Tristessa by Jack Kerouac Page A

“You”) “—and me”—pointing at herself—“We are nothing . Tomorrar we may be die, and so we are nothing—” I agree with her, I feel the strangeness of that truth, I feel we are two empty phantoms of light or like ghosts in old haunted-house stories diaphanous and precious and white and not-there,—She says “I know you want to sleep.”
    â€œNo no” I say, seeing she wants to leave—
    â€œI go to it sleep, early in the mawnins I go get see for the mans and I get the morfina and com bock for Old Bool”—and since we are nada , nothing, I forget what she said about friends all lost in the beauty of her strange intelligent imagery, every bit true—“She’s an Angel,” I think secretly, and escort her to the door with movement of arm as she leans to the door talking to go out—We are careful not to touch each other—I tremble, once I jumped a mile when her fingertip hit my knee in conversations, at chairs—the first afternoon I’d seen her, in dark glasses, in the sunny afternoon window, by a candle light lit for kicks, sick kicks of life, smoking, beautiful, like the Owner Damsel of Las Vegas, or the Revolutionary Heroine of Marlon Brando Zapata Mexico—with Culiacan heroes and all—That’s when she got me—In afternoon space of gold the look, the sheer beauty, like silk, the children giggling, me blushing, at guy’s house, where we first found Tristessa and started all this—Sympaticus Tristessa with her heart a gold gate, I’d first dug to be an evil enchantress—I’d run across a Saint in Modern Mexico and here I was fantasizing dreams away about foreordained orders for nothing and necessary betrayals—the betrayal of the old father when he entices by ruse the three little crazy kids screaming and playing in the burning house, “I’ll give each one your favorite cart,” out they come running for the carts, he gives them the High Incomparable Great Cart of the Single Vehicle White Bullock which they’re too young to appreciate—with that greatcart command, he’d made me an offer—I look at Tristessa’s leg and decide to avoid the issue of fate and rest beyond heaven.
    I play games with her fabulous eyes and she longs to be in a monastery.
    â€œLEAVE TRISTESSA ALONE” I say, anyway, like I’d say “Leave the kitty alone, don’t hurt it”—and I open her the door, so we can go out, at midnight, from my room—In my hand I stumble-awkwardly hold big railroad brakeman lantern to her feet as we descend the perilous needless to say steps, she’d almost tripped coming up, she moaned and she groaned coming up, she smiled and minced with her hand on her skirt going down, with that majestical lovely slowness of woman, like a Chinese Victoria.
    â€œWe are nothing.”
    â€œTomorrow we may be die.”
    â€œWe are nothing.”
    â€œYou and Me.”
    I politely lead all the way down by light and lead her out to street where I hail her a white taxi for her home.
    Since beginningless time and into the never-ending future, men have loved women without telling them, and the Lord has loved them without telling, and the void is not the void because there’s nothing to be empty of.
    Art there, Lord Star?—Diminished is the drizzle that broke my calm.

PART TWO
    A Year Later . . .
    DIMINISH’D NEVER IS the drizzle that broke no calm—I didnt tell her I loved her but when I left Mexico I began to think on her and then I began to tell her I loved her in letters, and almost did, and she wrote too, pretty Spanish letters, saying I was sweet, and please hurry back—I hurried back too late, I should have come back in the Spring, almost did, had no money, just touched the border of Mexico and felt that vomity feeling of Mexico—went on to California and lived in a shack with young monk Buddhist type