Throughout this scene, which became increasingly violent and coarse, Vanya sat rigid, her lips sealed, a look of stony impenetrability on her countenance. Now and then, when some particularly vile epithet was hurled in her direction, a shudder went through her. As for Tony Bring, he seemed to have lost his senses. Back and forth he strode, shaking his fist first at Hildred, then at Vanya. The most shocking, virulent obscenity poured from his lips. He cursed them up and down, denounced them in the foulest terms. Through it all Vanya had managed to preserve her Sphinx-like imperturbability. But when, in a final gust of passion, when dancing before her on tiptoes, threatening her, reviling her, spitting at her feet, he shouted “Louse!” she could tolerate no more. Springing to her feet, her eyes twitching like a maniac’s, she returned insult for insult, curse for curse. It ended with hysterical convulsions of grief and rage. Hildred flung herself on the bed and tried to stifle her sobs in the pillow. Her sobs left Tony Bring cold. It’s gone home at last, has it? he thought to himself. Good! Let her lie there and taste some of the agony of life.
After a lull he turned to Vanya, who had by now calmed down a bit, and said in his most conciliatory vein: “Now that the fireworks are over, let’s talk things over sensibly. Let’s see if we can’t understand one another.”
Vanya was pacing to and fro, her eyes still wild, her fingers working frantically. Thin streams of smoke spurted from her nostrils, her bosom was covered with ash. Keen as a blade, venomous, belligerent, she was on fire from tip to toe. What had just transpired was simply a workout for her. She was furious to think that Hildred had succumbed so wretchedly. It was cowardice, sheer, feminine cowardice, and it was disgusting. She was not only ready with her tongue, but with her hands. Let him only try . . . let him only put a little finger on her! She’d break him in half . . . splinter him . . . mangle him.
Asked if she felt like participating, Hildred made no answer; her shoulders shook convulsively, her head sunk a little deeper into the pillow. Clearly then it was between the two of them. And it was clear too that Vanya approved as, with lips grimly compressed and eyes wide and unseeing, she nodded for him to continue.
But from the moment he opened his lips and as if in accompaniment to his words, there began to pass through her head a strange procession of figures—grotesques in wood and ivory, with taut, elongated breasts, their strange limbs embellished by dyes of raw blue and red. One of them, a figure from the Sudan, sat on a tabouret upheld by a cluster of smaller figures. A thin, delicate column shot from the cavity of the thorax to the genitals. But its phenomenal aspect resided rather in an object which elevated itself from the plateau formed by the monster’s lap. In the museum, where she had seen it recently, people scrutinized it minutely, shook their heads, held whispered, animated conversations to one side, their gaze still riveted to the object clasped by the rigid, painted fingers. Bisexual it was—phallus and lingam combined, though to say this was to give nothing of its exotic character. To penetrate its significance one would be obliged to retrace the entire development of the race, to enter not only into the mystic ceremonials of primitive man, but to go back further still, back to the ferocious nuptial orgies of the insect world, world of sexual anomalies, world of lust and terror beyond all power of human conception.
Such were the thoughts that passed through her head as she listened to his words. God knows, his thoughts too were anything but ordinary. They seemed to follow the course of his words like a river canalized by the shoulders of a gorge. The solid, resisting walls were choking the tumultuous stream that rose somewhere far back in the myriad roots of his soul; it was their function, doubtless, to stand thus unyielding, throttling the blind, destructive energism which would otherwise devastate the world and itself come to naught. His thoughts surging forward and upward swirled in vast eddies, rose in dazzling foam and spray to collapse again and be borne along in a lathery chute. The most that could be hoped for in this ceaseless struggle was a triumph of erosion. Thus, confusedly, the conflict shaped itself in his thought. His language was far less complicated. It was like the difference between sound and script in music. What the tongue expressed was but the thin melody which held the extravagant weave of thought and feeling together.
As he went on his voice became more soothing and gentle; he paused now and then, expecting that she would seize the occasion to inject a word, but she remained silent, her hostility falling away more and more. He reminded her briefly of a scene only a few days back when Hildred had locked herself in the little room. What went on in there behind the bolted door? Ah, what a question to ask. As if he could expect them ever to tell. But this much they had admitted—after frightful wrangling, after he had literally extorted it from them—they went in there to kiss each other! Well, no use running on in this vein. Perhaps the best solution was to submit the case to a jury—an impartial tribunal of experts. Let each one choose his man. Let each one tell his own story.
At this point Hildred suddenly came to life.
“You shut your bloody mouth!” he yelled.
“No, leave her be!” said Vanya. “She’s in this just as much as we.”
“She’s out of it, and she’s to keep her mouth shut, I say. Are you willing to agree to my suggestion?” he said, turning his back on Hildred.
It was like the critical moment in a fight, when one of the contestants suddenly softens under a damaging blow. He was for rushing her to her knees, but again Hildred intervened. “She will do no such thing,” she said, rising from the bed with a sort of dying-empress dignity. It was a ridiculous proposal through and through. There were no experts competent to pass judgment. And besides . . .
“You mean to say . . .”
“I mean that no matter what anyone said it would make no difference to me.”
“Even . . .”
“Even if the whole world agreed . . .”
“Agreed that what?”
“That she was queer . . . invert, pervert, whatever you like. No matter what they said I would never desert her. . . . Is that clear?”
It was quite enough. There comes a stage when the touch of reality becomes so sharp that one is no longer an individual harassed by circumstances, but a living being cut into slices. . . . That which a moment ago might have seemed like a living planet, a throb of splendor in a universe of night, becomes of a sudden a dead thing like the moon burning with fire of ice. In such moments all things are made clear—the meaning of dreams, the wisdom that precedes birth, the survival of faith, the stupidity of being a god, etc., etc.
Part 5
1
TONY BRING sat in the dark with his hands buried in his overcoat pockets, the collar turned up, his hat falling over his eyes. The place was cold and damp; it was like sitting in a tomb without even a taper burning. A fetid odor seeped from the walls—a sweet, sickening stench, full of leprosy. Thoughts gurgled through his brain like the music of the drains in Vanya’s room. He thought about his thoughts as if they were smears under a lens.
The bell rang. Let it ring, he thought, I’m not here. There was a rap at the window, followed by a tattoo. He got up and pulled the curtain aside. His friend Dredge stood there grinning. He went through the lower hall and swung open the big gate. Dredge was still grinning.
“What are you doing with yourself in the dark?” asked Dredge.
“I was thinking, that’s all.”
“Thinking?”
“Yeah, don’t you think sometimes?”
“Do you have to sit in the dark to think?”
He lit a candle while Dredge deposited himself in the most comfortable-looking seat and smiled his usual weak, affable smile. It was Dredge’s twenty-eighth birthday and he had had a drink or two in his room before stopping by. “You know,” he said, “people go crazy from sitting around in the dark like this. I’ll tell you what, you come over to my joint and have a little snifter with me. Then we’ll go out and celebrate.”
A LITTLE later they were sitting in Paulino’s in the Village. The pla
ce was upside down. Everybody scrooched. A swell fraternity: gamblers, plainclothesmen, thugs, federal agents, big stews from the big papers, vaudeville teams, wisecracking Jews, faggots with dirty mouths, chorus girls, college boys with the signs of the zodiac stenciled on their slickers. . . . A free bottle of wine stood on every table. While they ate a crowd gathered in the hallway waiting to grab the vacated seats.
When they staggered out they had a beautiful edge on. As they walked down Sixth Avenue they were followed by an undersized pimp who insisted on handing them cards while he described more or less graphically the various women at his disposal. Next to a cigar store there was a dance hall. It was swamped. Booze again . . . vile, stinking booze. Where did it all come from? New York was just one big river of booze.
As they were leaning against the wall with ginger ale bottles in their hands suddenly they heard a scream and a hysterical young wench rushed out of the lavatory saying that she had been assaulted. A shot was fired, tables knocked over. In a jiffy, almost as if it were a Mack Sennett comedy, the cops appeared. They swarmed over the place, using their clubs liberally. They got hold of the young woman and bundled her out. And then the music started up and the waiters began mopping the floor. Nobody could say who had pulled the gun. Nobody seemed to want to know. Time to dance. Time to take another swig. Dredge looked around for a partner. All taken. It was like a bargain sale. They waited for the next dance. All taken. . . .
Outside the fellow with the cards was laying for them. He shook his head disparagingly. “Come with me,” he urged. “Fifty nifty gals . . . and what I mean, they’re nifty!”
“Tomorrow,” said Dredge.
They ambled leisurely through the quaint old streets. The names of the dives were promising, but that was about all one could say for them. It was a bohemia without bohemians. The villainy, the vice, the joy, the misery—all was fictitious.
“I’m sick of the Village,” said Dredge. He had been saying this for years.
Just then a door opened and they caught sight of a bar. They walked in without ceremony. It was one of those joints which are open to any and every one, from the President on down. Mahogany bar, brass footrails, soaped mirrors, calendars, photographs of pugilists and soubrettes clipped from the Police Gazette. The only innovation was the presence of the other sex. In the old days the female element kept to the back room. They weren’t allowed to stand at the bar telling dirty stories or bragging about the number of men they had slept with. Nor did they need to be dragged out by a boat hook when the place closed. No, in the old days the women of the street sometimes conducted themselves like ladies, at least they tried to; the new age made it compulsive for the ladies to conduct themselves like whores.
At any rate, this was the conclusion the two of them came to while indulging in a little quiet drinking. They discussed the situation backward and forward. They were annoyed that they should be obliged to rub shoulders with these respectable eighteen-year-old prostitutes.
They were walking toward Fifth Avenue, their way taking them through Washington Square, deserted now and silent. Near the arch they paused to void a little sentimentality. Once there was a charm to New York—the Haymarket, Huber’s Museum, Tom Sharkey’s, the German Village, and there was Barnum and Thomas Paine and O. Henry. . . . Gone all that. Skyscrapers now . . . kikes, flappers, automats. Dredge opened up about the Luneta in Manila. A thousand times better off there, or in Nagasaki, where there were certain houses with red lights over the door and beautiful dolls with cherry-ripe lips and almond eyes. . . .
A cab pulled up to the curb. The driver leaned out and beckoned to them. Would they like to know of a nice, quiet, refined place, etc.? To hear his dulcimer notes one would imagine that he had in mind a paradise of houris and musk.
Dredge was skeptical—it sounded too good, too much like the days when the Guadalquivir was ashimmer, etc.
“Hell,” said the driver, “you don’t want to go to some dive and get cracked over the bean, do you?” This by way of clinching the argument. “Get in,” he purred, “and if you don’t like it you can beat it. I wouldn’t steer you to no gyp joint.”
They no sooner got in than he started off hell-bent for election. “You’ll like it all right,” he shouted through the window.
The tone in which he flung this out irritated Dredge. “We don’t have to like it,” he shot back.
“Shut up!” said Tony Bring. “Don’t start an argument with him. Let’s see where he’s taking us.”
Somewhere in the 40s they rolled up in front of an imposing-looking office building. The entrance was barred by a folding gate. In the hallway stood a cop talking to the elevator boy. The five of them bundled into the elevator. As they ascended, the elevator boy whistled. He had a sallow, seamy face, the type one sees standing at the gallery entrance of burlesque theaters on a cold, rainy night.
There was a sprinkle of tinkling lights, carpets soft as velvet, doves glittering with sequins, their backs cool as alabaster, their vermilion lips trembling like wavelets. From a hidden alcove, subdued strains that made their limbs melt. An odor of sweetened bodies, heavy languor of roses, flurry of powdered limbs, goldfish dozing in tepid bowls. The door closed and the elevator dropped out of sight. They looked at each other helplessly. Trapped. Sorcerized. Locked in with the mystic bride.
There was someone at their elbow, pattering away in a suave, seductive tongue. Beside him stood the taxi driver, his hand outstretched. Tony Bring nudged his companion. “He wants you to slip him something.”
“But I did,” said Dredge.
“Well, give him some more then.”
“For what?”
“For bringing us to such a nice, quiet, refined place.”
THE GREEK who took them in tow proved to be a polite, smooth-faced assassin. He said yes to everything. His hands were pale and velvety and he had deep-set, roving eyes that glittered like agates. At the cloakroom they glanced around timidly. Gorgeous butterflies, dragging their cocoons, sailed by or paused to rest their wings, drugged by their own eroticism. In their passage they scattered a shower of petals and chatter thin as gauze.
The table to which they were conducted rose up like a drunken ship in a mist of smoking wine. Sparkle of silver and splintered crystal dissolving in fires of dust. Letters of pitch rising an inch thick from the menus. . . . The refinement of it made them shudder.
Hardly had they seated themselves when a pair of doves fluttered over. Dredge made an abortive effort to rise while Tony Bring rubbed his hand over his beard meditatively and glanced at his frazzled shirt in the mirror beside him. The introductions were brief and pleasant. The Greek rubbed his smooth, velvety hands. His tongue moved smoothly between his smooth white teeth. Everything smooth as a bright new scabbard.
Miss Lopez, of Spanish blood and somewhat oversexed, inquired at once if they weren’t thirsty. She asked it in a parched voice, as if the past were a monsoon and her life a desert. The other, Miss St. Clair, expressed herself as just dying to dance. She got hold of Dredge and, in her refined way, dragged him to the floor for a workout. Miss Lopez employed a different strategy. She had the trick of appearing to swoon in one’s arms.
They were scarcely seated when the orchestra struck up again, whereupon Miss Lopez became electrified. It was one of those specialty numbers which provide an opportunity for the singer to circulate from table to table and pour out her heart as the music bursts open the windows of her soul. Miss Lopez paused just long enough at each table to touch the pocketbook of the one on whom she fastened her drowning eyes, then stuffing the money in her bosom she gave a gratuitous wriggle or two and moved on—all without interruption, while the musicians repeated the chorus of the song over and over. It was a song about love. . . . “I love you . . . I love you . . .” There seemed to be scarcely any other words to it. The performance was concluded in front of the clover club cocktails which Dredge had ordered. As she imparted to the worn words a last lingering shred of tenderness, she sank to her seat like a
n angel breathing her last.
By now the girls had become extraordinarily thirsty. They asked for Sauternes, and when they had taken a few sips they excused themselves and fluttered away.
“Better count your dough,” said Tony Bring.
Dredge pulled out his wad. There was thirty-seven dollars.
“Is that all you’ve got?” said Tony Bring.
“Is that all?” Dredge did his best to look amazed.
“Listen, Dredge, pull yourself together. This is a nice, refined place. . . .”
Dredge retreated behind his usual weak, amiable smile. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said, “and what’s more I don’t care. I’ve been thrown out of better places than this. Forget about it!”
But Tony Bring couldn’t forget—not all at once, at any rate. He was thinking of the taxi driver’s words . . . and then that smooth-faced assassin with the velvety paws!
When the girls returned they remarked immediately that the boys looked pensive. Miss Lopez leaned on Tony Bring’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Her hand burned right through his trousers. “Just one little kiss,” she whispered, and, lying back in his arms, she pulled his head down, fastened her warm lips to his mouth, and hung there. The lights grew dim and as the first muted notes of “The Kashmiri Song” throbbed in their ears she clung to him rapturously. All about them were panting nymphs expiring in the arms of their partners. It was like a warm night in spring below the Himalayas when the pigeons begin to rut, when among the wet leaves of the forest there begins a rustling and murmuring, a bursting of fragrant buds, an imperceptible movement and stir that thickens the blood.