At that moment he imagined himself another Raskolnikov, another assassin waiting for the words of a Sonya: “Go to the marketplace and kneel before the multitude. Go and confess your sins. Speak to God in the public square; pray to him on your knees, so that every one may hear….” He got down on his knees. He made his appeal to the Almighty. No snout-faced moujik ever prayed more lustily. His prayers were woven in the strands of her hair, in the letters of her name.
And, even as he did so, the door opened gently. Blanche stood there listening.
Her first temptation was to laugh. Never had she seen a more grotesque object than this figure, this obscene bedmate of hers, huddled in an attitude of reverence. She had a wanton desire to laugh outright—a spiteful, mocking laugh that would chill the very marrow of his bones. But the prayerful babble from his blasphemous lips, the earnest flood, so unlike the scoffer she had known, silenced her. She heard the sound of her name as she had never heard it before. For the instant she was touched; her hatred was at the point of melting before this devout furnace. But, at that very moment when, overwhelmed by this example of sincerity, she was about to throw herself at his feet and pour out her affection so fiercely withheld, a morbid, blighting suspicion entered her brain. With a blinding radiance the idea flashed through her mind that he was … yes, that he was jealous.
The knowledge that he loved her increased her bitterness. Her faint lease of gladness was despoiled by the swollen floods of resentment that welled up in her and urged her impulsively to wrest from him the last drop of servitude.... Hitherto his jealousies had been the sullen, fitful fires of a vengeful spirit. They were of short duration and but added fuel to the flames of discord. Never had she witnessed such an attitude of contrition … the more convincing, too, since her arrival was unanticipated. Was it, though? She indulged in a fleeting perplexity, as if to diagnose from past performances the cause of this abject surrender.
When he realized her presence in the room, in spite of himself, a chill came over him. He had in mind, when this moment should arrive, to throw himself at her feet… and evacuate his emotions. He had imagined that when the door should open, and the miracle of his deliverance rend him, all the pent-up agonies of his shameful ways would bubble over and flood her in a glamorous spate of words. Now they stood face to face, each trying to pierce the veil which separated them. She was mute, impenetrable, unapproachable. And yet a passion stormed through her blood, took possession of her heart, and leaped with the turbulence of a freshet to the fastness of her lips. A wistful expression gathered between her eyes, like a low-hanging fog pressing against two arc lights. She no longer remembered that her soul had been smashed to bits on their Procrustean marriage bed; she was aware only of a gathering ache that clutched with tenacious fingers and hollowed her with groans.
Moloch had left his wife that morning the image of a hopeless slattern. Her tiny Cupid’s mouth, which he kissed perfunctorily, had seemed a trap geared with invisible wires and pulleys that caused it to open and shut with a mechanical cadence that at once fascinated him and repelled. When the hinge moved, and the trap fell open, he could see the taut filaments of her geranium-colored tongue. It wagged like a poodle dog’s tail, her tongue. It never ceased wagging. When the trap opened the tongue fell out and lapped against a full lower lip or slid reptile-wise along a bank of lace-pearl molars. That very morning he had restrained an insane notion to leap at her and bite the damned thing out of her mouth.
Now he stood gazing helplessly at the tremulous corners of her pursed lips. He expected them to open and utter mysterious language. They did open. They parted sweetly on these words:
“Jim Daly came to town. I just left him. We spent the evening together.”
“Then you didn’t go to the theater?” He was left open-mouthed, speechless.
She expressed surprise that the news should affect him so strangely. If the long-heralded Messiah had made the long-promised terrestrial descent it could not have affected him more.
“Are you … hurt?" she asked.
He shook his head slowly, sorrowfully. He was too overcome even to throw out a monosyllable.
She flew on in a light, gossipy vein…. “I would have brought him here only he had to return on the midnight train. He sends you his warmest regards. It was just a flying visit … to see how we were getting along, he said.” She paused. “Do you know, he acts as if he can’t believe that I’m still married to you. I guess he’s still waiting for me. .. .” She paused again, to study the effect of her words. Had she said enough?
“Poor Jim,” he said suddenly. “I can’t help liking him. He was a brick. … He was the one you should have taken, Blanche.”
A mirthless laugh gurgled from her tiny Cupid’s mouth.
“A pity you didn’t think of that before. A fine time to tell me what a mistake I made.”
He started to speak again. She was gazing at him in utter amazement.
“You remember the night we stayed at the Claridge Hotel … just a week before we were married? You remember telephoning your aunt the next morning from the hotel? You recall that she told you Jim Daly was on his way to New York to see you … that there was a telegram for you?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, looking at him bewilderedly. “I remember everything… everything, very distinctly. I stayed at the hotel all that day, and Jim met me there.”
“He came to see you on a very important mission, didn’t he?”
Blanche hesitated. “Ye-e-s,” she faltered.
Moloch pressed on. He reminded her of the events that followed upon that meeting, their little banquet at the Café Bous-quet, the discussion they carried on, the way Jim and he took to each other immediately, the strangeness of that mutual admiration.
Blanche was getting impatient. “I know all that. What of it?”
“Well, after I took you home that night, and you told me you had refused Jim your hand, I went back to the Claridge and went to bed with Jim.”
“You did?” she gasped. “You never told me that!”
He paid no attention to this exclamation.
“Yes, I went back to your lover and told him everything, I was so touched that I volunteered to remove myself, and let him have you.”
“You told him everything?” she cried, ignoring the remainder of his speech. “God, I detest you for that! Who gave you the right to do such a thing? You’re a brute! The idea of torturing him that way …”
Moloch smiled. “I don’t believe he felt tortured. He liked it—I mean the dramatic qualities of the scene. He took a great fancy to me. Really, we became excellent friends—just on account of my actions, I believe. Oh, it was a regular Alphonse and Gaston scene, all right. We never slept a wink all night.”
“You think it quite a joke, don’t you?” Her voice had become hard and bitter again.
“No, I don’t,” he replied at once. “Of course, it does seem a trifle ridiculous now. But at the time it was very real, very tragic, for both of us. You must remember, we were genuinely in love with you … then.” (He was sorry he had added that “then.”) “It was no light resolution on my part to relinquish you. For once I was capable of forgetting myself and my own selfish desires. Perhaps it was because I wanted you so much that I could understand and share his agony. I’m sure he understood my motives. He realized that it wasn’t just a bit of playacting.... What will you say if I told you that we shed tears over you? We lay there like a couple of schoolgirls, raving about you, gloating over your beauty, admiring the charm of your character, weeping about you as if you were some lost princess....”
“And my figure… my beautiful breasts … what did Jim have to say to that?”
“Your figure? Your breasts?” He stared at her confusedly. At the same time he was aware that her figure had changed … for the worse.
“Yes,” said Blanche, “I mean my body… since you discussed everything.”
He was taken back. He didn’t know whether to ask her or not.
“You me
an,” he began timidly, reluctantly, “you mean that you thought I told him about …”
“Why not? You said a moment ago that you had told him everything.”
“Blanche,” he said, and his voice dropped, “do you mean that you believe I would say—? You thought me capable even then …?” It was impossible to get it out.
“Oh, God!” she exclaimed. “How can I believe you? You lie to me so.... Are you sure, Dion? Are you certain?”
He hung his head. He was ashamed of her, of himself, of the whole god-damned business of love and what it had brought them to.
Blanche went over to him impulsively. She threw herself in his lap, and begged him to forgive her. She realized now that she had been mistaken. … He said nothing. He let her talk. Blanche clung tight. She poured a flood of strange, tender words in his ear. It was a new kind of joy for her. He took down her hair and buried his lips in the soft silky mass that hid her face.
At last he spoke. His voice was soft and suasive.
“Tonight, dear … what did you tell Jim?”
“Not now,” she pleaded. “Don’t ask me now. Nothing is changed.”
“But what do you think .. . about Jim, I mean?”
She crumpled up in his arms and closed her eyes that he might not see the tears which were streaming down her cheeks. “I … I don’t know what to think,” she murmured.
He pressed her no further. Her limbs were trembling violently. Thus the earth trembles when fear-crazed buffalo stampede....
Gently he brushed the tangle of hair from her brow, and placed his tender lips upon her eyelids. Her peppery breath, like the odor of sandalwood, left him careening through a dizzy vortex. The room was a Pompeian fresco of sound and space. Through every spore and interstice of his palpitant flesh the elixir of her veins penetrated and drugged him. Outside, in the night, a whorl of glinting pinpoints studded the expensive dome of a ravaged universe. His thoughts, gushing like a geyser, fled quivering into the night. “Just love, just love,” he repeated to himself, transfixed by the swell of her abdomen, which rose and fell like a sea.
“You do love me, then, Dion?” Her voice was a torn veil.
He answered with lowered eyes, blinded by the milky hues of her thighs.
Somewhere in North Africa the baobabs were rustling in the keen night wind. A wave of passion engulfed him as a Spahi is caught in a simoom.
The mask with which she met the world fell from her as a yashmak is lifted to admit the gaze of a lover. Her body became a lovely, sacred vessel, such as it once had been. The sweeping contours rose in velvet undulations. The skin was cool and chaste to the touch. It reminded him of a Cretan urn, diapered with splintered jewels, carved with handles of rare ivory.
All the lies, the counterfeits, the baseness of his past was transmuted by her love into a gospel of devotion. The parched infidelities, like a barren soil in which they had struggled and starved together, promised to blossom and flower under the rivulets of this reawakened passion. Deep down in the rich subsoil of love hope took root.
A pale finger of light invaded the room upstairs. They undressed in tense silence, shy and oppressed by the heavy gloom in which the room seemed to float. In the dark nuptial loam which they had rediscovered their desires expanded and fructified. Scalding tears trickled down the white of his flesh and caressed him. They were her tears. They burned into the lymph and tissue of his organism until they were identified with the adulterous specters of forgotten loves....
There were women he had known under the coverlet whose sloe eyes were Niagaras of repentance. Some had a stagnant beauty that exhaled a miasma which dulled the senses. Some fell into his arms like marble goddesses toppling from their pedestals. These were excited by the tremors of their fall. Some cowered like nuns under the twilight of their robes, surrendering themselves in a swoon to the desecration of his touch. Some fairly reeked of passion and whispered inflammatory words that left a sulphurous gleam in their wake.... No one was like another.
He felt his wife’s grip tightening about him until it seemed that they must be welded together. All her fears, all her desires and hopes, were dissolved in one stupendous wrack of passion. An autumnal unison, beaten out of the shattering dissonances of their lives, fused the turmoil of their hearts.
16
THE MAELSTROM OF SUBTERRANEAN PASSIONS WHICH sucked these two human beings under left their bodies strewn on the bed like wreckage next morning. Moloch scooted off to work without disturbing the prostrate figure of his wife. She remained outstretched, her oval face lost in a wilderness of hair, her lips slightly parted in an attitude of expectancy.
What had been accomplished? he asked himself. Was this to be the beginning of a new life? The answer to this was lost in a vague, scattered silence of the flesh. He felt like one who had been encircled with drum-fires, whose very soul had been singed, and was now curling up, scarred and shriveled, under the tunic of his skin.
She’s not the piece of wood I thought I had been living with, he decided. The idea of identifying her with a piece of wood intrigued him. He wondered if Jim Daly had found her very wooden the night before. It was a vile thought, and he tried to suppress it, but think what he would he was seized with the notion that there was something unusual, if not suspicious, about her sudden, inflamed ardor. He tried the sequence of the dialogue which had precipated their reunion but his memory of words was no more than a white ash, powdery, opaque, and cool to the touch.
The rapprochment which they had established was not quite on a plane with the spiritual solidarity he had envisaged, he himself saw. Again kneeling before the low-cushioned chair, praying for the moment when Blanche should return and unleash his impetuous declarations. He had anticipated a studied silence, a withering glance, and expression of dubiety, perhaps even consternation. But he was totally unprepared for the vision of loveliness which had assailed him. The vision rose before him again, in all its phantasmal lure; it spread its wings about him and crushed him to the earth. The rich loam in which they had wallowed still clung to him. He shuddered ecstatically and made an involuntary movement as if to free himself from the cloying stains of the earth…. No one was like another…. Some there were who fell like marble godesses toppling from their pedestals.
He arrived home that evening, three quarters of an hour earlier than usual, in a somewhat disordered state of mind. Blanche was absorbed in the excitement of turning the room into an inferno with her bone-cracking pyrotechnic. He sat on the couch and listened to the massacre of the “Liebestraum.”
Sensing the silent imprecations which her consort usually reserved for such compositions, Blanche abandoned her efforts and commenced tinkering with Stojowski’s “Love Song.” It was Stanley who had once said that Blanche ought to be restrained by law from committing this sacrilege. Stanley’s Polish ear was limited to a narrow range of musical compositions, but within those limitations his judgment was precise and unfaltering. Whether it was because she had no soul for Slavic lyricism, or whether it was due to an innate sterility, it was a fact that in the realm of sentiment, of tenderness, of passion, she was lost. The flail-like automation strokes with which she belabored the instrument made every nerve in his body twitch with pain. She had taken to repeating a certain passage, breaking it up into its component measures, dissecting every chord, every arpeggio. Her bludgeon strokes fell with the methodic, senseless beat of a metronome. Every note was a fresh bruise. Moloch buried his head in the pillows to muffle the hideous din.
Lying thus, with eyes closed and ears partially stopped, he was besieged again by the insidious advances of her flesh. He remembered how he had left her in the morning, lying mute and exhausted, with half-opened lips. At the office, engrossed in the petty preoccupations of routine, this fresh image had been forgotten. He was pleased, consequently, when he arrived unexpectedly, to find her arrayed like a practiced coquette. In all the petty details which had to do with her personal appearance, such as the selection of her attire, the gloss of her nails, th
e arrangement of her coiffure, she had become suddenly (miraculously almost) attentive. This inordinate fastidiousness had extended so far as to embrace even the living room, which heretofore had always been a triumph of artistic neglect. The room now presented the peaceful, ordered charm of a virgin’s sanctuary. The pleasant sensations induced by this complete metamorphosis were swamped by the unsuccessful blend of her washboard dynamics. The very mention of Liszt was sufficient to suggest to his mind the pleasures of the carousel, the imbecilic blasts of calliopes, déjeuner sur l'herbewith frankfurters and ants.
The melodies of these two love themes were telescoped, as if they were two express trains colliding in successive dreams. They became inextricably interwoven, forming a huge contrapuntal pattern that beat an insensible tattoo upon his frayed receptors.
The faces they brought with them to the dinner table were like burnt-out craters. They roused themselves intermittently to pass a bowl of vegetables, or exchange vapid comments concerning the flavor of the tea, or the state of the weather. He thought he read a declaration in her eyes that this surrender of the previous evening was merely a truce.