Outside the bohemian joints stood ridiculous figures buried in ridiculous costumes. How should one suspect that the wretch one brushed against in the doorway would be only too glad to dispose of a corpse for a five-spot, that the first female one encountered harbored in her body the active germs of all the venereal woes, or that the suave gentleman with the cauliflower ear, who escorted you to a table, was a Borgia raised to the nth degree? Behind the velvet there might be enough gats to decimate an army corps.
Not far from Jefferson Market he came upon a modest three-story building; it was entirely dark except for a gleam no bigger than a knife blade coming from the ventilators in the basement windows. He stood before a heavy iron gate and rang the bell. The proprietor himself came to the door, peered through the grating, and after a nod of recognition turned on a pink light in the vestibule and unbarred the gate.
The place was jammed. It was always jammed. In the rear of the basement was the kitchen, in the front a bar about the size of a coffin. A genial buzz of voices greeted his ears; the faces were cheery and the beverages looked colorful and inviting. He stood a moment at the threshold, soaking up the warm, liquid glow of the room. They were standing three deep at the bar, the women outnumbering the men. Everyone seemed to be gay and tipsy. A woman was scratching her behind; she saw him look at her but it made no difference. It was her behind and she had a right to scratch it, since it needed to be scratched. A sort of proclamation of emancipation. . . .
As he was about to ascend the stairs leading to the dining room a tall, well-proportioned female, lit up like an ocean liner, started waddling down. She smiled heavily and gave a signal to stand clear. Her dress was high at the bottom and low at the top; she kept hitching it up as if she feared she would trip. Slowly and cautiously she lowered herself—like a grand piano. And all the while she smiled, as people smile when they’re paralyzed. He stared straight into her eyes, and then a little lower, at the expanse of flesh between her knees and her waist. It was solid, olive meat polished here and there by glowing patches of shadow. He glanced from her thighs to her face and back again. She raised her skirt a little higher; her grin spread wider. She was ages hoisting herself down. She wasn’t just lit up—she was fumigated.
“Have a drink?” she said, soon as she realized she had hit the bottom. He tried to refuse politely. “Oh, come on . . . have one!” she said, and he felt her thigh pressing against him.
“All right,” he said, “but just one.”
“Hell no, one won’t do you any good. Let’s have a flock of them. I’m sitting upstairs with a bunch of old hens. We’re having a regular old hen party . . . ain’t that fierce?”
“Yeah, fierce!” he said.
“Say, I don’t look like an old hen, do I?” She squeezed his arm in her painfully playful way. “Tell me,” she repeated, “do I look like an old hen to you?”
“I wouldn’t say you did . . . except for the feathers.”
“Feathers? What feathers? Say, you’re full of feathers yourself.” With this she gave a lurch that nearly tipped him over.
They ordered martinis. She insisted on paying. The woman always pays. He looked at her dumbly and wondered where she was putting it all. The room was spinning; he had to watch her mouth to get what she was saying. The voices came to him in a confused blur splintered now and again by the staccato shouts of the waiters. They were lapping it up like flies at the bar. There was no need to hold himself erect; everyone leaned against everyone else. He was not so befuddled, however, but that he could tell whose hand it was pressing against his thigh. It was a hot, heavy hand, and every once in a while it got spasms or something. When he shifted a bit he felt her legs moving in and squeezing hard.
“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.
She grinned and her legs twitched some more. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and taking him by the hand she led him toward the stairs. “Jesus, your hand’s cold,” she said. “Feel me . . . I’m hot as hell.”
The idea of going upstairs to join a bunch of old hens didn’t appeal to him at all. He tried to pull away from her. “Come on,” she whispered. “I know what I’m doing.” When they got to the second landing she stopped short. He saw a pink light over the door at the end of the hall. She had her hand over his mouth and was pressing heavily with her drunken weight. He raised his eyebrows questioningly toward the pink light over the door while she wagged her head from side to side like an automaton. Suddenly, chewing her lower lip, she gripped him tight. What the hell! he said to himself, feeling more and more like a pile of wet sand. The next moment he felt her lips fastened to his ear, her breath scorching. “Do it here,” she murmured as she pressed him against the banister and with a convulsive, shuddering movement lifted her dress.
HE DIDN’T know where he was walking, only that it was somewhere uptown. He was famished and his head was still cloudy. But the frost soothed like an ice pack. There were a million lights—they dazzled and blinded him. They were little and then they grew big and swooped down on him. The colors were wild and dangerous. They rushed up on him like a flock of semaphores.
A sheet of ice, no thicker than the band of a ring, covered the asphalt. It was a mirror broken into an ocean of light waves, a mirror in which all the colors of the rainbow flashed and danced. A theater loomed up; the lobby had vertigo. It was not a lobby but a huge illuminated funnel revolving at high speed; into this dizzy, crystal maze long queues advanced with an undulating motion, like gigantic waves flinging their plumed crests against the shore of an inlet. With each smashing assault they eddied back in a swift-rushing vortex, were reabsorbed and became another column which in turn lifted its vibrant, hissing mass and broke in swirling cubes of light. . . . At a drugstore he saw a row of telephone booths in the window. The booths were put there to make people telephone. “I want to speak to Hildred,” he said, when they had connected him with the Caravan. “She’s not here,” came a gruff voice. Bang! The receiver clicked like an automatic. He jiggled the hook. “Hello! Hello!” There came to his ears the hum of far-off planetary orbs rolling through ethereally cushioned space. It’s no use, he said to himself, we’re traveling in different orbits. The world was simply a field of blind energy in which microcosm and macrocosm moved according to the caprice of a demented monarch.
By the time he reached Times Square he was drunk with well-being. He felt the ebb and flow of bright, liquid blood in his veins. With trip-hammer rhythm it rose and fell, dilated his heart, bathed his vision, surged through his pulsing limbs. Bright, red, liquid blood: in a state of euphoria it made men wise, lucid, sane; diluted it produced flaccidity, neuroticism, despair, and melancholy; clotted it gave the spangled phenomena of solipsism, the terrors of epilepsy and chorea, the hierarchies of caste, the unfathomable magnitudes of dementia. In a single red corpuscle were sufficient enigmas to confound all the colleges of science. In blood were men born and in blood they died. Blood was potent, fecund, magical. Blood was an ecstasy of pain and beauty, a miracle of creative destruction, a particle of the divine essence, perhaps the essence itself. Where blood flowed life ran strong. Where there was song there was blood, and where there was worship there was blood. There was blood in the sunset, in the flowers of the field, in the eyes of maniacs and prophets, in the fire of precious gems. Everywhere where there was life and song and drunkenness and worship and triumph there was blood.
In this state of bloody exuberance he took a stand across the street from the Caravan. It was about midnight. Groups of idlers, attracted by the bursts of revelry escaping from the partially opened windows, clung to the railing in front of the establishment. Presently he was hanging on the railing himself. The privilege of enjoying this spectacle from the outside gave him a strange exhilaration.
Whenever Hildred brought to light an interesting personality she would escort him to a little niche in the corner near the window. Here, with elbows planted well forward, she would sit and stare admiringly into the eyes of the one who had for the moment capti
vated her. If, as had happened before, she averted her gaze for an instant and allowed her glance to stray through the window, lighting with a rapt, unseeing expression on the figures huddled at the railing, Tony Bring would lean forward involuntarily and wait with drunken heart to detect a gleam of recognition in her luminous eyes.
But tonight, this niche in which Hildred, like a patron saint, was accustomed to sit enshrined was vacant. He went inside and ordered food. There was a roach in the food but he was too hungry to wait for another order. Presently Earl Biggers came along, his massive form wedging through the tables like a piece of granite slipping down a mountainside. With him was a coarse-looking woman who posed as a French vedette. He recognized her immediately from the description Hildred had once given him. As Hildred said, there was a certain something about the mouth and eyes which, in spite of the woman’s coarseness, made her attractive. It was common knowledge that she had a passion for robust, athletic males. She had also the foulest tongue of any woman on the American stage—a compliment of the first magnitude considering the competition to which she was subjected.
He watched intently as she trained her large, wicked eyes on the assembly. One could hardly call them eyes, since they were not so much instruments for perceiving objects as huge, revolving drums of light which, skillfully directed, threw an argent flood over the frieze of faces. If one of the loose remarks which were constantly passing her lips awakened a response her nostrils dilated and quivered, precisely like a mare’s in heat.
Someone showed her a book. “I read it,” she said, and the enamel of her teeth gleamed lasciviously.
“Did you like it?” she was asked.
“Did I like it? Say, when I got through with that book I was playing with myself.”
Earl Biggers was blushing. “You’re a darling,” she said. “You’re so big and healthy you’re going to spoil if you don’t do something about it,” and she squeezed his legs under the table.
At this moment a rather notorious female with a monocle in her eye walked in. Biggers pointed her out as the mistress of a prominent Broadway actress.
“Is that so?” she blurted out, loud enough for all to hear. “Say, I’d like to meet that dame. That’s one thing I haven’t tried yet.”
The one to whom this remark had been obliquely directed, far from considering herself insulted, commenced thereupon to preen herself. Tony Bring looked at the cockroach he had laid to one side. He lost his appetite.
HILDRED WAS already undressed when he walked in. Her face was cold-creamed and there was a cigarette dangling from her lips.
“Where have you been?” she asked. She seemed upset.
Before he had time to answer, she added: “God, I don’t know what to do. . . . Vanya’s disappeared!”
“That’s wonderful,” he said. “I hope she’s drowned herself. . . . And you,” he added, “do you know what I think about you? I think you’re crazy. I think if I had any sense I ought to strap you down and beat the piss out of you. I think I’m crazy, too, for tolerating all that I have. I swear to Christ if that woman appears again I’ll mutilate her. And I’ll fix you, too, mark my words. You’ve been driving me nuts with your goddamned Vanya this and Vanya that. Vanya be damned! She’s disappeared, you say? Good. I hope she’s croaked. I hope they don’t even find a toenail. I hope she’s stuck in a sewer and her body full of rats. I wouldn’t care if all New York got poisoned so long as she’s out of the way and done for. . . .”
6
YES, SHE had disappeared. As completely as if the earth had opened up and swallowed her. Hardly had the news gone around when it was announced that she was in Taos, but this was immediately contradicted by a rumor that she had been seen in an opium dive on Pell Street. Then, one day, a letter arrived. “Dear Hildred,” it ran. “I am in the psychopathic ward here. One of the nurses has been kind enough to smuggle this out for me. Please come immediately—I’ll go crazy if they keep me here another day. The nurse says that I will be released if someone appears to vouch for my conduct. Bring some clothes with you—something feminine.”
This missive reached Hildred at the Caravan. Immediately she took one of the girls aside and borrowed from her a suit and hat. In the dressing room she removed the Vaseline from her eyelids and the heavy strokes of soot from her eyebrows and the alizarin from her lips and the green layer of powder from her cheeks. Then she hurried out and bought a pair of silk hose and bloomers.
Somewhat more conventionally garbed than usual, she presented herself at the hospital. Dr. Titsworth, whom she was instructed to see, was like most public officials engaged. An elderly woman who appeared to be his secretary bustled to and fro with corpselike gravity. She had a high stomach over which she peered through magnifying glasses. Hildred gave her the once-over and turned her back on her.
The Under Secretary of the Insane appeared.
“You wished to see Dr. Titsworth?”
Hildred nodded.
“About what, please?”
“I’ll tell that to him.”
“But he’s engaged just at present.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
She was sitting on a hard, shiny bench. It was a tremendous barren hall with reformatory windows. She was getting hysterical looking at the bare walls; she was thinking what a place Vanya would make of it if they gave her a free hand. She hated the stained-glass windows: they reminded her of churches and toilets.
Presently the grand mogul was ushered in. He had the skull of a Caesar and the snout of a Czar. He extended his hand; it was like a piece of cold steak. They sat down and Hildred explained her presence, quite calmly and briefly. While she talked he drummed with his long, tapering fingers on the arm of the chair.
“What right have you to demand her release?” he asked.
Hildred replied that she was her legal guardian.
“Ah, I see! And you are how old, may I ask?” His tiny, gimlet eyes bored clean through her. It was an expression he had learned to assume in the presence of his patients. It was intended to make one uncomfortable.
Hildred toyed with the suede gloves she had borrowed and repeated the usual feminine gesture of covering her knees. Dr. Titsworth coughed modestly. He reminded Hildred very gently that it was entirely in his power to restrict the patient’s freedom if he had a mind to, that is, if he was convinced that it was still necessary. Hildred listened very gravely and respectfully; she put her hand on his, quite accidentally, and then apologized profusely. Oh, it was clear that she was quite beside herself, that she had never found herself in such a predicament before.
“Doctor,” she said, and her eyes were like angels weeping, “this affair puzzles me completely. I don’t make a thing of it. I feel absolutely helpless, wretched. And doctor, didn’t you say a while ago that you wished to ask me some questions?”
Titsworth immediately summoned his secretary and had a typewritten list, prepared in advance, brought to him. He held the paper absentmindedly in his lap, just long enough for Hildred to scan it quickly. They were the usual idiotic questions which, more than answers, require rubber stamps, seals, and the illegible scrawls of illegitimate witnesses.
Suddenly his beady eyes shifted slyly. “Now tell me, please,” he said coldly, “how long has she been taking drugs?”
“Why doctor!” Hildred looked not only astonished, but injured.
“Come, come!” he said. “Why did she rave about Nietzsche when she was brought here? Why does she insist that Nietzsche drove her mad?”
“But doctor . . .”
“I suppose you know,” Titsworth went on rapidly, “that your ward was raped the other night?”
Hildred gasped.
“That was a thing you didn’t know, eh?” said Titsworth. “Why did you leave her that night? Why didn’t you notify the police? Why . . . ?” There seemed to be no end to his questions. Then, as though he had had his amusement, he ceased abruptly and beckoning to a nurse issued a brief command. It seemed to Hildred as if it were the next moment
that Vanya stood there, in the doorway, hesitant at first, then wildly exuberant. Her hair had grown longer; there was almost a bloodthirsty look about her.
“Hildred!” she cried. “You did come!” She almost pushed the latter over as she fell into her arms.
“Steady, Vanya, steady!” Hildred whispered as they clung to each other.
“God, Hildred, I thought you’d never come. I’ve been watching the clock all day. . . . You must come back to the ward—they’re all dying to meet you. Wait till you meet George Washington . . . she’s a scream!”
“Careful, Vanya!” said Hildred, giving her a swift nudge. Then, raising her voice, “You’re very nervous, dear. It must have been terrible for you.”
Vanya squeezed her hand.
“Don’t worry, Vanya,” said Hildred, “everything is settled. You’re coming home with me.”
Titsworth took it all in without opening his mouth. As they were going back to the ward a group of nurses passed through the hall. “Hello there! Hello everybody! I’m leaving . . . I’m leaving!” shouted Vanya. Then, clutching Hildred’s arm, she whispered: “See that little blonde—she’s got a crush on me. That’s how I got the note out.”
TONY BRING received the news soon enough. Hildred voiced her intention immediately of bringing her ward to live with them. There was a scene. For an hour or more they fumed and ranted. Finally he brought his fist down. “No!” he said. “Absolutely no!”
Then Vanya dropped in on them. She spoke to him softly and wistfully. Her eyes were still a trifle mad—large, restless orbs floating in green ink. Her speech still retained traces of that queer accent which Titsworth had mentioned to Hildred. She was changed. There was a subdued, frightened air about her.
There were days when Hildred did nothing, except to take her ward to the theater, or to a concert. There was the inevitable taxi bill and trifles like gardenias and orchids. If Vanya so much as sighed, Hildred was disturbed. Her slightest whim was immediately gratified. Thus when Vanya expressed a longing to paint again Hildred flew off and purchased a bewildering array of materials. Everything of the best. An ordinary easel wouldn’t do—not for a sick genius. It had to be something out of the common run of easels. What she brought home was an elaborate affair of Javanese workmanship which, so she said, she had picked up for a song. Everything expensive was picked up for a song.