Through a Mythos Darkly

by Glynn Owen Barrass

  Next came the newsreel. First came a story of an Indian man in diapers who had decided to stop eating, protesting the mistreatment of the lower castes. Then there was a horrific picture of mass book burnings in Germany. This upset Tru considerably as his lifelong goal was to be a writer. The film showed a little man with a toothbrush mustache, and the men behind us said something we did not understand, but sounded very hateful. Tru and I agreed with them. A man named Karl Jansky had detected radio waves from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The last item was about the great destruction on the main island of Japan earlier this year. Originally thought to have been caused by an earthquake, the deaths were attributed to a large green dinosaur which, in addition to its great size, had the ability to breathe fire. The lack of international concern and aid for this disaster had led the Japanese Empire to withdraw from the League of Nations. The narrator speculated if the dinosaur might be of the same species that had been seen in Loch Ness, Scotland, at the beginning of May.

  The Island of Lost Souls scared the beans out of us. It takes place on a Pacific island, where a shipwrecked American meets Dr. Moreau. Moreau is interested in speeding up evolution by turning animals into people through gruesome surgeries. He wants to mate his cat-woman Lota to the American, but his fiancée shows up. I thought the cat-woman was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Bela Lugosi led the animal people as the Sayer of the Law. In the end the animal-men rush into Dr. Moreau’s surgery, the House of Pain, calling out “Knives! Knives!” and we hear the horrible screams of Dr. Moreau. The second feature was Deluge, a movie showing New York being destroyed by a great tidal wave. The problem had likewise begun in the Pacific. Tru remarked that there seemed to be a lot of problems that came from the Pacific. After the show we walked back to our hotel. Our spirits were low because we knew after tomorrow Amasa was going to turn Tru over to his mom and his new Cuban father. Amasa has told us to eat in the hotel restaurant and charge the bill to our room.

  We had a suite at the New Yorker Hotel. The dining lounge was on the 39th floor, which would make it thirty-six floors higher than the courthouse in Monroeville. The view was spectacular. To the north we could see the Chrysler Building and due east was the Empire State Building. Tru had read everything he could about the building, of course. His great ambition was to get his hair cut there tomorrow. The hotel had a forty-two seat barbershop, making it the biggest in the world. The hotel stood close to Madison Square Garden, which to my surprise was not a garden but an arena. The marquee promised that tomorrow night, “King Kong the Eighth Wonder of the World”, would be shown. Both Tru and I had begged Amasa to take us, but he had seemed very angry at the idea. My father was seldom angry or withdrawn and was (for a lawyer) one of the kindest of men. This trip had brought out an entirely new side of my father, a dark and mysterious side, which was not to my liking.

  After dinner we were forbidden to leave the hotel as we were told that New York could be more dangerous than Monroeville. We had not brought swimming gear, and Amasa had explained that our natural mode of dress would not be welcomed at the world’s largest indoor swimming pool. We resolved to spend the early part of the evening riding up and down in the elevators. We were on our second trip when we encountered the man with the pigeon. He was 77 years old; we knew this because his picture had been on Time magazine two years earlier. It was the first magazine I had read (with some help from my father) cover-to-cover. His name was Nikola Tesla, and he was a genius. He had invented electricity, we thought. He was speaking to the pigeon in a deep and loving tone in a language I did not know. It was a beautiful white bird with light gray tips. Another man was with him, an effeminate man with a pretend German accent.

  Tru started with eyes as big as dinner plates. Finally he asked, “Are you Mr. Tesla?”

  The other man answered. “Ja. He is Tesla and my name is George Sylvester Viereck. And who are you little boy?”

  Tru introduced himself.

  “I like little boys,” said Herr Viereck. “Do you like vampires, little boy?”

  “I saw Dracula at the picture show in Birmingham.”

  “Quite, so. I wrote a novel about vampires long before you were born. It is called The House of the Vampire. You must read it some day.”

  “I am sure I will. I love to read and write.” Tru showed off his ever-present tablet.

  Tesla only seemed to have noticed the exchange when Tru showed off his tablet. His English had almost no accent. “And you are perhaps his sister?”

  “No, Sir. I am his neighbor. My name is Harper.”

  “Like David, who was the harper for Saul.”

  “Yes, Sir. That was what my father had in mind. I have never seen a pet pigeon before.”

  “Oh,” said Tesla, “She is more than a pet to me. I fed pigeons for many years, and then one day I met her. Yes, I love this pigeon, I love her as a man loves a woman, and she loves me. There is nothing more innocent than a bird. I hope that you will remember that all your life, little girl. ”

  “I’ll remember meeting a real author all my life,” said Tru.

  The elevator rose to the 33rd floor.

  Tesla said, “Do you like amazing things? Come with us. I will show something amazing.”

  His apartment was small and bad smelling. Only two rooms. I thought geniuses had more than that, but I was unsure what sort of wages geniuses might make. Jim told me often he was a genius, so I was naturally curious on this point. Trunks of all sizes were stacked around the walls, and there were only three chairs. The pigeon flew to a much guano-stained trunk, the highest point in the room. Tesla went into the bedroom and returned with an odd-looking device. It was a small steel box from which protruded a cylinder wrapped in tiny red wires. At the top of the cylinder was a small brass knob. Herr Viereck was all smiles; he was in on the mystery and had that smile that grown folk have when they are about to show off some special knowledge that belongs to their state. Mr. Tesla sat his device on a small table and plugged it in. He then went to the lamp by his bed in the other room and unscrewed two bulbs. He told us to stand back. He pulled the white thread that served as the off switch to his overhead light. The pigeon gave an alarmed sound. Then he flicked a little switch on the side of his device. Something whirred inside of it and the air smelled of lightning before a thunderstorm.

  Then it happened!

  Lightning bolts so bright white that they seemed blue leapt out of the knob in all sorts of crazy directions. The air sizzled with the sound of sparks. Then as though this were not the miracle of the ages, Tesla held out the bulbs in his bare hands and they glowed!

  I am sure that the demonstration lasted only seconds but, for me, time stopped. Tesla amazed us then with stories about a giant tower he had built in Colorado Springs. He told us how he had made a system that could have given free power to everyone in the world, but the financers had stopped him. He talked about ripping a contract from Westinghouse to shreds. It could have made him rich as Rockefeller, but he wanted power to be free.

  “And you, little lady. This is the best news for you. You see when power is free women’s servitude to men will end and women will rule the world!”

  Tru had wandered into the bedroom and found a strange-looking gun. He brought it out and held it up as a question-gesture.

  Tesla almost jumped. “Put that down, little boy. It is not a toy. That is my particle beam gun. You could kill us all.”

  Viereck said, “If you sold that gun to Hitler, he could make the world you want.”

  “We have been over this George. You may be the greatest living poet in the world, but your politics are atrocious. Hitler has some good ideas, but not good enough. Your friend Crowley wanted me to sell it to the King.”

  I knew that Amasa had many bad things to say about Hitler, and I hadn’t liked the way he looked in the newsreels. I suddenly didn’t like this man who wrote about Vampires. “Mr. Tesla, Mr. Viereck. It is getting late. I am sure my father would prefer that we went to our room now.”
r />   “Of course, little lady. Perhaps during your stay you will come again,” said Tesla.

  “Are you going to see King Kong at the Square Garden tomorrow night?” asked Herr Viereck.

  Before I could kick him, Tru said, “No, sir. Mr. Lee says we are not to go. He is going, but he said it might be too exciting for us.”

  “Oh but this is terrible. I am going. Perhaps I can take you and the young lady on the sly.”

  “Oh Mr. Viereck, that would be the most wonderful thing of all! Are you really the world’s greatest living poet?”

  “Ja, it is true what Tesla says. I am the world’s greatest living poet.”

  As we left room 3327 I told Tru, “Why don’t you ever show any sense and shut up? We don’t know anything about this Mr. Viereck and anybody that likes Hitler is most likely not going to be favorably viewed by Amasa.”

  “Oh have a little sense of adventure, Nell. It is very exciting to meet a real writer. He told me that in his book boy vampires kiss boys.”

  “That sounds nasty to me,” I said with such grave dignity as I could muster.

  “I think it sounds exciting,” said Tru. “And I think tomorrow night when we see King Kong will be the most exciting night of our lives.”

  Even when he later wrote In Cold Blood, Tru was to have a gift of understatement.

  The next day we had a brief breakfast with Amasa, who was going to be arranging some important business with Mr. Whateley. We were given a sufficient allocation to visit the Metropolitan Museum and eat some outlandish dish called pizza. We were gravely warned not to enter Central Park because of the Hoovertown there. As we made our way amidst the great storm of humanity, Tru asked me the forbidden question: what was the story of Mr. Nathan’s brother, whom the local Monrovians called “Boo?”

  “I don’t rightly know the whole story. I know that he is the elder twin of Mr. Nathan, and he has been kept out of the state asylum for some years by the power of Whateley money.”

  “How does Mr. Whateley make his money?” asked Tru. Tru, despite his heritage, was never truly Southern. We are not a people of direct inquiry on sunlit streets, but prefer the veiled remark at twilight as the lightning bugs begin their dance or heat lightning shimmers in the west.

  “Mr. Whateley deals in cotton,” I told him, “which means he has money and we do not and of what you know nothing you must not speak.” I had asked Amasa once if we were poor and was surprised that he answered, “Yes.”

  I told Tru that I would tell him all I knew of Boo’s saga, if he would purchase me a Three Musketeers candy bar, which in those days consisted of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry nougat. This confectionary homage to the older Alexandre Dumas having been proffered, I explained to Tru that the Whateley twins were well-established adolescents by the time they had come to our dusty town. Arthur stood a head taller than Nathan; in fact he was the tallest man in Monroe County. Unlike his more respectable brother, Arthur had frizzy kinky hair and somewhat yellowish skin that produced the rumor that, like Lincoln, he was half-Negro. The town’s people in their charity called him “Lavinny’s black brat.” John Whateley was much older than the slatternly Lavinia and local gossips claimed he was the boy’s grandfather. Neither boy attended the local high school, nor, like their parents for the most part, of the social scene, such as it was. It was widely rumored that Nathan had gotten a girl in trouble in Thomasville, but no cotton came of the planting as they say.

  Arthur’s life was more troubled. He had taken a shine to a white trash girl named Mayella Bishop. They had planned to run and get hitched in Mexico. This exotic scheme ended one May Eve. When a tearful Mayella had turned up at the courthouse with torn and bloody clothes and quite out of her mind, her father suggested that his daughter was a victim of “nigger rape,” remanifesting the rumors of Arthur’s dark parentage. Dr. Adams inspected the girl and pronounced her intact, although she never did regain her mind. What had transpired was never discovered, but the population began to fear the tall gangly Arthur and his goatish smell.

  Time came around and Mr. Whateley sent his boys off east to some business school, no doubt of high repute. Arthur returned after a semester claiming that he didn’t want to take part in old man Whateley’s business. He hung around his house for some weeks, until one day Lavinia had run screaming out of the Whateley home. It seems that Arthur had been repairing an ancient black leather book of his father’s with paste and scissors. As John walked past his son, Arthur had sunk the scissors into his thigh. The doctor came soon. No charges were ever filed, but Arthur was never seen on the streets of Monroeville again. Some said he fled. Shortly after the incident, John Whateley bought an old plantation house near Finch’s Landing where there were stretches of marshland that one instinctively disliked, and indeed almost feared at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bullfrogs. Many people believed that Arthur moved into that gloomy old house. John Whateley began a long decline after the stabbing. The doctor told Amasa one night while they were passing around stories like moonshine that he suspected that old man had the cancer. He died two years later and Nathan came back to care for his mother and (presumably) Arthur as well.

  Various ghoulish tales floated around the figure of Boo, if he still lived. Some people claimed that the Whateley money was being drained away feeding him large amounts of cattle out at the old house. Others claimed that New Orleans voodoo Negroes came up to visit Arthur on Halloween. Others blamed him for various natural phenomena—early frost, dry rot, impotence.

  By the time I had told this story to Tru we had reached the Metropolitan, and I wanted to see the Egyptian displays first because Jim was fascinated by the Egyptians, whom he told me had created toilet paper. Tru had a fascination for costumes.

  After several hours, our Alabama brains drunk on visual culture, we became aware of a great emptiness in our bellies. New York, unlike Monroeville, is full of places to eat and we purchased slices of pizza in front of Tiffany’s. During our lunch at Tiffany’s, while our palate was hypnotized by garlic and cheese and our eyes were mesmerized by a window full of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, the voice of my father and Nathan Whateley shocked us with the familiar. Hearing them arguing as they sauntered down Fifth Avenue was as astonishing as hearing a school bell while one was in fairyland.

  Mr. Nathan said, “I don’t want your opinion, Mr. Lee. The harsh light of capitalism is the logical way to end far too many years of the darkling nigromancy of the Whateleys. This deal is as good as the one my foolish ancestor signed.”

  “Nathan, I know you have every reason to hate your brother, but darkness is sweet for the misshapen, the old, the deformed. And the haunted. It gives them a beneficence that the electric light or the harsh sun can not.”

  Tru and I stood still as statues as they passed.

  Mr. Viereck arrived in front of the New Yorker hotel at seven. Amasa had left and we had promised him that we would stay out of trouble. Mr. Viereck drove a new car, longer and more elegant than anything that would be seen in Monroe County until after the war. It was a deep crimson in color, memory has left me unsure but I think it was a Packard Super 8. He was full of all sorts of strange and wondrous information. He pointed out the traffic lights the city had installed three years before. He explained the subways to us—we had been too intimidated to venture below ground. Mostly he explained Kong to us. “According to the exhibitor, Kong was captured in the Fengshyang region of China. The locals called him “Yeren” or wildman, and the name “Kong” was apparently given to him by Norwegian sailors that transported him to the United States. He seemed to be a large specimen of Gigantopithecus blacki, a species formerly thought extinct.

  As I remarked, Madison Square Garden proved not to be a garden at all, but rather a large arena. Tru and I were beginning to understand that Yankees were much like Humpty-Dumpty and made words mean whatever they wanted them to mean. The
smell of so many humans gathered together was nauseating. I had smelled the human stain before in the Courthouse and I have never come to like it. Tru said that tragedy begins when enough humans walk into a room that they change from persons to people. We sat near the middle of the people mass, a small man talked into a microphone before a giant red curtain. Reporters crowded the front and pictures were being flashed which added to the smell, as well as the omnipresent tobacco. In the North, everyone smokes, but few people dip. We could not hear all the man was saying, “…eighth wonder of the world. Darwin’s Missing Link…origin of myths of giants and trolls…Kong is a prehistoric type of ape, neither beast nor man. Strong smell of the Yeren or Skunk Ape, ladies may wish to cover their noses … without further ado … ”

  The curtain rose. Men screamed. Women fainted. Photographers exploded flash powder and I remembered where I had smelled the smell before. It was the faint evil stench that came from the Whateley porch. That summer two years ago when Tru and Jim and I were using a tire as a chariot and they had rolled me past the street and up unto that outer gateway of Hell.

  Within the cage sat Boo Whateley. Surely no ape, prehistoric or otherwise. He had grown, it was later measured, to thirty-six feet. Above the waist he was semi-human, though his chest had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, he was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. His legs were thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-gray tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to Earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of the giant dinosaur we had seen the day before in the newsreel.