by Henry Miller
In estimating the task which confronted the founder of such an institution never once did Hari Das touch upon such prosaic requisites as money, advertising, football teams, or such perquisites. Did he expect this eclectic institution to flourish without an Alumni Association? What would take the place of football and regattas? Religion?
Almost as if he divined what was in Moloch’s mind, Hari announced with the utmost seriousness: “It should be the duty of every educated American to know and appreciate the other great religious teachers of the world. Jesus the Christ is not the be-all and end-all of religion! The life of Jesus, as described in your Bible, what is it but a repetition of the incidents that occurred in the life of the great Gautama who lived over five hundred years before your Savior? ...”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but he’s not my Savior!” said Moloch.
Hari smiled tolerantly and continued.
“Take such unique occurrences as the immaculate conception, the temptation by the Prince of Darkness, the slaughter of the innocents by Herod: these are not isolated Christian myths! Consider the familiar parables of Jesus: the parable of the Prodigal Son, and of the Marriage Feast at Cana . . . why, they were known to the Hindus and Buddhists of the pre-Christian era. The rituals of the Catholic Church—have you any idea how many of them have been borrowed from Buddhism?”
Here Hari Das made a digression to explain to Moloch and Blanche (for she was listening, too, with some amazement) the manner in which Pythagoras came by his knowledge of the doctrines of pre-existence and transmigration of souls, of ascetic observances and vegetarianism, of the virtue of numbers, and the idea of the fifth element, which was unknown in Greece and Egypt at that time. “Ether as an element,” said Hari, “was known only among the Hindus then.”
“Good stuff, Swami!” chirped Moloch. “Some of our pundits trace everything back to Greece and Rome. Our traffic regulations, for instance, we borrowed them from the congested days of the Roman Empire. The Street Cleaning Department gets no end of brilliant ideas from the archaeological surveys made in Crete. Take our open-work plumbing—you might think that a German importation. No sirree! We copped that idea from the ruins of the Palace of Knossos.… As for myself, I think the most important item the Greeks gave birth to was tragedy.”
“Even that is a myth,” Hari exclaimed, ignoring the Nietzschean invitation to the dance.
“No doubt,” said Moloch dryly.
“You see,” Hari began again, “in the Occident, because of your falsified traditions, your emphases are on the wrong things. The vast contribution to civilization made by the Oriental peoples, a contribution that is extremely more important in the ultimate than any Parthenon, Roman laws, or Attic tragedies . . . this great contribution which flows from Egypt, China, Africa, India, Japan, has been either deliberately minimized by your pedants or else respectfully forgotten so as not to affect the continuity of that beautiful Greco-Roman hypothesis.
“We read in your books endless panegyrics on Plato and Aristotle, on Euclid, Aesop, Pythagoras, and Hippocrates, but there is never any mention, unless I am woefully misinformed, of the fact that we were the first teachers of plane and spherical trigonometry. In the science of numbers the Greeks never even approached the ancient Hindus. Take the simple, practical science of arithmetic. It would have been impossible without a system of decimal notation, would it not? Who gave it to you? The Arabs. And where did the Arabs get it? From India. . . . What is plane geometry after all but an elaboration and extension of the Vedic formulae for the construction of sacrificial altars! As for music, the scale with the seven notes was known in India centuries before the Greeks had it; it was built up from the chanting of primitive Vedic hymns ...”
“Whoa, whoa!” cried Moloch good-naturedly. “Soon you’ll be telling me that the theory of relativity is an anachronism.”
Thus the conversation proceeded, while the icebox was steadily drained of jams, fruits, cheese, of all the edibles that Blanche had been holding in reserve for future meals.
Stimulated by Moloch’s sly encouragement, Hari Das trampled joyously on things sacred and profane in the Occidental world. Moloch applauded generously, and when the former ran short of material supplied him with ideas. They were in perfect agreement that without Cascara America would perish of constipation; that halitosis was a scourge second only to leprosy. America: the land of stop and go! Big Ben: the workingman’s idol!
Blanche was a basilisk, heavy-lidded, blinking indignantly. The warm blood rose to the back of her neck and clotted her thoughts and impulses. A dull rage thickened her tongue; it hung in her mouth like a crape.
In due course Hari got around to our national heroes. He had a severe prejudice against Lincoln because of the Gettysburg Address.
“Either Pericles anticipated Lincoln,” said Hari, referring to the famous funeral oration of the Peloponnesian War, “or we must believe the Great Emancipator to be a plagiarist.”
“God,” cried Moloch, half in earnest, half in jest, “if you’re going to take Lincoln from us too”—he scratched his head vigorously—“you may as well summon the angel Gabriel. That’s the last ditch! I didn’t mind seeing Washington go. In his pajamas he was nothing, you might say, but a British realtor with a strong propensity for the wenches. Franklin—he had to be exposed, too, as a bibulous, whoring son of a chessplayer who liked nothing better than to loll about on the sidewalks of Paris with immoral Frenchwomen. But when it comes to Lincoln . . . hang it, there ought to be something sacred in this democracy of ours. A plagiarist, you say? Tch! Tch! Tch! And he knew such good jokes. . . . But then the Civil War was too big a joke for him, I guess.”
“Tell me, you’re not holding anything up your sleeve against Robert E. Lee?” he added as an afterthought.
Hari appeared mystified.
“What? You don’t know Robert E. Lee? Man, he’s the only figure in American history that no one can throw dirt at. Beside him General Grant was just a horny gaffer given to smoking cheap cigars. As for General Sherman—well, to put it politely, he was a common, low-down Jack the Ripper. When he finished marching through Georgia there wasn’t enough vegetation left for a plant louse to cling to. All our national heroes—Webster, Brigham Young, Barnum, Buffalo Bill, Jesse James—they were all tainted. There isn’t even a good word to be said for that pathetic washboiler Carrie Nation. She wasn’t an epileptic, but she heard voices too.”
These names were as familiar to Hari Das as an almanac of Polynesian deities, or Lydia Pinkham’s remedies for women’s complaints.
Blanche had been listening to all this nonsense with a polite sneer. Several times she had been on the point of blowing up. Finally, she got up, made an inarticulate reference to her husband’s diseased mind, and signified that she was retiring.
“So early, my zephyr?” Moloch tauntingly placed his hand on her shoulder to detain her. “I had something to say to you concerning our friend here.”
“Your friend, if you please. . . . You’re not going to ask me to fix a place for him, I hope?” She made the feeble excuse that she was expecting her mother.
“You never dropped a word about that, Blanche.”
“Oh, didn’t I?” She turned to Hari as if he were a judge before whom she was pleading a case. “He goes about in a trance when he’s home. You’d think I was a piece of furniture instead of his wife.”
“Come, come,” said Moloch, “Hari doesn’t want to hear that nonsense. Look here, why can’t Hari sleep with Matt? I’m sure Matt won’t mind.”
“How do you know he won’t?”
“Because they’re great friends already, isn’t that so, Hari?”
The latter was perplexed and exceedingly uncomfortable. He begged them not to inconvenience themselves on his account.
“Tut, tut!” cried Moloch. “It’s a pleasure.”
More fruitless words were exchanged—with dagger thrusts and cobra venom. Nevertheless, Moloch was determined to have his way.
Hari Das deri
ved a somewhat malicious enjoyment from this wretched, absurd squabble. Instinctively he aligned himself with his host, not because there was more justice on that side, but because the Hindu view of women made Blanche appear in his eyes as a sinister example of the fruits of that Occidental evil called feminism. He said nothing, but if one could read his thought it was that a sound thrashing would terminate a lot of unnecessary argument.
Outside a searchlight was spraying the trees and walls with violet rays. When it had finished spraying the earth it tilted upwards and swept the firmament clear of stardust.
Moloch glanced at Hari. His skin barely sufficed to cover his bones; his complexion had paled until it became the color of urine.
When there are girls and boys in a classroom it is trying for the teacher to say “Lake Titicaca.” No one takes this lake seriously. It sounds absurd—and a trifle suggestive. Moloch felt the same way about this situation. He wanted someone to extricate him.
Blanche slipped off quietly to clasp her dreams. Her gesture was akin to the shrug of a dance-hall woman tossing aside a novel by Maxwell Bodenheim because “it starts off dirty.”
Toward dawn Hari slipped into Matt’s bed. It was not necessary to disturb Reardon since he was not there to disturb. In the telegraph game one meets with a large variety of experience. Very likely Matt had put the kibosh on the insurrection uptown, and then, highly satisfied with his efforts, had gone to a prizefight with one of the operators. After that a drinking bout and a Turkish bath. Or an all-night session in a black-and-tan. Matt would arrive bright and early in the morning with a swollen head and a fitful desire to spend the rest of his days in the South Seas. . . .
Moloch tarried a few minutes before retiring to glance at Hari’s pamphlet entitled “Merry Christmas Greetings to the World!” It was written in the first person spectacular. Some of it was in high fettle.
“I restrain myself lest a stray casual remark develop into a volume. I do not expect to be appreciated all at once. Of this, however, I am convinced, that only the rarest among men have been foreordained to understand me. . . . The rest are merely humanity on their way to ordination. . . .
“I boast of my system being fluid, gaseous, capable of evaporating. This is the highest rational system ever yet propounded. The sensations embodied in my ‘Aphorisms’ are a tiny fragment of the vast firmament of my philosophy, and exhibit the state of chaos out of which will order be born, to which I shall willingly, proudly, stand Godfather; it is the state of Inharmony out of which shall Harmony be born, to the divine rhythm of which the world shall dance for the pleasure of the Master-Artist. . . .”
“The Master-Artist”! Moloch mused awhile on megalomania. The Master-Artist was already snoring deeply. His “Aphorisms” were floating like toy balloons over the surface of his dreams. He was no longer aware of such mythical realities as corns, bunions and “Charley Horse.” He walked in deep meadow grass through the valley of the moon, and the smell of clover was as incense to his quivering nostrils.
“With a proper diet, clean linen, a soft pallet, he’ll get over this Messianic complex. I suppose it’s up to me to play Joseph of Arimathea. ... Ho hum!” He yawned, stretched himself, and lit a cigarette. Ideas gathered, the species of ideas which strangles sleep, and which seems next morning to be more than mildly aberrant. He pictured himself in a Quaker meeting, passing the hat around for his friend, the Master-Artist, who has just finished lecturing on “The Religious Aspects of Procreation.” As an entrepreneur his success is established. The hat is full. If this gag can be repeated, it it can be pulled on the Christian Scientists, well... the telegraph company can go to hell then. The Master-Artist has no idea what a gold mine awaits them. Once California is reached. . . . California: the land of golden whales. California: where a new cult is born every day. He’s glad he was born an American. America: the land of opportunity, where the rich grow richer and the poor poorer. If necessary, he’ll change his name . . . Mordecai Brown, Impresario!
In the upper stratum of Chinese society a favorite method of committing suicide is “to take gold leaf.” Death is brought on by the gold leaf obstructing the glottis. Similarly, the web of cocoons that Dion Moloch spun brought about a suffocation of ideas and he became deliciously drowsy. The last impression he was conscious of was the racing extra in the Evening Telegram: “Original wins in the fourth!” It proved to be no more stimulating than those books which are omitted from the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
5
BLANCHE HAS BECOME HABITUATED TO SPEAKING OF herself in the past, as if she were a piece of secondhand furniture. Her mind and spirit have become as angular as her face, which has now acquired an equine aspect. She exhales the atmosphere of a Protestant church. She is not only morbid and suspicious, she is colorless, inflexible, poor-at-heart.
It is easier for these two to quarrel than for a preacher to say Amen. Fortunately, they are seldom left alone. When Moloch does come of an evening, which is rare, he always finds visitors. Not that Blanche is responsible. She seldom sees anyone. She doesn’t believe in friends.
Riding to work mornings, Moloch frequently reflected on the sad state of affairs. His life with Blanche was so absolutely different from anything he had visualized. He almost gave a start when his mind fell back to the days of their courtship. Was this the same Blanche? This the passionate, impetuous woman whom he took to matinees, with whom, under cover of darkness, he committed nameless indiscretions?
He thought with premeditated satisfaction of his secretary, a slim, eighteen-year-old virgin whose skin had the mossy bloom of a magnolia. Each evening, as he dozed in the fetid atmosphere of the subway, he planned anew her seduction. Hers was not the platitudinous beauty of a Jewess, that excites the perverse curiosity of a drummer and arouses in her Gentile sisters the itch of envy and despair. Men thought of Marcelle rather as the frail respository of a forgotten charm, the sort of charm that one discovers in a vase at the museum.
It was a pity, he often told himself, that he could not have married the girl he loved. That was so long ago, his first love ... his only love. (Do we not all speak that way of first love?) He no longer thought about it sanely.
This first love was no pale Mona Lisa, of legendary charm. Cora was a buxom, two-breasted Amazon. He never thought of her without a sharp pang at the remembrance of her firm, upstanding breasts, full as an Indian burial mound—and her breath, warm and milky.
At seventeen Cora was like an Arctic summer. She looked out at the world from cold, porcelain eyes that shimmered like blue icebergs under the play of boreal lights. In ten years Cora had paled into a fragile memory, a memory of a tight bodice and a sassafras peruke. He could never permit himself to think of Greenpoint without a vicious tug at his heart. Maujer, Con-selyea, Humboldt Streets; the streets that Cora once had trod. These streets, forlorn now, were consecrated to HER. If the truth were known, he had even kissed the flagging of these very streets. Late at night, of course, and in a moment of terrible anguish.
The period we speak of was in the first decade of this century. Young men in long trousers were not ashamed then to hold parties in which they played at “Post Office” and “Kiss the Pillow.” They even formed clubs so that they might meet at one another’s homes. Nor were they abashed to call themselves “the Deep Thinkers.” Had it not been for such diversions Moloch would probably never have kissed this goddess whom he worshiped with all the pathos and chivalry of an adolescent. For months he has contented himself with taking a long walk every evening after dinner. He does this in order to kill time, because it is impossible for him to fathom how he will go on living unless Cora acknowledges her love for him. And how is she going to do this since he is afraid even to speak to her? He does not think of using the telephone, or inviting her to the theater. He would tremble too violently if he heard her voice, if she sat next to him in the dark. No, these things require a courage that is beyond him. He prefers to take a long walk so that at the end of an hour he may find himself, as though by ac
cident, directly beneath her window. He fears to linger there more than a minute lest the door open suddenly and one of her family, perhaps a younger sister, espy him and make fun of him.
Just the same, his secret is known. The other members of the club (thick-skinned, all of them) have taken to spoofing him. When they mention Cora he blushes terribly and stammers. They fail entirely to perceive what a goddess she is. In their vulgar way, they know her only as a robust, athletic figure, sparkling with life and joy. It amuses them, in an indecent way, to see this girl whom they have played with on the streets and in stables and alleys regarded as a Vestal Virgin. She is good to look at, excellent company, kisses divinely, but shucks! She isn’t the only girl in Greenpoint. There is Ethel Tilford, and Violet Munson! What’s wrong with them?
One evening they decide to make a man of Moloch. They get him drunk. They saunter out, twelve young blades, full of kümmel and Rhine wine. They make a beeline for Maujer Street, where Cora lives. It is hardly necessary to drag Moloch along. He is up in the van, shouting and gesticulating. “A capital idea,” he brags. “Let’s give Cora a serenade!”
In front of her home they stop, drag Moloch into the middle of the street, and perform a mystic ceremony. Their shouting and laughter is enough to wake the dead. But no one appears at the window. Not a shade is drawn.
“They must be out,” thinks Moloch. Emboldened by the thought, he mounts nimbly to the top of the stoop and delivers a speech.
His speech is mad, fantastic. He spews it out with volcanic energy. Everything that he has kept locked in his breast pours forth. He plunders the skies to hurl jewels at her feet.
A tumultuous applause bursts from the louts on the sidewalk. They have never heard anything more hilarious. Moloch stands aces high. He will be the next president of the club. . . .
And Cora—where was she during this mad outburst? Was she in bed, dreaming of becoming a ballet dancer? It were better had this been so. But Cora is kneeling at the window in her nightdress, listening to every word of this crazy buffoon. The darkness of the room hides her from sight. She cannot see him, either, but his words make her shiver. He must be mad to love her like this. What are they laughing at, the fools?