City of Night (43 page)

           “Except,” he went on, “that you hold back. Why? I
know
youre intrigued by Violence. I could sense your excitement when I presented you to the mirror. You saw yourself, Then, as you should be—as you would
like
to be!—as you
could
be! Out of my clothes, you know, youre very ordinary—like hundreds and hundreds of others. (Youre really not my cup of tea),” he added cuttingly. “But I can transform you—if you Let Yourself Go!” he exhorted me forcefully. “Let me!—and I’ll open the door—Wide!—for you. Youll exist in My Eyes! I’ll be a mirror!... Why should we fight our natures, which are meant to be violent?” he went on in the strangely gentle tones. “The past—with its grandeur, its nobility—yes, its purifying Violence—that was the time! It wasnt the ‘compassionate’ hypocrisy of our feeble day!” he sneered. He rose to add a thicker belt to the dummy in black. (Almost every inch of the dummies is covered, except for the faces.)

           He goes on, now speaking about the weak and the strong, how the former are to be used by the latter, extolling violence, drawing pictures of what his world would be like. “Power,” he was saying. “Contempt!” he shouted. “Contempt for the weakness of compassion,” he derides....

           Tense, cold in the warm afternoon, I found myself—although I didnt realize it until he said what he did next—automatically twisting the ring on my finger.

           “Who gave you that ring?” he asked abruptly.

           I hesitated to answer. Finally I said: “My father—a long time ago.” Even to mention my father—to recall the memories of that ring—in the presence of this man suddenly seemed blasphemous.

           Neil made a face of supreme disgust, and I felt anger mushrooming inside of me. “Things like that—which people cling to as memories,” he said, “it’s those things that keep men from realizing their True Nature. My movement will be an upheaval: Nothing is sacred, except Violence and Power. Sentimentality—false memories of tenderness—... Fathers, mothers!” he said contemptuously. “That ring you wear as a symbol of—whatever!” he spat.

           My anger became hatred for him.

           And did he sense this? And had he been counting on this? I didnt have time to consider that, because the scenes that follow will come suddenly like a movie in fast motion.

           Suddenly Neil is crouching before me where I am sitting on the bed. He is sliding a pair of thick-soled, high-length studded boots onto my feet. I stare motionless at him as he winds a thick belt about my waist (
I remember that other man in San Francisco: “You will eventually... if not with me, with some one else.”
) This time, sensing my immediate mood—the mood he has cunningly put me into and will use—he will not even take the time to “dress me up” completely.

           Swiftly he has flung himself on the floor, his head rubbing over the surface of the boots—the tongue licking them. He rolls on his back. His face looks up pleadingly at me.

           Automatically responding (the anger, the hatred like a live gnawing thing inside me)—feeling myself suddenly exploding with that all-enveloping hatred for him
(has he counted on this? does he always?)
and also for what I know I will do at last (senses magnetized on pinpoint), and, too, feeling a tidal-sweeping excitement at the reflections from the mirror which he has carefully moved before the bed so that it records from various angles the multiplied adoration of his face (an adoration augmented shrewdly by the remembered hint, the challenge, of its possible withdrawal: “Out of my costumes you’re very ordinary...”)—his eyes as if about to burst into flame, his tongue like an animal desperate to escape its bondage—I stand over him as he reaches up grasping, urgently opening the fly of my pants.

           “Please—... On me—... Please do it!” he pleaded.

           And as the meaning of the tea looms in my mind, I realize suddenly what he wants me to do. But I cant execute the humiliation he now craves. He rushed into the bathroom, turned the water faucets on fullblast. “Do it,” he pleads....

           The sound of the water, splashing....

           The scene reels in all the incomprehensible, impossible images that follow.

           A gurgling in his throat—and he rises on his knees, face pressed against the wide belt, which he unbuckled urgently with his teeth. Like a dog retrieving a stick and bringing it back to its master, with his teeth clutching the buckle, he slid the belt out of the pants straps—and he crouched on all fours brandishing the belt before me, dangling it from his mouth extended beggingly toward me. “Use it, use it!” he insisted.

           Something inside me had been set aflame, a fire impossible to quench until it has consumed all that it can burn: something aflame with the anger he had counted on. I acted inevitably and as he had wanted all along: I pulled on the belt, which he clung to with his teeth, so that, released, it snapped in a lashing sound against his cheek, leaving its burning imprint.... He knelt there, eyes closed, expectantly....

           I dropped the belt, which fell coiled beside him, the gleaming studs like staring blind eyes on the floor.... He gnaws ravenously on the straps inside the tops of the boots, falls back in one swift movement lying again on the floor as he reaches for my legs with his hands, looping his fingers into the inside straps, bringing one studded boot pushed into his groin. He makes a sound of excruciating pain. Even then, his hands will not release my foot, crushing it into his groin with more pressure. “Harder!” he begs. “Please!
Do It Harder!!!”

           Rocked by currents inside me which sealed off this experience from anything that had ever happened previously to me—aware all the time that it was
I
who was being seduced by
him
—seduced into violence: that using the sensed narcissism in me—and purposely germinating that hatred toward him—he had played with all my hungry needs (magnified by the hint of the withdrawing of attention), had twisted them in order to use them for his purposes, by unfettering the submerged cravings, carried to that inevitable extreme—and disassociating myself from all feelings of pity and compassion, to which—despite the compulsive determination to stamp out all innocence within me and thereby to meet the world in its own savage terms; to leave behind that lulling, esoteric, life-shuttering childhood, that once-cherished place by the window—to which, despite all those things, I had, I know, still clung: to compassion, to pity—and knowing only that this was the moment when I could crush symbolically (as in a dream once in which I had stamped out all the hatred in the world) whatever of innocence still remained in me (crush that and something else—something else surely lurking—but what?—
what!!)
—that at this moment I could prove irrevocably to the hatefully initiating world that I could join its rot, its cruelty—I saw my foot rise over him, then grind violently down as if of its own kinetic volition into that now pleading, most vulnerable part of that man’s body....

           He let out a howl.

           A dreadful sound hurled inhumanly like a bolt out of his throat—a plunging bolt which buried itself instantly within my mind. His face turned to one side as if he would bite the floor in pain. Tears came from his eyes in a sudden deluge which joined the perspiration and turned his face into a gleaming mask of pain. And he sobbed:

           “Why... hurt?... Why... do you...? I... did... for you—... did everything!... Wanted—... want—... Why?... hurt... why?... Wanted lo—...” Clenched teeth choked the word he had been about to utter.

           The scene exploded in my mind. I was seized by the greatest revulsion of my whole life—a roiling, then a quick flooding invading my whole being like electricity; a maelstrom of revulsion—for myself, for him, loathing for him, for what he wanted done—loathing for what I was doing.

           And hearing the racked baleful sobs which continue (“Why... hurt?...” And again the unfinished word: “Wanted—want lo—...”)—seeing that writhing pitiful body, the boot pinioning him to the floor (like a worm! like a helpless worm! like a helpless worm tortured by children!)—seeing that face gleaming with tears and sweat—and feeling, myself, as if the world will now burst in a bright crashing light which will consume us both in judgment—I bent down over him, extending my hand to him—my foot removed from his scorched groin: extending my hand to him, to help him up—to help him!—as if he were the whole howling painracked ugly crushed mutilated, sad sad crying world, and I could now, at last, in that moment, by merely extending my hand to him in pity, help him—and It. Compassion flooded me as turbulently as, only seconds before, the seducing savagery had rocked me to my violated soul.

           And as the man sobbing on the floor in the disheveled wet costume saw my hand extended to him in pity, the howling stopped instantly as if a switch had been turned off within him, and his look changed to one of ferocious anger.

           And he shouted fiercely:

           “
No, no! Youre not supposed to care!”

        
4

           “I knew youd come back,” he said victoriously.

           I had walked out on him that day, and I had stayed away for several days.

           “I understand,” he said. “In the first stages it can be difficult—for some. And those are the ones that turn out to be the best. This time you can use this whip.” He brandished a coiled leather snake. “And if youre ready, I’ll show you my ‘studio’ in the basement.”

           He had misunderstood my purpose in coming back—which was to show him (and to show myself?) that he could never seduce me in that way again. I knew it irrevocably when I saw a black costume lying across the leather-spread bed. He was bent over it folding it to replace it in the closet.

           It was the costume, complete with swastika, of a storm trooper.

           “Were you wearing that?” I asked him.

           “Yes,” he answered proudly. “I wear it only on Special occasions.” But a note of nervousness entered his voice as he said: “Today I went to an Execution.”

           I blinked incredulously.

           “Yes,” he repeated with bravado—but he appears even more nervous now. “You heard right: An Execution! If you had been here, you could have witnessed it. My cat—remember the furry one?—he was becoming too weak—constantly simpering, whining. I hate weakness. I despise it. I loathe it... So I executed him.”

           “You put on that Nazi costume and you—?” I started.

           “Yes! And I Exterminated him—as all weakness must be Exterminated!... I put that cat out of his absurd sniveling misery!” He went on deliberately: “I put him in a bag. I drowned him in the bathtub!” As soon as hes verbalized what hes done, he appears visibly shaken, as if an emotional rubberband had been stretched to the point of snapping.

           I felt violently sick.... The black uniform now being hung adoringly in the closet... the flushed face... the pitiful lumpy body covered with the absurd clothes... the terrifying words.... The dummies gazing blankly....

           Noticing that I was staring at him with undisguised contempt; surprised to see it so coldly aimed at him; realizing all at once that he had misinterpreted my returning here—and looking tense as if my look of disgust had thrown him unexpectedly off-balance—he blurted:

           “There is no excuse for weakness!... Once you allow yourself to be touched by it, youre lost!... And you may think—like that insidious Carl!—that it’s weakness to do—to do the things I do. But remember the importance of Seduction! The Leader of every cause has to set an example, whatever form that takes! He has to show The Way!”

           I want to tell him what I see so clearly. I want to say: “Youve rationalized your masochism—masking your own very real weakness.” But I merely stare at the posed obdurate face, chin thrust out like the caricature of a repugnant dictator—but a very uncertain dictator somehow.

           “You killed that cat,” I said finally—still not really believing it; rather, not wanting to.

           He sighed wearily. The enormity of what hes done seems slowly to be dawning on him. But he fights back, shaking his head: “Once you let weakness touch you—...” he starts; and his whole body begins to tremble instantly, as if his jangled nerves were out of control, rebelling against him. He shook his head as if he were very, very, very tired.

           And then he erupted:

           “I’ll give you an example of what weakness can do!” he shouts as if to blot out his own guilty thoughts.
“The
Example! My own father!... He was weak!... But my—... mother!” He flung the word out with infinite revulsion. “—that—woman!—that loathsome despicable woman with her hatred of the body—... I couldnt go barefoot! I even had to take a bath in the dark!... That woman!—
she
knew.
She
was strong—and she used that strength, and she used my father’s weakness—” He twisted his hands as if wringing out a piece of cloth. “—and she twisted and drained and twisted. And then he—my father—that weak man—would take it out on me—hit
me.
” He flayed himself with the thick belt he had removed from the dark pants. “But I showed him
I
was a Man! I wouldnt run away from him!... And he hit me and hit me and hit me with his belt—until I'd pass out.”
Whack!
—again the belt against his thigh. He didn’t flinch.

           “And then I wouldnt even faint any more,” he said. “I’d just—... let him.... And yet,” he whispered as if in a trance, “and yet—do you know?—that weak, dreadful man—my father—he—...
He wore boots! Boots!
—a symbol of the strength he’d given away so easily, without a fight!
That pitiful man
—
dominated by my mother
—
had the guts to wear Boots!
... And then I found the Answer—Strength!... And when I found that out, I—... You want to know what my first gesture of—of Freedom!—from him and that woman—was?” He threw back his head and roared with pained laughter. He continued as if hypnotized by the remembrance of that ugly past: “I had gone to the movies—secretly because I wasnt even allowed to do that! It was a period picture.... And the hero—a strong, handsome, masculine man (everything my father wasnt!)—he was wearing Boots too. But on him they were Right: No woman would have dominated
him!
... I sat through that movie several times especially for a scene in which that magnificent man was sitting in bed, putting on his Boots! He looped his fingers about the inside straps—and he slipped the boots on! I held my breath.... That night, when my father was asleep, I went into his bedroom. I stood looking at him: Even asleep he looked weak and dominated.... And staring at my—... father!—asleep—I hated him more than ever. I found his boots under the bed. I took them to my room. I got my mother’s scissors.
And I snipped the straps off the insides of his boots!”