Moloch: Or, This Gentile World

by Henry Miller

  But what in the name of Lucifer were they doing to his Bedford Avenue? Each time he went back to it, it got worse. It was like a venerable patriarch who has but one frock coat in his wardrobe which he brushes carefully before going out for a walk. And despite his care, now and then a button falls off, or the elbows shine, or it begins to fray at the cuff. But the lines remain. Nothing can alter that. You can see it came from a good shop, that it’s substantial. You don’t have to look at the label to make the discovery. The way it hangs—that tells the story!

  It was something like that with Bedford Avenue.... The “sheenies” could come, stick a funny little star on the steeple top, and christen the church a synagogue. They could take an old brownstone front, and with renovations make it into a cozy little fur shop, or a Parisian millinery store … any damned thing you want! But the form was there; the lines remained. Nobody could take that away…. It was idle for anyone to deny it: New York belonged to the Jews. Everywhere you went, there were Kosher signs, garish mansions for banquets and weddings, delicatessen shops with pastrami, sturgeon, “lox,” smelly cheeses and wursts hanging in the window… and coleslaw dressed with a vomit. In course of time comes the dentist, and puts a little white sign in his window: “Painless Dentistry.” He lies. There was only one such benefactor in Brooklyn: “Painless Parker.” … And in the wake of the dentist comes the chiropractor, the masseur, and the music teacher—bleating like stuck pigs for a crumb of business. Whatever, whoever it was, it made no difference. They were all making a living, advertising themselves, getting pupils or patients, selling their nostrums and their indigestible comestibles.

  Why did he detest them so, these long-suffering and (as every one admits) perfectly harmless people? They didn’t damage the country, did they, with their merchant ideas and their bogus intellectual life? No, not that exactly, but—to put it succinctly, “they smelled bad.” One doesn’t like to harp on distasteful subjects, but that was precisely the case: they smelled bad! They were like the disgusting creatures Virgil mentions: they soiled everything. Where they were, life was coarsened, cheapened, vulgarized. Sacred or profane: a human life, a discarded vest, a woman’s virtue—everything was smeared with a price-mark. … It wasn’t only Bedford Avenue, the entire metropolis was worm-eaten.

  If you pressed them hard enough they admitted it themselves, these wandering ones. Try it sometime. Get them in a corner. Just rub their noses in the dirt, and then ask them for a little plain talk. “Out with it, blatherskites! Own up, shitepokes! Who’s responsible for this mess?” Watch them whine and whimper, offer flimsy excuses: Russia, the pale, pogrom-makers, the whole category of bromidic absurdities. Press them a little further.... “Who’s asking you now to use dirty handkerchiefs? Is there any law against clean linen in this country? Why do you insist on throwing your refuse into the street? Haven’t we given you garbage cans … don’t we collect your dirt for you every day?” … Oh, they’ll give you an answer to that, too. Argue themselves black in the face. In the end, they’ll admit it: “they love dirt!” It’s just as natural for them to be filthy as it is for the Germans to be tidy, for the Irish to be poor, and the Catholics ignorant. “It must be in the blood,” he told himself. The poor, lousy, mangy devils! Just the same, he could never get used to it. If he could only bawl them out publicly, or clout their fat behinds with a barrel stave! Whew!

  At the fountain he loafed awhile, enjoying the fine tingle of spray, musing, smiling quietly as some funny little incident out of his boyhood leaped to mind. He recaptured an image of himself walking along the street with Dr. Carmichael on his arm. They were going to the Clymer Police Station to notify the sergeant that his wheel had been stolen. What a stinker Carmichael was! Was there a more cantankerous principal in all Brooklyn? Always holding out for decorum, the veriest stickler for propriety. Pretending to be outraged when he found them playing tag in the toilet. Never gave one a chance to explain. But what fun it was, slamming those toilet doors, climbing over the partitions, turning all the spigots on. … Perhaps they did wreck the joint, but what of it? Boys will be boys. And what did it matter, in the long run, if a few toilet seats were broken? Misdirected energy, that’s all. But you couldn’t tell Carmichael that. The old crab didn’t have a friend in the world, unless it was his battered skullcap. Fancy an old fusspot like that walking through the cold corridors. A pious peacock, with his nose in the air. Garbed in the same old pinhead suit… a Presbyterian monitor with a paunch, and chronic catarrh. They used to say he was “nuts” on the Latin teacher, that he got her to stay after hours and help him with his office work. Office work, raspberries! Maybe that’s why he used to visit the Latin class so often, letting on that he did so in order to keep his hand in; asking foolish questions about Julius Caesar, the Lupercalia, and Vercingetorix. And that simpering way he had of droning his Latin. Trying to make us believe he was cultivating our ears so that we might appreciate Cicero’s noble cadences…. Worse than a priest at it! Then making us translate at sight, saying he would try it himself, too, when all the time the old geezer knew the book backwards. A sly old fox he was, keeping one eye on the nefarious practices of Catiline and the other eye on her nibs, perched on the high stool with a brillian-tine smile, applauding him whenever he said something clever— something she called clever, for no one else could detect his cleverness! (Unless one could call it clever to expatiate for a whole period on the pooh-pooh theory of language.)

  Well, the Jewies settled his hash....

  “Wouldn’t you boys like to do some extra reading so as to become more familiar with your Virgil?”

  Sammy Mankowitz speaks up instanter. “I can’t. I gotta help muh fader in der store.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to pass with honor, Master Mankowitz?”

  “Naw … I jes wanna pass. I’m goin’ in fer dentistry soon as I’m tru.”

  “How about you and you,” he asks, feeling out the Gentiles in the class.

  “Me eyes are weak.” … “I’m taking music lessons.” A bagful of excuses. Not a damned soul interested in the rites of the Lupercal, or th Lives of Plutarch. He shakes his head pathetically. “It’s a different generation, Miss Dillon.” That’s all he says, and closes the book. As Carmichael closes the door behind him Izzy Lefkowitz blows a snotter.

  “Is that nice?” tweets Miss Dillon. “I want the boy who made that horrid noise to come right up here.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll give the young gentleman who was guilty of such misbehavior just three minutes to stand up and offer me his apology.”

  More silence.

  “May I leave the room, Miss Dillon?”

  “Yes, Mr. Wright. I’m certain it wasn’t you.”

  She taps the desk impatiently with her ruler, hoping that the culprit will be man enough to announce himself and spare her the injustice of punishing the others along with him. She waits a few more minutes, then looks at her watch. “Very well, we’ll all stay after hours and conjugate irregular verbs. We’ll do that for the rest of the week.”

  Master Lefkowitz murmurs under his breath: “You big hunk of cheese!”

  “What are you mumbling so for?” she demands fiercely, almost certain that he was the culprit.

  He whines piteously: “I gotta help me fader.”

  Moloch laughed softly as he reflected on Izzy’s trickery. Izzy was true to form: anarchic, and without honor. When they fell into a trap the herd instinct asserted itself. They fled then into the arms of Karl Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and hid their long noses in the sands of Anti-Semitism. Thenceforth, until the sweat glands have exuded the last drop of soul-quaking panic, they espouse with the full vigor of their stribilious temperament the philosophy of work. This lasts until the philosophy is annihilated by discussion.

  But aren’t they intellectual, you say. To be sure. They have a dry intelligence which condones deceit, which elevates cheating to the point of supreme virtue. Fool! That’s what they have intellects for. It takes a stupid goy to recite his p
aternosters, to try for a hundred percent when sixty is all that is required to pass.... But they produce some great men, some rare geniuses, do they not? Admitted—but why the soft pedal when it comes to talking about imbeciles, cretins, hydrocephalics, crooks and thugs, cadets and whoremongers?… Every great scientist, every great author, every great leader of the world has been a Jew— sometime or other!

  Meek and humble, you think? Because you see them plodding along on Canal Street, or East Broadway, with their heads in their beards? Not a bit of it! Get him alone and every Jew will admit his superiority. The world couldn’t get along without them. They’re a leaven in the body politic—it’s that tosh you’ll hear.... Who wrote your Bible? Who gave you a Savior? Who produces your motion pictures? Who underwrites your operas and symphonic concerts? Who conducts them? Who writes the world’s masterpieces? Who discovered Salvarsan? Who organized the needle trades? Who gave us the eight-hour day? Who supplies the teaching staff in the public schools? Who is at the bottom of this infernal, ceaseless agitation for more sewers, brighter lights, bigger theaters, gayer neckwear, shorter skirts, sheer hose, furs in summer, municipal golf courses, public baths, Catholics for the White House, emancipation for the Negro, and so on and so on? Come to find out, there are only a few things they overlooked. Lacunae: Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton—a few odd names like that; a building here and there: St. Peter’s or the Taj Mahal; the world of premodern painting. God knows, was Rembrandt a Jew? One can’t be sure anymore. Not when a Jew is elected mayor of the holy city; not when they tamper with the father of Parsifal and the author of Jean Christophe. If this nonsense continues, one may soon expect to hear Bernard Shaw announcing his Semitic lineage.... However, there are one or two we may be fairly certain of: the Buddha and Confucius. But this is strictly without reference to the Jewish Encyclopedia….

  A throng of children were coming down the street with books under their arms. Lunchtime. Down the avenue a little farther Moloch came upon the Amphion Theatre, the old Amphion where he had sat in the gallery with his mother to see Way Down East. Someone had slapped the Kosher label on the Amphion, too. Rudolph Schildkraut playing in some schrecklichkeit or other. Posters heralded the coming of a female cantor from Abyssinia, a fat tar baby with platyrrhine nose and blubber lips. “There you go. Dig ‘em up out of Africa, Mesopotamia, Tibet, perhaps Alaska, too. Soon the American Indian will be robbed of his ethnologic mystery....”

  Was there ever a people who lived so successfully in the aura of the past? It has been proposed that they try assimilation. No go! Like a cold-water cure for excessive public itch. They don’t want to be assimilated … much too good for that. But it was going on just the same. There was Donald Fleming and his second wife, Rhoda, a comely Jewess from the ranks of the intelligentsia. They were trying it out—this shopworn solution of the Jewish problem. That is, Donald was doing the assimilating and Rhoda was taking the punishment. When Rhoda’s parents came to visit, they stood in a corner modestly, like a brace of portmanteaus, or a pair of inoffensive candlesticks. On these occasions Donald would generally find a pretext to absent himself, claiming an engagement at the Chess Club. More Jews there. One didn’t mind playing chess with them. But living with them? That was another matter.... Not that Donald became an anti-Semite. Oh, no! On the contrary, no one defended the Jew more stoutly than Donald Fleming. He was too stout a defender.

  One suspected that he was a little silly on the subject. After all, the Jew is fairly well able to defend himself. He’s been doing it now for how many hundreds of years. A Gentile is always a mere tyro at the game. Anyhow, when Fleming got up on his hindlegs and began to brag about the Jews he filled one with irritable questions.

  So it went. Five of his friends married to daughters of Israel. All getting along famously. No divorces, no plate-throwing. Why? Apparently their wives weren’t mere bedmates, hash-slin-gers, booby prizes. They discussed things together: books, politics, the marriage question, the miracles of Saint Patrick, chess problems, the hundred and one subjects which the ordinary Gentile usually takes to the saloon or the billiard parlor. These Jewish wives showed no reluctance, no finical squeamishness in making the home usurp the attractiveness of the beer parlor. … Neither did they mess around the house all day and complain of backaches when the husband returned. They went out, and found jobs for themselves, took up plastic dancing, batik work, music lessons, attended free art schools. In other words, they refused to mold themselves into ornaments for hubby to stick in his nose. They lived their own lives, and they fused well.... Take Blanche now. More talent in her than in any of the Jewesses his friends had adopted. What did she do with her gifts? Nothing, absolutely nothing. She knew less and less each day. It never occurred to her to open a score of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Orn-stein, Honegger. They didn’t interest her. She played the same things over and over—the things she had learned at the convent. Technique: perfect. Presentation: according to Hoyle. Ideas: none. Soul: less than none. He had a feeling that the piano was wasted on her; the washboard would serve better. She had all the motions: proper wrist movement, full pauses, good legato— everything but inspiration. If Sister Dorothea had played an arpeggio thus and so, she did likewise.

  He remembered once buying her a ticket to hear Omstein. She came home raving like a Shakespeare of the madhouse. Fragments of conversation recurred to memory.

  “What’s the matter, was he too original?”

  “Original? I call it cheap.”

  “You didn’t like him, then?”

  “He ought to be prohibited from playing anything but his own compositions.”

  “Yes, and I daresay you’d get the censors after him for that.”

  “He’s just a flashy Jew, that’s all. A vaudeville kike.”

  “All right, call him a Jew. He doesn’t mind. But he made you sit up, didn’t he?”

  “He made me furious, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, that’s something. Your playing wouldn’t cause a commotion in an igloo.”

  Perhaps that was unkind, but it was coming to her … and to her god-damned Sister Dorothea!

  Moloch rambled along leisurely, keeping a weather eye open for a clean lunch place, growing more and more intoxicated by his introspections as he penetrated further into the old neighborhood. Whatever became of Eddie Carney and Tom Fowler? And sober-faced Gus Mills? The names evoked recollections: a strip of cobblestoned street (the old cup-shaped cobbles that the trucks rattled over) with a narrow asphalt band along the curb for cyclists. Bob Ramsay in front on a dizzy high-wheeler and Tom Buckley right behind on a classy low “Columbia” leading the pack on their way to the Island of a bright Sunday morning. In the name of the Holy Catholic Church he’d like to know what had become of them all? Sing Sing, or the Supreme Court bench?

  The past rose up warm and misty. How bright and promising the world seemed then! Nothing to do but go out in the street and play; when it grew dark, run upstairs and tackle Hans Christian Andersen. And what a wonderful day Saturday could be! In the morning bustling about, cleaning the silverware and washing the windows for mother. At one o’clock he and Stanley (it was Stasu then) standing on line outside the Novelty, waiting to nab a seat in the gallery for a dime. He could never forget those vaudeville shows, nor that big Hunky, Bob Maloney, the special officer in a Confederate uniform, who stood outside the theater and kept the gang in line. Big square shoulders he had, and cauliflower ears. To look at him, hard as nails; but when he smiled it was all golden. And that heavy rattan he carried! When they went upstairs and waited in the gloom and stench for the orchestra to appear it always seemed an age. There was such a pitch to the gallery; it made him breathless at first. Suddenly Bob Maloney would rap on the gallery rail with that wicked rattan. “Hats off!” he’d bellow … wouldn’t he put the fear of Christ in them!

  He halted in front of a vacant store, arrested by a blatant sign whose ugly letters proclaimed it a rescue mission. He chuckled as he peered through the dirty windowpane and scann
ed the huge letters on a banner over the altar that had been erected in the rear of the shop:

  WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NOT DIE BUT ...

  He gazed fondly at the walls and puzzled over the familiar texts and warnings posted conspicuously for the sinners to heed. He seemed to be searching for one in particular. Yes, there it was, that peaceful admonition: “Don’t spit on the floor.”

  It all came back clearly—the night he and Matt Reardon sailed in for a lark and almost got converted. Almost! If it hadn’t been for an attack of hysterics. He’d say to Matt furtively: “Read that one over there.” And Matt would repeat the words under his breath, adding something vile and nasty. Then Matt: “Look at that one over yonder,” whereupon he (Moloch) would invent some abracadabra to go with the sign…. Suddenly a big bass voice booms out: “Miss Powell, you make ready a song!” (“Make ready to leave,” whispers Matt, bending down and hiding his snoot in his cap.)… “Come now, who’ll testify?” roars the big bass voice again. The voice of a sea lion, the effrontery of a labor leader; great big hairy paws (like a blacksmith’s), a funeral parlor suit and a forehead like Herbert Spencer’s…. “Let us all go down after the meeting and call on our bereaved sister, Mrs. Blatchford. Let us go down together, in a body, after this beautiful hymn number 73—and all take a look at that beautiful face. Come, brothers, let us stand while we sing hymn number 73: ‘Lord, plant my feet on the higher ground.’ As I was saying a moment ago, when I saw that steeplejack climbing up there like a huge spider, painting our new steeple bright and pure for us, the words of this dear old hymn rushed to my lips: ‘Lord, plant my feet on the higher ground.’” The hymn over, a thin squeaky voice from the back pipes up: “I praise God for his savin’ and keepin’ power!” An antiphonal chorus from the four quarters of the room hurls back “Amen! amen! hallelujah!” The walking delegate in the funereal suit booms again: “He purchased you with a price, brother… the price of his own precious blood shed on Calvary Someone else now… someone come. Plunge in! Someone else!" Another voice, timid, quaky: “You know, folks, I’m not much for testifying. You know I generally keep my mouth shut. But there’s one verse very dear to me, very comforting. I believe it’s Colossians Three: ‘Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.’… Just stand still. Just keep quiet. Brothers, sisters—that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever tried. And I never have succeeded. Try it sometime. Get down on your knees, and just try to stay there for ten minutes thinking of him. Try to listen to Him. Let him speak. Don’t you be making suggestions. Listen for that still small voice … just see how hard it is. and try to keep your mouth shut. Let God talk! Give HIM a chance to say something!” (Matt nudges him and points to something directly overhead: “Jesus Loves You.”) He stuffs a handkerchief in his mouth to muffle the convulsive mirth. Again that stentorian appeal: “Sister Powell, you get ready another hymn.” (Matt whispering: “You get ready to be crowned!”)… “Before we take a last look at the face of Sister Blatchford’s dear son, let us sing one more beautiful song, my favorite: ‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’ I guess we all know that by heart, don’t we?” (Matt muttering amiably: “I’ll tell the cock-eyed world we do!”) … “Oh, men, men—if you’re not washed in the blood of the Lamb it won’t matter how many books your name is registered in down here. Don’t put him off. Tomorrow it may be too late. Come to HIM tonight. … All together now: ‘What a friend we have. …’ ” Thus the song and dance continued for an hour or so, until it got time to “go down and take a last look at that beautiful face.” The two of them were in convulsions. The entire congregation—sinners, repentants, Colossians, snot-nosed Pharisees, gay cats and cracked sopranos—stared. Such stares as are worn by the statues of Egypt’s “Petrified City.” But there came an end at last, even as Pontifical Dick exhausted his store of mealy objurgations. The final exhortation came: “Yes, Brother Pritchard, you put out the lights.” …