Word: moricand
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After the war Moricand scouted out Miller's place of rest in California. Miller was living precariously in a cabin above the cliffs at Big Sur with a young wife (his third), a small daughter, a plenitude of unpaid bills and an uncertain future...
...Lamprey Moricand attached himself to Miller in Paris in 1936. Once he had been rich, but by then he was destitute, his only assets being the fine art of conversation and the black art of astrology. Miller gave him minute sums of money, and served him up as a dinner-table oddity among the bohemian intellectuals and expatriates. Miller also got him astrological commissions among his friends and, when friends ran short, invented imaginary characters for whom Moricand would supply horoscopes. It proved to be an expensive game...
Nevertheless, he scraped together the money to fetch the moribund Moricand from his rats' castle in Switzerland to the solitude of Miller's own Walden Pond (the Pacific Ocean). Moricand saluted Miller, systematically went about the business of making himself master in Miller's house. He became Mrs. Miller's ally in her daily quarrels with Miller. He demanded gauloises bleues cigarettes, special tooth powder of pumice, writing paper of a special shape. He refused to be pacified by the Pacific, and he plugged his air less room so that no fresh air could leak...
...Moricand contributed to the household only one tangible asset, a collection of his exquisitely detailed pornographic drawings. But he declined to sell them to Hollywood connoisseurs. Miller's friends advised him to get rid of his incubus, but Moricand insisted on regarding the papers Miller had signed to get the man into the U.S. as a moral and legal obligation upon Miller to support...
...parting gesture, Moricand pronounced a curse on Miller...