from my own brain, or is there a Being who is the entire air, every molecule, that turns the coins one way or the other, answering every question, while at the same time entering every creature on earth who inhales?
I talked to Susan few nights ago, when Tracy called her from here. Naturally, I can't stop thinking about our talk. She sounded sad, or at least I thought she did. But I didn't ask her about it. I told her Tracy and I were watching TV, a show about the "Temple System" of irrigating the rice fields of Bali. She interrupted me, saying "Do you think we'll see each other?"
The way she said it brought all of my blood to my face instantaneously, and made it impossible for me to answer right away. I said, "Uhh," when I realized I had been silent too long, and I looked over at Tracy, who was beside me on the mattress, but leaning attentively toward the little color television that sits here by the head of my floorlevel bed, on a cardboard box containing the publisher's overstock of the paperback edition of my last book, with her chin on her fist, watching the endlessly fascinating story (I have seen this show many times before) of those irrigation ditches in Bali, that are alternately flooded and drained by a system of gates, each gate controlled by a priest, and located either within, or right beside, a temple. Tracy was watching the part about that festival they have designed to appease the god of the volcano. When I was again able to croak out hesitant speech, I said to Susan: "How's Ben?"
"Searching," she said.
Ben is her husband. He's searching for a job.
I said, "Did he try Mirthco? Did you tell him what I said?"
"Well, he called your friend James. But your friend told him they weren't actually looking for any new writers."
"Oh, well..." I said, "But what about..."
"Story editor?"
"Right. Did he ask about the possibility of a job as a story editor?"
"Well, yes, he did mention it, but I mean you must have known your friend James is the story editor. Didn't you?"
"Oh, is that what they call him?"
"It is, yes." She paused for a long time, and I could tell she was taking a long drag on a cigarette. Then she said, "Ben feels you set him up."
"I was trying to help him."
"Well, I told him he was crazy, but he says you must have known this James..."
"I didn't, though."
"Let's talk about something else," said Susan.
"I'm very sorry about this," I said.
"Well," she said, in a tone that indicated she did not entirely believe what I was saying. Then she said, "He thinks you did it because you're still in love with me."
To which I replied in exasperation (but with an eye toward a better future) "But doesn't that mean I want you to be happy? Doesn't that mean I want your husband to be employed, so he will not cause you to have to go out to work as a cook?"
"A chef," she said. "Well, anyway, let me talk to Tracy."
I put Tracy on the phone. Then I crawled over her so I could be up next to the TV while Tracy and Susan talked.
Tracy now began a long series of denials. "No, no ... no ... ah, no ... uhuh ... no really, no ... well, but no..." and so on. "No, we're just watching this show," and so on and so forth. Finally, she reached over me and put the phone between its plastic trapezoids, and said "Sheesh!" in her just abovewhisper highpitched voice. "She wanted to know if we were sleeping together."
"What did you tell her?" I switched the channel to a movie called Morituri, starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard.
"I told her she was crazy, naturally," said Tracy. Her voice is really not a whisper, her words have all the qualities of words that might come from any other woman's mouth musicality, inflection, graceful modifications among an enormously wide range of emotional colorations but all at such a low volume that sometimes I have the feeling I'm hearing a voice trapped under some heavy stone I happen to be passing, a voice calling out: "Here I am ... over here!" This unwillingness on her part to impose in any way the sound of her voice, bothers some people, but I like it. It makes you listen to her very carefully. It makes you lean toward her, sometimes even touching one of her arms, in the hope that this extra contact will cause vibrations that pass through her veins when she speaks to add a few words to your comprehension of what she is saying.
"Anyway," she said, "What would give her that idea? Did you say anything to her?"
"No, of course I didn't. Only could have originated with Arianna."
"Oh, you told her," said Tracy, raising herself from the mattress with a single motion, and padding over to the closet to look through my pockets after first patting them all on both sides.
"No, I denied it, but you know how she is. And of course, she's good friends with Ben."
Tracy pulled the rectangular, beatup pouch of aluminum foil from the pocket of my tired corduroy jacket, where I keep it hidden from my three apartmentmates, and padded back over here, to the mattress area, with a cute look on her face.
Was the sun still in the sky at that time?
Was the room washed in afternoon red, evening blue haze, or what? I can't remember. I think the news came on, and that's the last thing I recall, until...
...I woke up and it was dark. Hours had passed. The candle was flickering in a pool of wax down in the saucer where it had stood. I was aware of someone standing above me, looking at me. I opened my eyes, expecting to see Tracy, but it was Susan. She was holding her dark hair back behind her ears with her fingers so it wouldn't fall over her face as she looked downward, and she was smiling. There was light from the courtyard coming through the window at the head of the bed, and the way it caught the glistening of Susan's eyes, I thought she might have been crying. However, before I could ask her about it, or say anything, I saw her start to check around the edge of the mattress, trying to work out some way of sitting down without falling. I put my hand up to give her something to lean on as she sat down.
"Well, well! Taking a nap?" she said in a slightly mocking tone. Then she looked around the room (I was grateful she had not turned on the light) and she said, "This is worse than I imagined!" After a second or two, she managed to stretch and turn her back in such a way as to be able to reach me, and place a kiss on my cheek. I said, "Susan I can't believe it!"
She said, looking serious, "I just thought if we could talk..."
"Sure," I said.
She looked at me in a very sweet way. Too nostalgic, too peaceful for me because from the instant I saw her, all the emotions of a present and overwhelming passionate involvement, had returned to me. But then she looked at me in a more intense way, and seemed troubled, though I had not caused any trouble, so far, and she said my name, and we kissed, very softly, and I tasted the salt tears on her lightly lipsticked upper lip, and I saw the flushed quality of her face. She said, "One of the things I think we'd better talk about is these conversations we've been having on the phone..."
"Have I said anything I shouldn't have said?"
"You have made it pretty clear that you'd like us to be together again."
She looked at me, but I didn't say anything.
She said, "And all these people telling me 'Michael still loves you, Michael still loves you...' How do they get that impression?"
I mumbled in a shamefaced, downinthemouth way, "I don't know," but I knew what she was talking about.
She said, "You must know there's no possibility for us. I'm married."
"I know that."
"Good, then," she said.
We stared at each other a long time, and finally I said, "I thought the reason you came down to New York, was because you wanted to see me." Pause. "I mean, at least partly."

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