His lips, glued against the marble of her bosom, responded with meaningless yum-yums. It was apparent that he cared little whether Leslie found them in this position or in the morgue. His feelings were comparable to those of a husband who sees his wife departing up the gangplank, and by a violation of natural law also sees himself on the terrace of the golf club, sipping a gin rickey.
A parched zephyr invaded the stifling chamber. The tang of sea air, faint but unmistakable, permeated Marcelle’s disheveled hair....
To be spiteful, Leslie returned promptly. He knew the location of their bodies but it was impossible, coming in from the brilliant light of the street, to unravel the twisted skein of flesh.
“What would you do if you two had to get out of here suddenly?” The tone of Leslie’s voice was a rich mixture of malevolence and glee.
“Why, I guess we’d go to the park,” said Moloch indifferently.
“What’s ailing you?” said Marcelle, disengaging herself. “You know, Leslie, you’re nothing but a filthy little brat!… If we get on your nerves, why don’t you go downstairs and pick up someone. Get it out of your system! Don’t be mooning all night … and plaguing us to death. We know you’re suffering from adolescence.”
“You might try writing to Beatrice Fairfax,” said Moloch, his voice velvety smooth.
Marcelle tittered. “Yes, that’s a bright idea, Leslie.”
“Go to hell—the two of you!”
“What—on a hot night like this?” Moloch proceeded calmly to open the bottles. “Get a corkscrew, will you, Leslie?”
“Is there anything else you’d like?” He suggested an article of convenience usually associated with bedrooms.
“Now, Leslie! Don’t get nasty! You’re losing your poise. Remember what I told you on another occasion. This is a free country. If you don’t like it here, you can get out and try some other place.”
“Oh, have some regard for his feelings,” Marcelle pleaded. “We shouldn’t expect too much of him. He’s just a child.”
At this Leslie was in a fair way to burst.
“A lot of control you people display!” he blurted resentfully. “I can turn you out, if I want, do you know it?”
“The perfect host!” cried Moloch. “Have a drink, kid, it’ll cool you off. When you dance with Marcelle you’ll need a barrel of poise. Try to control yourself. …”
Marcelle spoke up quickly. “No, thanks. No more dancing tonight for me. It’s too beastly hot.”
“All right, then. Let’s finish this stuff and take a stroll in the park.”
“I hope you two enjoyed yourselves,” Leslie moaned.
“Of course we did, kid. Of course, we did.... Er, next time, make it sour wine. I can’t go this sweet stuff!”
“You managed to get away with a few bottles, I notice.”
“Out of politeness, kid … sheer politeness.”
“Well, next time don’t be so damned polite.” He turned and commenced to stalk out of the room. “I wish to hell I’d never met you two,” he flung at them over his shoulder.
“What a tantrum!” exclaimed Marcelle.
“Leslie! How about a nice little carousel ride?”
No answer.
The heat was less intolerable down in the street. Marcelle hung on Moloch’s arm. They walked in silence for a few blocks.
“Must we go through the park?” Marcelle asked suddenly.
“No-o-o-h … it’s a shortcut, that’s all.”
“I’d rather talk to you, Dion.”
“Can’t we talk in the park?” He wondered what disturbed her now.
She was hesitant. He knew very well what she meant—why did he pretend? She was disgusted with herself sometimes. The park seemed as indecent as a menagerie.
She struggled to screen the nakedness of her thoughts. “It’s just this, Dion—we hardly ever seem to talk anymore. You used to tell me so many things; you don’t confide in me anymore. You never have time to say anything to me … oh, you know what
I’m talking about.... You’re not a good comrade, that’s what I mean.”
“Come, come!” he protested. “You know that’s not true. Heavens! All day long, in the office, I look at you and I’m aching to walk over and throw my arms around you. We seldom have a chance to be alone anymore.”
This was not precisely the passionate language she had expected to awaken. It seemed to her that he was growing deucedly prosaic.
They came upon a deserted bench.
“Sit down,” he urged. “You’re in no hurry to get home, are you?”
“Only a few minutes, Dion. You’ve got to get to work on time tomorrow.”
“Don’t remind me of tomorrow,” he muttered, and drew her familiarly to him.
“Don’t… please, not here,” she implored. She tried to wrestle free, but he held her in a vise.
“Marcelle, you’re driving me crazy, do you know it?” He kept kissing her lips and neck and shoulders. “Why not—here? God, you’re ravishing!”
When they floated up from the bottom of the sea they found an equally preoccupied couple parked alongside of them.
“Let’s go,” said Marcelle. “We can find another bench.”
They sauntered off in silence. Instinctively they left the path and cut through the heavy grass. Moloch walked with head down, burrowing into seedy abstractions.
“Why don’t you say something to me?” she asked, after a space.
“I can’t,” he answered hoarsely.
They stopped dead (as if someone had given a signal) and faced each other. Her bosom heaved expectantly....
“My God, Dion! Can’t you behave?”
He pushed her roughly against a thick oak.
“You’re hurting me… stop it. Listen to me—you’re crushing me.”
“Be quiet,” he muttered fiercely. “I’m not hurting you.”
He leaned against her insolently, savagely. With furious hands he clutched her convulsively. … She was gasping.
“You must stop it!” She lowered her voice until it resembled a heart throb.... “I’m afraid, Dion.…”
“Oh, come on, then.” He sounded sullen, vengeful. She felt as though he was dragging her along by the scalp.
“You’ll get us into trouble,” she said softly.
“I don’t give a damn!”
“But, listen, dear … supposing we were caught here? What would Blanche do?”
“That’s right—think of all the ugly things.”
“I can’t help it. You remember the last time. Do you want one of those filthy perverts to catch us again?”
The thought of that shameful episode made him wince.
“Oh, I guess you’re right, Marcelle. … I lose my head— sometimes.” He looked about him helplessly…. “God, is there nowhere we can go?”
They walked on again, each striving to find the solution to this riddle, neither coming to any conclusion.
Finally, with the timidity of a squirrel burying its treasure of nuts, Marcelle hid her bosom in the prism of shadow cast by the upholstered facade of the museum.
So far she had remained inviolate....
Like a butterfly in the palpitant tomb of its chrysalis, Marcelle fluttered and yearned with nubile wings for the miracle of the advent of dawn. In the surrender of a caress she looked for the swoon which would bring about her deliverance.
The shroud which enveloped her struggling pinions had the rigidity of a cathedral’s vaulted ribs.... She lost herself in the ecstasy of brushing against the delicate-tinted panes now suffused with the faint flush of dawn. The voice of her lover was drowned in the tumultuous peals of shattering chords. His lips were the edges of raw wounds which shrieked unspeakable horrors, whose agonizings mingled with the suffocating smolder of caromed organ notes. … At that moment when, galvanized by gusts of devastating energy, her delirious ardor seemed about to burst the taut filaments of her being and engulf her in a chaos of deliquescence, a thundering diapason sounded, the barrel v
ault was riven, and the temple of her spirit laved in a rutilant flood of light. Her wings, which were meant for flying, proved incapable of such sustained effort. Tremors, like the mournful echoes of a flute, capered over the moistened silk of her wings. The languor of ten thousand moody nocturnes invaded the hollows of her loins and draped her crumpled form in quivering curves.
The sacrifice of which Marcelle had dreamed—inflamed by virginal fantasies—had been consummated under the spell of that lunar deity, the goddess Astarte. Instead of a hundred bulls, the fabled hecatomb of antiquity, the offering had been herself, “her plowed divinity.” Her silhouette, fugitive and palpitant, had wandered in the course of the ceremony, from the tenebrous depths of the lawn, in which it was hidden, to the flake-white exterior of the museum.
In the violent emergence of reality, she caught a vision of her new self: a shuddering, tripled horror surmounting a granite plinth. Touched with moon madness she gazed with frozen fear to behold the dismal goddess Hecate, who it is said guards the crossways of life—whose worship it is also said is associated with the shades of the dead, with ghosts, and with sorcery…. From her feet issued serpents; serpents were entwined in her hair. And in her hand she bore a lighted torch.
7
THE ALARM WENT OFF PROMPTLY AT SEVEN-THIRTY. Moloch turned over and pretended not to hear. Blanche went through the usual morning’s efforts to rouse him but it was useless. He piled the covers over his head and rolled up like a ball.
“Are you going to take a day off again?”
Warily he stuck his head out of the covers. “Call up and say I’m ill. I can’t go to work today.... I’m all in. Let me sleep another two hours—that’s all.”
Blanche detested these lies. He was always forcing her to make excuses for him. Rather than get up and telephone, he’d sacrifice his job....
As soon as he learned that she had phoned he was a different being. In a jiffy the blankets came off. Out of bed he sprang, frisking about in his nightgown, making grotesque faces at her, singing snatches of operatic aires…. Sing? He had lungs of leather, now that a holiday was decreed.
“How about some bacon and eggs, Blanche?” he inquired cheerfully. He smacked his lips. They were rather thick lips, excellent for the purpose. “I can smell the victuals frying in the pan…. And get a big loaf of Jewish bread—corn bread—a couple of pounds. Don’t come back with white bread or I’ll slit your parsimonious throat.” He made a queer guttural sound in his throat. He had acquired the knack from long practice; it derived from “burlesque.” At the same time he drew his hand slowly across his throat. “From ear to ear,” he mimicked, supernally pleased with his droll behavior.
Blanche was anything but delighted over this unexpected holiday. She realized sadly how long it would take him to find another job. Every time he took a day off she went through tortures for fear that he would be seen by someone and reported to the officials.
“Am I to buy theater tickets while I’m out, or are you going off somewhere by yourself, as usual?”
“Anything you like, honey.”
As she put her hand on the doorknob, to go, he added hastily: “No, don’t let’s go to a vaudeville show today. I’m fed up on vaudeville…. Perhaps I’ll stay home and do some writing.”
“Remember that you have a job,” she threw out. “Don’t go starting a book again.” She slammed the door to emphasize her malice.
Don’t start a book, eh? Why not? That was the very thing he did want to do. Why couldn’t she leave him alone to do as he pleased? He might finish one if she were a little more tolerant, a little more interested in what he was doing…. Always worried about “the job.” Christ, would she ever let up on that subject? She’d have him dig ditches rather than see him idle for two weeks. For her part, he could tackle anything—so long as the rent was paid and she had the price of another hat in her pocket. He asked himself, what did she do with the money she earned giving piano lessons? He never saw any of it. She expected him to get along on five bucks a week; had it all figured out; so much for carfare, so much for lunch, so much for tobacco, etc., etc. How about a good cigar once in a while, or a burlesque show, or a trip to Luna Park? Not that he gave a damn much, but it was good to put your hand in your pocket once in a while and feel a couple of bills there. He was sick of borrowing lunch money every day, or getting Dave to take him to a show. How many books did they buy in a year; how many times did they go to a concert, or take in a lecture? Pfooh! No wonder a man ran around nights with other women. He needed recreation. That was it.. . recreation.
They ate breakfast in customary silence, dividing the newspaper between them. He started to warble once, but she made such a wry face the words died in his throat.
“I’m going for a short walk first,” he announced, after he had finished his second cup of coffee.
“For inspiration, I suppose?”
“No, to pick up a Jane. That’s what you wanted me to say, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t hurry on my account. I won’t be here when you get back. I wouldn’t think of interfering with your … er, writing.”
She gave him a cadaverous smile and started to collect the dishes and pile them in the sink where they would remain until the next meal.
“The hell with you,” he thought. “For my part, you can go and drown yourself.”
She went into the next room and began to pound away on the fourteenth rhapsody of Liszt. “Go ahead, pound away,” he mumbled to himself. “Break the damned instrument.”
If anything could drive him crazy, it was Liszt. “That Wurlitzer composer! That charlatan with lecherous vigor!” That’s what came of studying music in a convent... Her Sister Dorothea! Another George Sand…. What wouldn’t he give to shove a big cigar in her mouth and give her a sound slap on the tenderloin! A pack of women lovers—all of them. Someone ought to call in the Society for the Suppression of Vice!
He donned a sweater and cap and started down the street. There was a snap in the air. Things looked bright and inviting.
A flock of sparrows flew in and out of the church belfry across the street. It was a somber, stately street they lived on. Houses of worship on every block. So utterly respectable, their neighbors!
Wouldn’t think of slipping outdoors without a necktie Rows and rows of brownstone houses, with massive doors and iron-barred windows. Every few doors a physician—with good old American names. “Dr. Edward Mitchell Swan”: five dollars a visit—homeopath, pince-nez, “How is Granny?” … The neighborhood had a quieting effect, nevertheless. His mind commenced to show signs of working peacefully. He began to reminisce.
Fine! Perhaps he really would go back, after a while—not end up in a burlesque hall. He’d show her he meant business…. If only he could get her out of his mind! She loomed up on his cerebral frontiers like some nasty carrion bird. “My vulture!” he thought, and smiled a feeble smile.
He walked along thus, pondering on queer incidents in his past, stopping now and then to inspect an interesting facade, thinking about the women he had failed to make, and wondering all the time, in the back of his head, just what he would sit down to write about. That was the pity of it… so much hectic gadding about, so many friends who seemed created for the sole purpose of pestering him to death. All manner of useless inroads on his precious time. Nothing accomplished.
The soliloquies he conducted in the street, or in the subway, or in bed nights, when his mind raced like a millstream—he could capture none of these when he sat down before a blank sheet of paper. What extraordinary confabulations he held with himself! “Get it down, get it down!” he repeated aloud, clenching his fist and waving it mechanically. .. .
For some time he had been walking along in this abstract muddle but partially aware of his environment. Suddenly it came to him that he was following a familiar route. He was heading toward the old neighborhood, where he had spent his youth. The prospect delighted him. It happened to him a number of times, when he let himself go, that he found his steps
directed toward that dear old neighborhood with its quaint tumbledown shanties, its gas tanks, its ferry slips, and a squalid, teeming ghetto life.
He emerged from a maze of crooked, woebegone streets onto the broad highway of Bedford Avenue, which smiled in its melancholy senescence like a snaggle-toothed courtesan. What was it about Bedford Avenue that tickled him so? Not the upper reaches, mind you, where the dour bourgeoisie dwelt in smug, stiff apartment houses, where they went for an airing of a Sunday afternoon in swallowtails and plug hats. (Yes, they still wore plug hats on Bedford Avenue—but only on Sunday afternoons, after a swill-fest and a turn in the Men’s Bible Class.) … No, that wasn’t the part he cared about. Down near the fountain, where the avenue first broadens out and begins to take on dignity—that was the section.