Moloch: Or, This Gentile World (17 page)

He was still dreaming about the ferry, and the golden, mellow days of the Nineties, when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of two giant gray cruisers swinging at anchorage in the basin. A huge steel coaling dock, with lacy network of bars and girders, appeared and vanished. Beyond it all were the skyscrapers, looming up like rugged sentinels in a turquoise haze. Finally, old Wallabout Market, lying just beyond the grease-streaked waters of the creek; separated by a comfortable distance from the odors of decomposition by which the creek is identified.

Somehow, amid the ceaseless change, the market survived. Not a building ever seemed changed, though doubtless here, too, subtle metamorphoses took place. Row upon row of low redbrick storehouses, bulging with produce, abubble with hand trucks, crates, and gunnysacks. There was something archaic about Wallabout Market. Perhaps it only seemed so, but the impression created was that of permanence, durability. It was as though Peter Stuyvesant had laid his heavy hand upon it, and defied the dago and the sheeny to remove it.

WHEN MOLOCH ARRIVED AT HIS HOME THAT AFTER
NOON
he found Sid Prigozi planked on the doorstep, waiting for him. The fellow looked the same as ever, possibly a trifle worse— unkempt, greasy, hatless. His features were stretched in a sickly smirk that was intended as a badge of welcome.

“Well, well,
Mister
Moloch!” at the top of his voice. “If I ain’t glad to see
you
.
I thought you were sick in bed....”

“You knew damned well I wasn’t.”

“Aha! The old stuff, I see. Taking a day off again, eh? What’s up now?”

Moloch tried to put an end to this jabbering with a sneer.

“Christ!” he ripped out. “Do you have to visit me every time I take a day off? Do you suppose you contribute anything to my happiness by dropping around this way?”

Prigozi had been sitting on the stoop like a bird of prey during
these greetings. He got up now and commenced to dance about his friend Moloch, rubbing his hands and making India-rubber faces as he spoke. Throughout this strange performance, as he shot one remark after the other, he kept surveying the other from head to foot in no complimentary manner.

“So I spoil your vacations, do I...
Mister
Moloch?”

That
“
Mister
“!
It was like a dentist’s pet drill There were times when Moloch wanted to run at the mention of it.

“Come on inside,” he said quietly. “We can talk better in there.”

“No, why should we go inside?” shouted Prigozi, in his squeaky, high-pitched voice. “You’re ashamed to talk to me in public, are you? You don’t like me to dance in the street in front of your home, eh? All right, we’ll sit down here on the stoop. I’ll try to behave like a minister.” He paused. “Now tell me, Mister Moloch, just what ails you? Tut, tut! Don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong. I know there’s some dame behind it all. Out with it … who is she?”

Moloch laughed, but not so contemptuously as he endeavored to. “Always a skirt, heh? Go on, hand me one of your windy psychological spiels.”

“There you go! Didn’t I say so?” Prigozi bounced to his feet

and started to pull a jig on the stoop “Out with it!
Confess!

Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes…. You’ve got a mild euphoria today, I notice; you look pale, a little haggard around the eyes.”

“Oh, let up! I haven’t any euphoria, and I’m not disturbed about a woman.” He stopped, and reflected a moment. “Look here, if I told you the truth, what then?”

“Well now, that all depends. The truth, you say? Do you want me to tell you something, Mister Moloch? …
THE TRUTH ISN'T IN YOU!
You’re a confirmed cheat. You even lie to yourself. You may be telling yourself this minute that you’re truthful with me, but if we were to go into it, the chances are we’d discover that you were humbugging again. However, I’m listening.”

“If you could conquer the illusion that I’m a patient of yours …”

Prigozi interrupted. “This sounds good to me. I’m staying on for the rest of the day. We’ve got to run this down, whatever it is.... Oh, don’t look so glum about it. I don’t invite myself to dinner very often, and when I do, you’ll recall that I usually pay for the meal.”

Moloch was thinking of the reception Prigozi would get. Blanche usually handled him like a third rail.

“I dropped by, Dion,” said Prigozi, dropping his bantering and worming, “because I wanted to have a serious chat with you. I knew you weren’t ill. Tell me frankly—can I help you in any way? What’s bothering you?”

Moloch slapped him brusquely to hide his affection.

“I don’t understand you,” he said. “Can’t a fellow take a day off without exposing himself to your infernal investigations? You want to know why I stayed away today. Well, look here … don’t laugh! I’m going to tell you the truth: I thought I wanted to write …”

Prigozi melted. It was not precisely what he had expected to hear.

“Hang it all,” he said gravely, “why don’t you stay home and write? I don’t mean for you to quit your job, but for God’s sake, stop running around nights with Marcelle, and Betty, and this one and that one. Give yourself a chance. I believe in you!”

“You mean it?” A shyness suddenly seized Moloch. “Do you mean to say that you think I can write?” Before Prigozi could answer, he continued: “Wait a bit; let me explain. I know it sounds ridiculous to ask a question like that. One ought to know, I suppose, whether or not he can write. But I tell you, I’m all at sea. I can’t get started, for some reason. Someone, or some thing, is forever getting between me and my impulses, robbing me of my energies....”

“You mean Blanche, I guess. Don’t misunderstand me. Not that Blanche deliberately prevents you from doing what you wish, but… well, damn it anyway, why do you permit her to get in your way?” He dropped his voice a peg. “Am I hurting you? I don’t mean to say anything offensive.”

“You’re not. Go ahead. I’m glad you mentioned it. I’ve got to
talk to someone about it. You’re not so far off the track.”

Prigozi seemed at a loss to know just how to help Moloch
along. It was seldom the latter honored him with his confidences
in such matters. With other things it was different. His apprecia
tion was so intense that he grew flustered and said things of no
consequence, things he never meant There were other indica
tions of his embarrassment. He turned red as a beet, his eyes
became watery, his lips trembled and twitched as though he were
making a proposal of marriage.

“By the way,” he inquired, “what did you do with yourself today? You haven’t told me yet. The burlesque?”

“Hell no! Why do you suspect that? Perhaps I went to the Aquarium.”

“People don’t go to the Aquarium, Mister Moloch, to see belly dancers. Tell me, how was Cleo today?”

Moloch smiled. It was a rather wan, pathetic smile.

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “However, get this straight: generally I invent the burlesque shows! Sometimes I do it to get a rise out of people, sometimes to indulge my sense of the grotesque. Often it’s intended as a subterfuge, if there are women about, to make the conversation spicier, to help me establish a more intimate footing without wasting a deal of valuable time. Understand?”

“Serious, Dion, I don’t. There’s something queer about such behavior. But then, that’s neither here nor there. Where were you then, if it was not the burlesque?”

“Had a long walk.”

“That all?”

“Isn’t that enough? I’ve been out ever since breakfast; strolling about, thinking, mooning, vegetating.” He went into a lengthy exposition of his state of mind. The other listened gravely. When Moloch talked to him in this earnest, rhapsodical fashion all the windows of his soul opened. Nothing his friend might ask of him could prove too great. He was almost ashamed to confess it to himself, but it was so—for Moloch he was prepared to make a greater sacrifice than for anyone he knew … including his wife.

“I don’t have to tell you, Sid,” Moloch was saying, “but that job of mine saps me dry. They should have a YMCA secretary, not me. Someone whose feelings are encased in an oyster shell. I’m too soft. How I come by this Jesus Christ foolishness licks me....

“The old man thinks the world of you, Dion.”

“I know it. He told me only the other day that I stood aces high. But on top of that he gives me a lecture for being too big-hearted. He knows I’m always in the hole.”

“Do you ever get any of it back—this dough you’re handing out so lavishly?”

“Damned little. I’d be a fool if I expected it to be otherwise.”

“This generosity is admirable, Dion, but you ought to do a little more for yourself. What do you expect to do—die in harness?”

“I know, I know. What do you want—a row of spare-time novels? I tell you, when it comes five o’clock, I’m licked. The company’s got me, body and guts. And when I get home, there’s Blanche. Do you know what it feels like to sit down at the table with a totem pole?”

“How about Edda?”

“How about Betelgeuse? That’s how much I see of Edda. Damn Blanche! She has a trick of maneuvering the kid out of reach that makes my blood boil. You’d think I was a contamination!”

“You think an awful lot of Edda, don’t you?”

A look of anguish sped over Moloch’s countenance. Prigozi’s words were like a iorch that set his thoughts aflame.

“By God!” he swore. “There are times when I feel like murdering her.”

He had forgotten all about Edda in his hatred for Blanche.

“It’s a rotten shame,” Prigozi remarked. “I’m not thinking of Blanche.
Edda
…
that’s who’s getting a raw deal.”

“I know it.” Moloch’s voice softened. It became quavery. “No one in the world could make me behave this way except Blanche. This quarreling and battling, I detest it thoroughly. Why, we fly at one another for nothing at all! The other night, for instance, the two of us were lying in bed, she in one room and I in the other. Neither of us could sleep. Finally we sat up in bed and began to insult and abuse each other. As I tell it to you now it seems hardly believable that two intelligent people could let themselves go in such a fashion. We stormed and raged like two maniacs. What oaths! It was horrible…. Well, at last we got to such a pitch that we jumped out of bed simultaneously and went for each other’s throat....”

He paused here.

“I’ll tell you something. Do you know what I believe? Sometimes I believe that she
wants
me to strike her!”

“Do you—ever?”

“Y-e-e-s … I have. I won’t deny it. I defy anyone in my predicament not to.... She stands there, egging me on, daring me to touch her, accusing me of the vilest things … what am I to do? If I remain silent and glower at her, or if I try imploring her to stop, she commences to scream. And how she can scream! I imagine everybody in the neighborhood must be awakened. And what insults! She piles them up like cordwood. Eventually she adds one too many and then, bang!—my fist shoots out automatically. That very instant I regret it, but it’s too late. Even a saint couldn’t stand by idly and tolerate such abuse.... Anyway, last night when I hit her she just dropped like a sack … there wasn’t a groan out of her. You can imagine my state of mind. I was conscience-stricken.”

Moloch paused again. Prigozi didn’t have a word of comment.

“With the rumpus the kid wakes up. She cries for Blanche. All that tumult in the dark, and then the sudden quiet… it frightened her stiff. I was frightened myself, and filled with loathing. What a way to bring up a child, I thought. I wished to Christ that I was dead! Of course, I looked after Blanche immediately, picked her up, talked to her soothingly, bathed her face, tried to smooth her hair.... What hurt most of all was that she never said a word. No reproaches. Not a word. Nothing. She just looked up at me tenderly and put on a brave smile. Her eyes opened wide and stared into mine. And the strangest thing was there nothing in them but trust, and pity perhaps. ‘Jesus!’ I said to myself. ‘This will never happen again!’ “

He laughed hysterically. A thought occurred which filled him with shame, which seemed to mock the fervor of the words still fresh on his lips.

Why was it, he asked himself, that at such moments he also experienced a feeling of elation, a curious abortive longing to repeat the drama, as though that brief interval of tranquillity, when he held his wife in his arms and spoke to her tenderly, was compensation for all the misery and degradation that preceded it?