“Bring him here,” she said quietly, betraying no sign of her disquietude. “I want to talk to him. I want to see what he has to say about you.”
“I’ll bring him tonight, Mom. He wants to meet you, too. I didn’t tell him anything about—” he refused to sully his lips with the name—”about him. I’ll bring Marcelle along, too, that’s his … she’s his secretary. You’ll like her. I’d take her myself if Moloch wasn’t…” He stopped short, aware that he had said too much.
“So that’s the kind of man he is? Runs about with his secretary—and takes you along to chaperon the party? I see now. Oh, I thought there was something like that. And what does his wife say to this, or doesn’t he tell her about his secretary?”
Leslie reddened to the ears and stammered: “He isn’t in love with his wife anymore. They never did get along. Anyway, she doesn’t understand him. You’ve got to see him, Mom. I can’t explain it to you. He isn’t what you think. Wait till you hear him talk … I know you’ll believe in him.”
“So that’s it! You can’t excuse him yourself, but you know that he can convince me. He’s a smooth talker, eh? If he tells you white is black that’s the end of it. You believe him. Oh, you poor boy, you can’t see any further than the end of your nose. You don’t want to believe in your religion any more; it isn’t good enough for you. But you fall down on your knees and worship this profligate who lends you his crazy books, who lets you share his harlot....” She forgot herself completely. A spate of ugly epithets slid from her tongue. Having nothing concrete to fasten on she drowned her hatred (there was no longer any disguising it) in a flood of calumny.
Leslie grew white with rage. He couldn’t believe his ears. His own mother talking this way, hurling these dastardly insults at Moloch. It was idiotic. It amazed him. Such fury! Such violence! Why? Why? What was Moloch to her? She didn’t know a thing about him, except for the careless remark he had dropped. At that, he hadn’t said what was on his tongue. He remembered now distinctly—he had checked himself in the nick of time. Supposing she had struck on the truth? How could she be sure? People ought to have proofs before they spoke so hastily.
His mother ceased raving. Her impetuosity frightened her, as though she had listened to the speech of some lunatic. She was ashamed, too, but her pride stifled any admission of it. Nevertheless she was adamant.
“I won’t have him here, Leslie,” she said, with muffled anger. “Don’t you dare to bring him without my permission.”
He grew insolent. “I wouldn’t think of bringing him here after this explosion. Do you think I’d stand by and see him insulted?
Not much. If you want to know something, I’m clearing out. Talk about your harlots and adulterers—do you think I’s blind to Aunt Sophie’s … er … er …” He didn’t know just how to describe his aunt’s behavior in a pithy term.
His mother recoiled. “My God,” she thought, “what have they done to my son? Where has his innocence fled?” She entreated him to stay, to give her a chance to show her affection. Oh, he needn’t worry about his stepfather. She’d keep him in his place. She’d do everything for him to make him happy, but he must not go away. “My arms are aching for you,” she cried. “You’ve been away from me so long. I should never have let you go. Oh, Leslie, Leslie, forgive me. I did not mean to hurt you. Bring Mr. Moloch here. You will see, I shan’t say anything to offend him. We will be good friends. Do ask him, Leslie, do. Only don’t leave me.” She began to sob and weep bitterly.
He was affected. “Come, Mom,” he whispered, “don’t carry on like this. I won’t decide anything today, but I can’t go on living with that si—” The word almost slipped out of his mouth. He had started to say “slut,” but he felt his mother shiver and restrained himself. “You know what Aunt Sophie’s like,” he added. His mother knew too well what he meant....
“Foul whore!” she cursed under her breath as Leslie turned to wipe his eyes.
At the close of business that day Leslie suggested to Marcelle and Moloch that they take dinner with him at his aunt’s house. To clinch their assent he added that there was a barrel of sacramental wine in the cellar.
Leslie’s determination to “clear out” was grounded in the belief that Moloch would take him in. He avoided mentioning this idea to his mother partly from a desire to pour oil on the troubled waters and partly because there was a doubt in his mind that Moloch would acquiesce. Moloch had been insisting right along that Leslie go to live with his parents.
Leslie seized this occasion to open a serious discussion with Moloch. He would have preferred to talk to him alone but he had a fear that Moloch would not consider it important enough; the invitation was therefore extended to Marcelle also. They thought it a capital idea—Moloch because he was strapped, and Marcelle because she was weary of defraying the expenses.
“What are you going to do about Blanche?” Marcelle inquired.
“You say that with such solicitude!” Moloch sneered. “One would think we had a real problem to contend with. Call her up, Leslie, and … put a little color into it this time. Make it plausible.”
Marcelle objected to this strenuously.
“I’d rather speak to her myself than listen to these abominable lies. Can’t you be kind to her, at least?
They wrangled for a few minutes, and then Moloch turned to Leslie again.
“Go ahead, do as I say. What’s the use of starting something new? It’s too late in the day to be developing a conscience.”
Leslie obeyed, but as he hung up the receiver he said gravely: “That’s the last time. I’m through with that dirty business. Why don’t you get a divorce?”
Moloch threw him a withering glance.
“Oho! Moralizing now? The next thing we know, little Leslie will be joining the church… or will it be the synagogue, Leslie?”
The boy was stung in a tender spot. He glared savagely.
“Go easy,” murmured Marcelle. “You’ve hurt him enough today.”
Moloch ignored her. “You’re not ashamed of your Jewish blood, are you, Leslie? I wouldn’t be. That’s where you get your originality … and your moral promptings. Don’t think that for a minute that you’re a hundred percent rotten. Give the Jewish blood a chance … there’s where your salvation lies.”
Leslie hung his head and flushed crimson. He detested Moloch now with his whole heart. No one could bruise his so—not even his stepfather. He preferred a beating to this vindicative tongue-lashing.
In a few minutes, however, his good humor was restored. He had an opportunity to observe Marcelle wincing under the scourge of Moloch’s retorts. “God,” he said to himself, “I wish I could say things as cruel as that… and not mean it.”
* * *
It was one of those sticky, sultry nights when the heat seems to coil about the body like a woolen fog. Up in Leslie’s flat the heat was oppressive. The walls looked moldy and the upholstery had a mildewed appearance. Moloch amused himself, as Marcelle scraped a meal together, by running through the family album. He thought Aunt Sophie looked like a cream puff. “What is she,” he asked, “a Lapp or a Croat?” Leslie screwed up his face in the way one does when he recognizes a bad odor. “What does she do on the stage?” asked Moloch. “Her legs are fat and adulterous.”
Leslie tried to explain. He had often asked himself the same question.
“She missed her calling,” said Moloch. “She should have been a matron in a comfort station.”
He snooped about, examining objects that interested him as if he were in the Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum.
Leslie uncorked a demijohn and together they sampled the sacramental wine. A mood of relaxation followed. Moloch permitted himself a few pleasantries.
“What a glorious life—for the priest; porterhouse steaks, Havana cigars, a short trip now and then to the bawdy house or the convent, an earful of smut behind the curtain … no wonder they look sleek and contented. They always remind me of the hindquarter of a calf….” He down
ed another tumblerful of the sacramental wine and slipped Leslie a huge wink. … “Drink ye all of it!” Down went the wine, making a pleasant gurgling sound as it swished down his throat.
Marcelle had removed her stockings. She was still complaining about the heat. “Lower the lights,” said Moloch, as they sat down to the table. “And, say, can’t you give Marcelle a kimono? She’s dying to slip out of her dress.”
Leslie jumped to his feet, Marcelle protesting.
“Very well, then, let her stew, Leslie.”
With the progress of the meal, and a few drafts of wine, Marcelle reconsidered. She wanted to be coaxed.
“But supposing your aunt returns suddenly … ?”
“She won’t,” said Leslie promptly. “And what if she did? You’re not going naked.” He looked to Moloch for support.
“Of course!” Moloch chimed in. “Don’t be stupid, Marcelle. Make yourself comfortable.” (He was in his suspenders.) “Here, have another glass of wine.”
“All right, then,” she assented timidly. “Where can I undress?”
Leslie showed her to the bathroom and handed her a piece of silk.
Marcelle loitered in the bathroom listening to the droning of Moloch’s voice. Moloch had stumbled into a nest of reminiscences.
Leslie wondered when he would get the opportunity to speak to him privately.
“Another time I remember a peculiar thing happening to me,” Moloch was saying. “It was a night similar to this … frightfully close. I was at the beach with a girl—I don’t remember how or where I picked her up. We were buried in the shadow of a giant Ferris wheel. There was a peculiar fascination about—the way it swished slowly and majestically through the suffocating blanket of humidity. An insane desire took hold of me to rip off my clothes and plunge into the surf. I mean this seriously. It wasn’t just an idea that you toy with and dismiss after you’ve had your fill of it. This was an obsession that I had to fight against with all my strength. Each time I got to the point of jumping up and carrying out this impulse one of the big carriages on the Ferris wheel would come sliding out toward the rim as though to make a nose dive into the sea. You could hear the occupants gasp and shriek when it started on its terrific lunge into space. I suppose my mind was diverted, for an instant, each time this happened by the notion of what would take place should these merrymakers suddenly be hurled to death by that twisted piece of steel. And that led me to thinking about God. No profound thoughts, mind you … just the ordinary lazy speculations about a frowning giant, with long whiskers, floating on his throne, over a heap of beautiful clouds. I thought to myself—old man, if you actually do exist, there is nothing I envy you except, perhaps, your memories. In three seconds, no doubt I went through five hundred pages of history. For an endless time I lay there, hypnotized by the incessant purring of this enormous, senseless contraption. The young lady in my arms was slightly peeved because I didn’t ask her to do things which I knew she would refuse. And then— golly, it must have been right on top of us!—an accordion suddenly broke loose. It had just the effect you might expect if you suddenly saw a comet swing out of its orbit—and you had nowhere to run.”
The narrative was interrupted by Leslie, who had succumbed to an inexplicable seizure of hysterics. Tears rolled down his cheeks; he held his sides to prevent them from bursting under the violent paroxysms of mirth.
“What’s wrong, kid?” said Moloch. He failed to perceive anything explosively comic in his anecdote. … “I hadn’t finished telling …”
“Don’t! Wait a second,” sputtered Leslie. “Don’t go on just yet.”
Marcelle returned and put out the lights; then she went over to Moloch and sat in his lap. In the sudden gloom the latter accidentally slipped his arm through the loose sleeve of her kimono. Her flesh was soft night and powder smooth. She made no attempt to change her position. Gently and quite casually he opened her kimono and clasped his hands about her dimpled form. She offered no more resistance to his embrace than a violet crushed between the leaves of the Heptameron. Their lips met and matched the silence of the dark. In a few seconds Marcelle straightened up taut and commenced talking in a rapid nervous staccato.
It was so very black in the room the instant after the lights went out that Leslie was not sure of his impressions. Nevertheless, he felt uneasy, strangely excited, as if the ether had communicated the intoxication of this silent union.
Marcelle begged Moloch to continue his tale.... “Why did you laugh so, Leslie?”
“That accordion!” he gasped. “Don’t let him go on … please. I can’t stand it!”
They waited again for him to subside.
“I swear he never heard an accordion,” Leslie ripped out after a valiant struggle to control himself. “He got that out of a book, or else he made it up. I swear it never happened. Not an accordion! Never, never!” He threatened to erupt again.
“Oh, damn the accordion!” said Moloch. “Let’s have some canned music.”
Marcelle scrambled to her feet. “Let me look, will you, Leslie?”
Leslie Ut a match while she knelt down to go over the records. As he did so, he peered defiantly through the partly opened kimono at her violet-tinted breasts. His hands trembled so that he dropped the match. It flickered out quickly and he was obliged to fumble for another, availing himself meanwhile of the sudden blackness to rub against her body. The touch of her thigh made him glow all over. He quivered with premeditated ecstasies.
“Just one dance,” he whispered stealthily.
Marcelle rose instantly and left his side. She too trembled. In the same manner the islands of the Pacific, just before they slip from under the light of the sun, seem to glow with a dying zeal and tremble under the avalanche of extinction.
The floor space in which Marcelle and Moloch simulated the execution of the dance was an irregular clearing, a rather circuitous lane studded with chairs and other objects against which they bumped cautiously, and with the speed of snails.
Leslie flung himself on a divan. He was absorbed in following the tantalizing movements of these two. With effort he could distinguish vaguely their welded forms, but he chose instead to lie back with eyes closed and listen to their heavy, irregular breathing, or the awkward scraping of their feet, drugged with desire. At times he had a feeling that they were not moving at all. Then the breathing grew heavier; the very atmosphere of the room became vitalized with their shuddering transports. He felt completely overpowered.
The touch of Marcelle’s thigh stuck to him. It phosphorized his senses. How had it affected her, he wondered; and immediately after he had formulated the thought came regret that he had taken so little advantage of his opportunity. It was useless to believe that she would give him a chance. If she did, it would be from pity. He didn’t want any of her god-damned sympathy. But wait.. . just let her get too gay, and then see. She’d be coming to him yet, with a tale of woe … asking his sweet advice. He’d give it to her—and something more! Christ, couldn’t she see what Moloch was after? It sickened him to see what an idol she made of her Dion. Walking into a trap with her eyes shut—that’s all she was doing. He wished Moloch had chosen another night, another place, to perpetrate his seduction. That’s what it was. Not a damned thing else! He could actually feel that something was going to happen. It was in the air.
They were perspiring freely, Moloch and Marcelle.
“Anything cool to drink around here?” asked Moloch.
“Yeah … water!” Leslie answered.
“You’re a hell of a host.”
“Run out and get something. It’s my treat.” It was Marcelle who said this. She dashed to the bathroom to get her purse.
Leslie detected the gleam of two slim white legs as she swished hurriedly past him. He was sorely tempted to reach out and grab her … grab her anywhere. It made him sore, the two of them coming here and using the place as if it were a house of assignation. It wouldn’t be so bad if they showed some regard for his feelings, but—Christ,
he was no better than a louse.
He took the money she offered unceremoniously and stuffed it in his pocket.
“How long do you want me to stay?” he said bitterly.
“Don’t be smart!” Marcelle came back at him like a spitfire. “You come right back … I’m dying of thirst.”
“Are you sure you’re merely thirsty?” he fired as he slammed the door.
“What a dirty little cad!” Marcelle felt her way to the armchair where Moloch was sitting, quietly puffing at a cigarette. He flung the butt on the floor and stamped on it. Then he seized her and carried her over to the divan.
“Please don’t let him find us here,” she murmured. “He’s such a nasty little devil.”