One can bear so many things if only there is one in the world to call a friend.
He thought of that line in the Egyptian’s letter: “There must be a humanitarian soul in which to deposit your pains and sufferings. …” God, that was a scream when he read it. But it was no joke! Ronald Burns had brought him the one friendship that he cared about. And now that was dissolving, apparently.
Ronald Burns was a musician and a litterateur. For three months he had shared the glories of existence with Dion Moloch and his wife. His return to North Dakota left those two individuals where he had found them—stranded on the mudflats of matrimony. For a time they had bobbed blissfully in the deep swift tide of companionship; then the tide had ebbed and they were left in the mud, stuck like scows.
Was Blanche in love with Burns? Moloch was ready to believe so. Was Burns in love with Blanche? That was more important. It made no difference to him what happened between the two so long as their friendship was not destroyed. If Burns wanted his wife— excellent! Come and get her! He could think of no happier solution of his difficulties. But if Burns wanted her, why then had he returned to North Dakota? Was he afraid to face the truth? Was it fear of hurting him? Had they no eyes, these two? Couldn’t they see he had stepped out of the way to give them free room?
The marginal notations, and the long list of words piled up in the back of each book which Hari Das discovered in browsing among Moloch’s slender collection, brought forth a series of critical appreciations that dissipated Moloch’s retrospections.
Of a sudden Hari Das gave a loud exclamation of joy and astonishment. With reverent fingers he clasped a worn volume and pushed it under Moloch’s nose.
“Now,” he cried, “now I know you cannot be an utter scoundrel!”
“So he had already accepted me as a scoundrel?” thought Moloch, somewhat cooled by the other’s effusiveness.
Hari thumbed the book eagerly, examined Moloch’s penciled notations, smiled, applauded silently. He skimmed through it with such feverishness as to make one believe he expected to find a treasure at the end.
“You do recognize beauty,” he exclaimed. “I can see that!”
His words startled Moloch and roused him to a pitch of unbridled enthusiasm.
“Stop!” he cried, getting up from the easy chair. “We can’t rush on this way. I want to say something to you. I can’t let your words go unchallenged.”
He was a bundle of excitement now.
“You were speaking about beauty. Yes, there is a little of it left in me … a little that my wife never sees.”
He spoke of himself in a brutally detached way. Blanche, their marriage, the cluttered kitchen in which he paced feverishly (like a tiger whose cage is not only irksome but too small to turn round in)—all this he seemed to dismiss with a wave of the hand as the detritus of another incarnation.
“Yes, Mukerji … Mukerji!” he pronounced ecstatically. (It was a volume of the latter’s that had precipitated this outburst.) “Yes, Hari, there is beauty to ponder on. Great soul-spluttering beauty! There is a man who should have been trumpeted forth ages ago. He makes India vivid, palpable—and yet ethereal, in her holiness. When I put down that book I wept…. Oh, you may shout and rave about your Mahatma Gandhi squatting on his emaciated legs and mumbling economic profundities larded with Vedanta fiddle-faddle. But I tell you, Gandhi may sit on his carbuncled can for another generation to come and never approach this poetry, this sublime beauty of Mukerji’s that stirs me…. I don’t know why I mention the man Gandhi at all. He annoys me, that’s the truth of it. A sort of dry, statistical Christ, forever on the verge of departing this life and forever being resuscitated by his ridiculous fasting and praying. With one foot in the belly of the eternal, he lectures the world about putting its house in order. My God! All that damned nonsense about non-cooperation and spinning wheels! No, give me Mukerji every time. Those Indian nightfalls of his—’descending like an avalanche of soot.’ The Taj Mahal’s ‘sigh fixed in marble.’
“Do you remember, Mari, that description of the humble door of a peasant bathed in the violet light of sunset? Or that unforgettable glimpse of the Ganges when he plunges into the tepid waters to hold discourse with the holy man? Imagine, if you will, two Baptist persons floating down the Mississippi with nothing on but tights. Can you picture them stirring up a wet fervor over the Old Testament?”
Hari Das broke into a loud guffaw.
“Unfortunately,” Moloch continued, “for most of us India has no more reality than an opium dream. When the feeble Mahatma sets up his caterwauling with a throatful of statistical disclosures he gives the world a distinct shock. Who wants to know about the millions of Untouchables, the forty-nine warring sects and tongues, the endless scheme of castes and fakirs, of filthy caves and whoring temples? No, the world prefers to believe that India is not only a land, ninety percent of whose population is continually on the verge of starvation, a land ravished with cholera and scurvy, but something more, something beyond and above all the confusion of massacres, vice, legislation, and crass ignorance. When the swollen white bullocks of Siva have vanished, when the drum-tight paunches of the Brah-mans have disappeared, together with their learned tracts on the digestive organs, what remains of India will still constitute, I feel, a nickelodeon of mystery, horror, and fanaticism. India will always be the place where religion forms the prime daily constituent of man. The sons of India will never permit religion to become the cheap, fractional thing with which the European is content. In their hands it will remain forever a peculiar, intangible earth-product, a something that will outlast our ‘struggle-buggies’ and ‘wind chariots,’ the loudspeaker and the high forceps. Ten thousand years hence, when the world will have been made sick and safe for democracy, and every Jake has his Annie, the dawn will still come up like thunder out of China ‘cross the bay. And down the virgin flanks of Mount Everest there will stream rivulets of sapphire! In that respect your cosmic loafers prophesy correctly. Then, indeed, shall we be able to dispense with town cars and Grand Opera, with elevators and subways, with concrete factories and Babylonish architecture, with barbershop chords and contraceptives that don’t contracept…. Upon my word, there’ll be nothing left of this modern world but a stench. There won’t be left a bottle of ketchup, or a Bromo-Seltzer!”
How much further Moloch would have pushed his imagination the Lord only knows. Blanche had been signaling him throughout this harangue to sit down and partake of the meal, which was ready at the beginning of his speech. Her manner, as she pushed the hasty meal before them, was that of a keeper in a lunatic asylum. She detested these discussions which never got one anywhere and which always ended in the larder being cleaned out. None of these “savants” ever thought of bringing so much as a layer cake along. They came equipped with looking-glass theories, speeches all wool and a yard wide, and—enormous appetites. If they addressed her at all it was only to ridicule her in some sly manner.
Blanche wondered therefore very justly what manner of individual the swarthy gentleman might be who sucked his bacon and eggs like oysters on the half shell.... She had not long to wait.
Hari Das had listened patiently to Moloch in order to be assured of the same courtesy when he took the notion to flap his wings and “bombinate in the void.” First of all—with what seemed like Oriental suavity—he extracted a calling card from his wallet and laid it gravely on the table. Moloch picked it up and scrutinized it:
“Dean of the Oriental Academy? Hm! And where is this institution located, if I may ask?”
Hari stifled his mirth. “The Academy, I am sorry to say, is not yet a physical fact. So far I have only the cards, as you see.”
“Well, that’s an auspicious start,” said Moloch, with comic gravity.
Blanche sniggered openly.
“My friend,” Hari went on, “it is one of my ideals to organize in this Western hemisphere an institution similar in aim and feeling to that universal seat of learning which Tagore has established
at Shantiniketan. I wish to break down the stupid prejudices which divide your world from mine. I want to see in America—because, in the last analysis, America is the only place to try such an experiment—a university where every culture, every people, will receive its due. I want to abolish forever that circular hypothesis of Greco-Roman origins. The Chinese must have their share of glory, and the Arabs; we must recognize the great contribution of the Slavs, the Negro races, the Jews, the Malayans …”
Moloch wondered especially what it was the Malayans had contributed to the great stream of civilization, but he held his tongue.
In estimating the task which confronted the founder of such an institution never once did Hari Das touch upon such prosaic requisites as money, advertising, football teams, or such perquisites. Did he expect this eclectic institution to flourish without an Alumni Association? What would take the place of football and regattas? Religion?
Almost as if he divined what was in Moloch’s mind, Hari announced with the utmost seriousness: “It should be the duty of every educated American to know and appreciate the other great religious teachers of the world. Jesus the Christ is not the be-all and end-all of religion! The life of Jesus, as described in your Bible, what is it but a repetition of the incidents that occurred in the life of the great Gautama who lived over five hundred years before your Savior? …”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but he’s not my Savior!” said Moloch.
Hari smiled tolerantly and continued.
“Take such unique occurrences as the immaculate conception, the temptation by the Prince of Darkness, the slaughter of the innocents by Herod: these are not isolated Christian myths! Consider the familiar parables of Jesus: the parable of the Prodigal Son, and of the Marriage Feast at Cana … why, they were known to the Hindus and Buddhists of the pre-Christian era. The rituals of the Catholic Church—have you any idea how many of them have been borrowed from Buddhism?”
Here Hari Das made a digression to explain to Moloch and Blanche (for she was listening, too, with some amazement) the manner in which Pythagoras came by his knowledge of the doctrines of pre-existence and transmigration of souls, of ascetic observances and vegetarianism, of the virtue of numbers, and the idea of the fifth element, which was unknown in Greece and Egypt at that time. “Ether as an element,” said Hari, “was known only among the Hindus then.”
“Good stuff, Swami!” chirped Moloch. “Some of our pundits trace everything back to Greece and Rome. Our traffic regulations, for instance, we borrowed them from the congested days of the Roman Empire. The Street Cleaning Department gets no end of brilliant ideas from the archaeological surveys made in Crete. Take our open-work plumbing—you might think that a German importation. No sirree! We copped that idea from the
ruins of the Palace of Knossos As for myself, I think the most important item the Greeks gave birth to was tragedy.”
“Even that is a myth,” Hari exclaimed, ignoring the Nietz-schean invitation to the dance.
“No doubt,” said Moloch dryly.
“You see,” Hari began again, “in the Occident, because of your falsified traditions, your emphases are on the wrong things. The vast contribution to civilization made by the Oriental peoples, a contribution that is extremely more important in the ultimate than any Parthenon, Roman laws, or Attic tragedies … this great contribution which flows from Egypt, China, Africa, India, Japan, has been either deliberately minimized by your pedants or else respectfully forgotten so as not to affect the continuity of that beautiful Greco-Roman hypothesis.
“We read in your books endless panegyrics on Plato and Aristotle, on Euclid, Aesop, Pythagoras, and Hippocrates, but there is never any mention, unless I am woefully misinformed, of the fact that we were the first teachers of plane and spherical trigonometry. In the science of numbers the Greeks never even approached the ancient Hindus. Take the simple, practical science of arithmetic. It would have been impossible without a system of decimal notation, would it not? Who gave it to you? The Arabs. And where did the Arabs get it? From India.... What is plane geometry after all but an elaboration and extension of the Vedic formulae for the construction of sacrificial altars! As for music, the scale with the seven notes was known in India centuries before the Greeks had it; it was built up from the chanting of primitive Vedic hymns …”
“Whoa, whoa!” cried Moloch good-naturedly. “Soon you’ll be telling me that the theory of relativity is an anachronism.”
Thus the conversation proceeded, while the icebox was steadily drained of jams, fruits, cheese, of all the edibles that Blanche had been holding in reserve for future meals.
Stimulated by Moloch’s sly encouragement, Hari Das trampled joyously on things sacred and profane in the Occidental world. Moloch applauded generously, and when the former ran short of material supplied him with ideas. They were in perfect agreement that without Cascara America would perish of constipation; that halitosis was a scourge second only to leprosy. America: the land of stop and go! Big Ben: the workingman’s idol!
Blanche was a basilisk, heavy-lidded, blinking indignantly. The warm blood rose to the back of her neck and clotted her thoughts and impulses. A dull rage thickened her tongue; it hung in her mouth like a crape.
In due course Hari got around to our national heroes. He had a severe prejudice against Lincoln because of the Gettysburg Address.
“Either Pericles anticipated Lincoln,” said Hari, referring to the famous funeral oration of the Peloponnesian War, “or we must believe the Great Emancipator to be a plagiarist.”
“God,” cried Moloch, half in earnest, half in jest, “if you’re going to take Lincoln from us too”—he scratched his head vigorously—”you may as well summon the angel Gabriel. That’s the last ditch! I didn’t mind seeing Washington go. In his pajamas he was nothing, you might say, but a British realtor with a strong propensity for the wenches. Franklin—he had to be exposed, too, as a bibulous, whoring son of a chessplayer who liked nothing better than to loll about on the sidewalks of Paris with immoral Frenchwomen. But when it comes to Lincoln .. . hang it, there ought to be something sacred in this democracy of ours. A plagiarist, you say? Teh! Teh! Teh! And he knew such good jokes.... But then the Civil War was too big a joke for him, I guess.”
“Tell me, you’re not holding anything up your sleeve against Robert E. Lee?” he added as an afterthought.
Hari appeared mystified.
“What? You don’t know Robert E. Lee? Man, he’s the only figure in American history that no one can throw dirt at. Beside him General Grant was just a horny gaffer given to smoking cheap cigars. As for General Sherman—well, to put it politely, he was a common, low-down Jack the Ripper. When he finished marching through Georgia there wasn’t enough vegetation left for a plant louse to cling to. All our national heroes—Webster, Brigham Young, Barnum, Buffalo Bill, Jesse James—they were all tainted. There isn’t even a good word to be said for that pathetic washboiler Carrie Nation. She wasn’t an epileptic, but she heard voices too.”
These names were as familiar to Hari Das as an almanac of Polynesian deities, or Lydia Pinkham’s remedies for women’s complaints.
Blanche had been listening to all this nonsense with a polite sneer. Several times she had been on the point of blowing up.
Finally, she got up, made an inarticulate reference to her husband’s diseased mind, and signified that she was retiring.
“So early, my zephyr?” Moloch tauntingly placed his hand on her shoulder to detain her. “I had something to say to you concerning our friend here.”
”Your friend, if you please…. You’re not going to ask me to fix a place for him, I hope?” She made the feeble excuse that she was expecting her mother.
“You never dropped a word about that, Blanche.”
“Oh, didn't I?” She turned to Hari as if he were a judge before whom she was pleading a case. “He goes about in a trance when he’s home. You’d think I was a piece of furniture instead of his wife.”
“Come
, come,” said Moloch, “Hari doesn’t want to hear that nonsense. Look here, why can’t Hari sleep with Matt? I’m sure Matt won’t mind.”
“How do you know he won’t?”
“Because they’re great friends already, isn’t that so, Hari?”
The latter was perplexed and exceedingly uncomfortable. He begged them not to inconvenience themselves on his account.
“Tut, tut!” cried Moloch. “It’s a pleasure.”
More fruitless words were exchanged—with dagger thrusts and cobra venom. Nevertheless, Moloch was determined to have his way.
Hari Das derived a somewhat malicious enjoyment from this wretched, absurd squabble. Instinctively he aligned himself with his host, not because there was more justice on that side, but because the Hindu view of women made Blanche appear in his eyes as a sinister example of the fruits of that Occidental evil called feminism. He said nothing, but if one could read his thought it was that a sound thrashing would terminate a lot of unnecessary argument.