His remarks made little or no impression upon his listener. “In India one takes his time, and when one is already dead, of what use is it to hurry?” said Hari Das. Brushing swiftly over “this Anglo-Saxon absurdity,” he gave free rein to his impressions of Western energy and futility. What, he asked, was the ultimate value of these extravagant sacrifices in the name of speed?
Prigozi, who had been roughly revising his concepts of the weak-kneed Hindus during the course of this disquisition, thought the moment opportune to introduce a little dynamite. He had been aching to observe the reaction which the word “nigger” would induce. He drew his bow and shot the arrow home.
The two men looked at Hari Das with that absurd air of vacuity which people display when viewing the fragments of a precious vase which has slipped between their fingers. Moloch was furious, but said nothing. Indeed, it was too late to say anything. Prigozi had said everything that was necessary—and a few things that were unnecessary.
A tiny throatful of laughter, that had the chink of broken glass, broke from the disdainful lips of Hari Das.
“In India,” he exclaimed, “I am a problem. In England I am an educated nuisance. If the Americans choose to make a nigger of me, very well—let them! I do not care a damn. My difficulty is an economic one, not an ethnologic one.”
“Bully!” cried Prigozi, throwing his restraint to the winds.
A twinkle of amusement, that was also a reproach, flashed in Hari Das’ eyes.
“Let’s get out of here,” suggested Moloch.
Prigozi and Hari had taken to behaving like two statesmen who flatter each other assiduously after a prolonged session of profanity and vituperation. There was nothing to be gained by permitting these two to continue. Besides, he was only too familiar with Prigozi’s views. He knew his opinions on everything— from theories of “magic and religion” to birth control and conditioned reflexes. What he wanted was an intellectual debauch with this Nietzschean Oriental.
“How about going to the Olympic?” said Prigozi. The fact that “Mister Moloch” had the price of a burlesque show in his pocket made him almost certain that this innocent suggestion would be adopted with alacrity.
“No, no burlesque for me tonight,” said Moloch impatiently. “Here—take this, if you need some coin,” and he thrust a five-spot toward Prigozi.
Prigozi refused the money, not from reticence, but because he was unwilling to be shunted off in this manner.
“Come along, then, damn you!” said Moloch, ushering Prigozi out.
Hari Das had gone ahead and was waiting for them in the street.
As they emerged from the office, Prigozi mumbled something in Moloch’s ear which caused the latter to voice a vigorous dissent.
“Well, then,” said Prigozi, unabashed and abandoning his furtive gestures, “how about that secretary of yours? Can’t we manage to seduce her? She looks as if she’s itching for it.”
Again Moloch shook his head. “You forget that I’m a married man,” he said facetiously.
Prigozi shrieked. “I always told you you were a god-damned hypocrite. Mister Moloch!”
Then, as if inspired, he took to dancing. Moloch wheeled slowly as Prigozi gyrated about him, observing the way the other’s fingers drooped and quivered, ever so delicately. He wondered if Prigozi had ever seen Toscanini, or performed a surgical operation.
A few pedestrians stopped to stare. Hari Das meanwhile leaned against a lamppost and studied the headlines of the Evening Journal. He got a great kick out of the headlines. … He never read what was printed below.
4
IN THE SUBWAY HARI DAS RECEIVED AS MUCH ATTENTION as if he were Genghis Khan suddenly come to life. Moloch was as far removed from the usual cares of an employment manager as an igloo from the equator.
They were not intoxicated. In the first place, neither Hari nor Prigozi had touched a drop when they entered the café after closing the office. Moloch had taken only a few glasses of gin, but those “few thimblesful” had produced the illusion of a rutilant Bakst curtain closing slowly over a drab backstage scene whose realism was not of the theater but of life, life as it is known to a Pirandello.
On this warm Crimean screen of velvet a cutback, translated from memory, bathed in vivid stews of color, and aching with promises that had never been fulfilled, projected itself. He became insensible of the clownish behavior of the man Prigozi standing beside him at the bar.
Indeed, Prigozi himself, the brass rails, the rubicund figure in the white apron whose back was revealed in the fantastically soaped mirrors—the entire imminent reality had melted into a snug, superheated bedroom. There was about this room the same befouling disarray, the same vile odors which we associate with the bottom of a birdcage. He saw again the woman called Blanche, before she had gone through the mock solemnities of the conjugal rite; she was lying on a crazy quilt in a crumpled silk dressing sack, green as the troubled Atlantic. Her lips exuded a flavor of burnt coffee and buttered cinammon toast. Her armpits were dark, darker than the deep olive of her neck and shoulders. He buried his head in one of the fragrant hollows with a long, deep kiss that left her quivering under the slow-curving caress of his body. Her long chestnut hair, electric with ardor, perfumed with vitality, enveloped him and tantalized him. He found himself climbing under the counterpane, his tongue sputtering with entreaties.
“I feel so ashamed,” whispers Blanche, as she lies languidly among the heaving pillows, pop-eyed with fright and expectancy. The word “marriage” is on her lips. He erases it with swollen affirmatives, almost stifling under the thick blankets. The distorted red patterns of the wallpaper are swimming in endless vibrations of heat.
In the midst of this reverie Prigozi nudges him. “What’s come over you?” He nods toward the bartender.
Moloch pays, gives Prigozi the change of a five-dollar bill, and dismisses him. He manages it so easily now. Not the slightest embarrassment.
“We’re going home,” he says, grasping Hari’s arm.
In the subway Moloch feels called upon to explain his behavior. “I had to get rid of him, Hari. He gets on my nerves sometimes. He’s like a bad breath. One can stand so much and then. …” He made a moue and looked around as if he wanted to expectorate.
Hari Das thought this frankness commendable. It was so un-Oriental. Moreover, he was beginning to perceive great possibilities in this friendship.
“I must tell you something about Blanche before we arrive,” said Moloch, apropos of nothing. “She may seem like a nightmare at first… somewhat inhospitable, understand? However, you mustn’t let that disturb you. It’s just her way. She’s really a fine woman. A little nervous, perhaps … has a worried look. Probably some glandular disturbance. A splendid musician, though.”
Hari Das tittered. Then he took a broken comb from his pocket and ran it through his greasy black hair.
“You know you’d make a wonderful Messiah, Hari? A veritable strap-hanging Savior, by George!”
Hari threw back his head and yawped.
“Our women adore Saviors, Hari,” Moloch continued. “Particularly when they’re handsome. By the way, you don’t suffer from delusions, do you? You don’t hear voices … or anything like that, you know what I mean?”
Hari accepted this as another one of Moloch’s little jokes. He enjoyed these sallies hugely.
“I should hate to believe you were setting up as another little Gandhi,” Moloch confided. “You’re too amiable to be another tin Jesus. Besides, this country is full of them.”
Hari’s response was lost in the scuffle attending their exit from the subway. They had only a few blocks to walk from the station. Hari appeared to be fascinated by the variety of churches they passed in review. He craned his neck to gape at the gargoyles which leered at the empty streets. Just before they reached the house he stepped to the gutter and blew his nose with two fingers.
Moloch was pondering meanwhile on the reception they would receive, praying that his spouse would make a
pretense at civility. Devil take her! He meant to enjoy the evening despite her malingering.
He pushed the button and assumed an air of sangfroid. An extraordinary greeting took place.
“Good evening!” he brought out blandly. “Mrs. Moloch? This is Mister Moloch … friend husband. Dropping in for a little friendly bite. Sorry we’re late…. May I introduce my esteemed friend, the late Maharajah of Lahore? Swami—my wife!”
He made a low bow to smother his hysterical laughter.
Hari saluted the woman with his usual grace. Blanche grasped the proferred hand stiffly, looked him over as if he were a rare guignol, and stepped back with a tight-lipped expression to admit them.
“The mansion,” said Moloch, beaming expansively, as if to communicate a moiety of his geniality to that hatchet with the canary-bird mouth. Blanche looked on with undisguised disgust as he prattled away.
“HOME!!! The sanctuary of repose. A cozy hearth, old friends, old wine….!” He spread his arms in the Shakespearean manner. “And above all, the good wife who awaits with eagerness the husband’s homecoming.” He turned his back on his wife. “Well, Hari, not such great shakes, the place, what? A little untidy … no servants, you see. Blanche hasn’t had a chance to do any housecleaning this week.” (He said this to intercept her apologies. His manner conveyed the impression that he was rendering her a favor.) “Believe me, Blanche here is a really excellent hausfrau when she chooses to be. To be or not to be—that’s our great domestic problem, isn’t it, old battle-horse?”
Blanche, who was neither “an old battle-horse” nor “an excellent hausfrau,” had daggers in her eyes. Her fingers were ten convulsive talons. They were by no means the well-kept digitals of a paramour. The nails were short and tough. Splendid independent finger movement—for the Hungarian rhapsodies.
“Excuse me,” she said, turning to Hari, “my husband is drunk, I see.” Her voice was bitter as tansy.
Hari flung both arms up. “Not at all, not at all,” he protested. “I shouldn’t be here if I thought he were drunk.”
Blanche perceived that she had two monsters to deal with.
“Well,” she said, “drunk or sober, I suppose you two want something to eat.”
Moloch was undaunted. He grabbed Hari’s coattail.
“Now isn’t that thoughtful of Blanche? Didn’t I tell you she was a cherub?” He turned to Blanche. “Of course, my dear… of course we want something to eat. We came home expressly to have dinner with you this evening.” He gazed at her ecstatically. Then he lowered his voice, affecting a new tinge of irony, if irony it could be called. “And where is our darling child this evening … that jewel of your loins?
Hari Das could no longer restrain himself. He had done his best, up to this point, to show discretion, to appear aloof and disinterested, as though this fantastic colioquy were taking place on the planet Neptune. He looked at Moloch helplessly. Moloch answered his appeal with a comical expression that beggars description, and turned the hydrant on Blanche once again.
“The supper is not ready, you say?”
She hadn’t said anything of the kind.
“Too late?” He simpered. “My, my! What difficulties life places in our path! Well, Hari, the maharanee has spoken. It’s bacon and eggs for us, I see. Well, well, our old friend, bacon and eggs. Too bad, too bad!” He wagged his head with gross solemnity.
The apologies that Blanche endeavored to make for her husband’s conduct gave Hari Das an insight into the private life of his newfound friend. He listened with such grave sympathy, with such a respectful mien, that Blanche soon found herself apologizing for more than she had intended.
“I never know when he’s coming home,” she rattled on, intoxicated with the variety of her husband’s peccadilloes. “He doesn’t even bother to telephone me. Sometimes he walks in on me like this with a gang … yes, a gang. And then he has impudence enough to get angry with me for not waiting on his rowdies hand and foot.” She stamped her foot feelingly. “As though I could ever welcome his queer idiots.”
“Queer idiots?” Hari repeated after her.
Moloch spoke up. “I told you Blanche was a gem, didn’t I? That’s just her way of making you welcome. She means to say that you’re a gentleman—you’re not a bit like the other rough necks. Why, my dear Blanche, I should say you are entertaining a gentleman. My good friend, the maharajah, has royal blood in his veins. You’ve got to have royal blood to be a maharajah—isn’t that so, Hari? Just the same, he’s not above eating bacon and eggs, are you, Swami? And Im’ not above making them for you, either. Swami, spill a little Hindustani while I prepare the feast. But let the talk be as excellent as the bacon and eggs!”
He dragged the two of them into the kitchen, shoved his wife into a chair, and commenced rattling the dishes in the pantry. He had forgotten to remove his hat. It was tilted over one eye.
“Now, Hari,” he bubbled, emerging with a frying pan which he flourished like a short-order book, “you tell friend wife all about the famine and pestilence in India.”
Blanche made a contemptuous grimace and adjusted her skirt.
Friend husband started to caper around her with the frying pan.
“Oh, Moon of My Delight! Gaze upon this jewel of ————*
*Editor’s note: A line of text is missing from the only known existing manuscript.
“Does your husband act this way … er… frequently?” Hari asked. He was at a loss to label Moloch’s conduct without giving offense, but he also wished to absolve himself of all share in this brutal baiting.
Blanche answered in a subdued voice, “Most of the time I think I’m living with a lunatic.”
“Poltroon, my dear, poltroon!” Moloch put in.
“He has no sense of decency, no respect—for me, or for anything. He’s a vulgar, coarse fool.”
She sat there stolidly, making no further attempt to prolong the conversation. It was the attitude of a dumb brute waiting for the ax to fall on its neck. A sort of grim, pathetic, God-help-me air about her. Even Moloch was touched.
He made an attempt to kiss her which she frustrated by giving him a vigorous push.
“You can’t undo your mischief with a kiss,” she hissed. “Leave me in peace, that’s all I ask of you.”
This outburst pained Moloch beyond words. He was like the criminal who hears the words of the sentence that is being pronounced but is dreaming all the while of the day he went fishing thirty-seven years ago—how beautiful the stream looked in the splashing sunlight, the melody of a bird, his own innocent dreams.... What he wanted to say was this:
“Forgive me, Blanche. I’m a wretch. Christ! I don’t want to go on hurting you, but you make me behave this way … with your coldness, your suspicions, your …”
Instead, he asked her in a weary voice if there was any mail. “Is there nothing from Burns?”
She shook her head passively.
“Nothing?” he repeated.
“There’s this,” she answered in a dull voice.
He looked at the envelope incomprehensibly. The handwriting was unfamiliar. He tore it open. Another envelope was inside, folded up within the letter. He looked at it vacantly. There was printing on it:
SHRINE CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF SOLACE CONEY ISLAND, NEW YORK
It was about the annual novena to our Lady of Solace in preparation for the feast of her annunciation “Dear Friend: During this solemn nine days’ prayer, Our Lady of Solace, who is never invoked in vain, will be petitioned for favors including spiritual needs, the sick and infirm, prosperity, positions, success in undertakings, happy marriages, the welfare of expectant mothers, vocations, and whatever else may be desired by those who seek Our Blessed Mother’s help.”
He flung the letter aside without finishing it. “Somebody’s playing a prank,” he thought. Now he noticed another envelope, much smaller than the others, with four rows of dotted lines:
KINDLY BURN A VIGIL LIGHT!
For a Novena..................
..............................$1.00
“Bah! The dirty rascals!” he muttered. “I wouldn’t give them a nickel, not even if they promised to get me out of Purgatory.”
No one paid any attention to his mutterings. Blanche tried to
make herself inconspicuous by busying herself with the cooking. Hari was rummaging through the books which were heaped on the china closet.
Moloch collapsed in the easy chair which had been dragged into the kitchen. Anything he had any use for he kept in the kitchen. It was the only room in the house he cared to live in.
His thoughts returned to Ronald Burns out in North Dakota. Why the devil was Burns so silent? He missed those huge bundles of mail which used to pass between them. Ten pages of enthusiasm for Dreiser, an essay on The Bomb, reams about Dostoevsky … almost a little book on The Idiot alone.... What was the matter? Had Blanche come between them? Had she been writing Burns about him … spreading calumnies?