Moloch: Or, This Gentile World (25 page)

About and around him was a vast enclosure whose limits he could only faintly apprehend. Before him rose the walls of a fabulously hoary castle whose ramparts bristled with spears. Pennants wrought with miraculously diabolical designs fluttered ominously above the crenellated battlements. Fire-eating monsters, repulsive and licentious-looking, leered at him from the battle-scarred portals of the castle. A sickly fungus growth choked the broad sweeps leading out from the terrifying portals. The gloomy casements were bespattered with the remains of great carrion birds which gave off a most nauseating stench of putrefaction.

But what awed and fascinated him most was the gruesome color scheme of the castle. It was a red, but like no red he could recall. The walls nearest him, indeed, had a warm bloodlike hue, the tint of rich corpuscles emerging from a knife wound. And yet, it was not exactly such a tinge but rather as though a layer of rich Carolina clay had been compounded with it and given it a glazed, carnal sheen.

Beyond the frontier walls loomed more spectacular parapets and battlements, turrets and spires, each receding rank steeped in varying shades of this murderous dye until it seemed to his terrified eyes that the whole monstrous spectacle was a butcher’s orgy, a Caracalla fantasy, dripping with gore and excrement.

He averted his gaze for a moment for fear he would swoon; when he looked up again with trembling lids the foreground had lost some of its odious appeal. Instead of the poisonous fungus and the scabby carcasses of vultures, he saw a rich mosaic of ebony and cinnamon shadowed by deep purple panoplies from which cascades of cherry blossoms slithered and arranged themselves in billowy heaps on the chequered court. A few yards from where he stood there was a resplendent couch festooned with royal drapes and pillows of gossamer loveliness. On it his wife reclined languidly, as if anticipating his arrival…. It was not a wholly familiar Blanche, though he recognized her tiny mouth at once. He waited expectantly for an inane tweet-tweet. Instead there issued from her columnar throat a flood of contralto notes which sent the blood hammering to his temples and made him buoyant with the madness of youth. It was only then that he became aware of her nudity, of the vague splendor of her loins and bosom.

He bent over her to lift her in his arms, but recoiled with horror at the sight of a dun-colored spider crawling over her breast. His fear amused her and she commenced anew a deep vibrant melody that bewitched him. But the sight of the foul spider crawling unmolested over her gleaming white body filled him with loathing and he ran like one possessed toward the castle walls....

As he reached the forbidding, menacing gates, encrusted with preposterous scarabs, a strange thing happened. The huge rusty hinges groaned and creaked, and by some magic connivance, the towering gates swung slowly open and admitted him.

Inside the portals a narrow path led straight to a spiral staircase that wound dizzily about a flaming turret. He fled precipitately up the iron steps, growing more frightened and breathless as he climbed frantically higher and higher, never seeming to reach the top. Finally, when it seemed that his heart must break with the exertion, he found himself at the summit. But the ramparts and battlements, the casements and turrets of the mysterious castle were no longer beneath him. A black volcanic waste unfolded, a waste furrowed with innumerable chasms of bottomless depth. Here nothing of plant or vegetable life could be seen. Petrified limbs of gigantic proportions, carbuncled with glistering mineral crustations, sprawled supinely in this brackish void. Gazing more intently, he was amazed, and then terrified, to discover that in this phantasmal waste there existed a spark of life. It was a slimy, crawling ophidian life which contented itself with winding and unwinding huge coils about the petrified remains of a forest.

Then suddenly he had a presentiment that the towering steeple up which he had climbed in panic was crumbling at the foundation, and that he and this immense spire together hung teetering
over the edge of the cataclysmic waste, threatening at any moment to be dashed into shattering annihilation. Presently the profound stillness was broken. Faintly there came the sound of a voice—a human voice. Possibly it was Blanche enticing him again with her throaty warbling. He forgot for a moment the imminence of the pit, the scaly reptiles waiting with heavy-lidded eyes for his certain downfall. As though his very salvation depended on it, he strained every nerve to recapture the tones of that faint human voice. Suddenly it rang out again with a weird moaning accent, and then quickly died, as if it had been choked down deep in the sulphurous abysses of the slimy void. His support was lurching violently, describing great swooping arcs that ceased miraculously just when the inevitable seemed inescapable. The voices rang out clearer. They were human—as human as the laughter of hyenas. Shrill lunatic screams, bloodcurdling oaths and epithets … the piercing, horror-laden cach-inations of the mad.

And then the rail against which he was leaning gave way. He was flung out into space, catapulted with meteoric velocity into the shrieking Bedlam. Leprous claws, and talons covered with verdigris, reached out and stripped the tender flesh from his hide as he continued on in his swooning flight. Down, down, down he shot, his beautiful frail body a loathsome dripping carcass of ribboned flesh. His bones felt as if they had been mangled by unicorns.

And now he was no longer hurtling with terrifying speed
through the interminable void, but shooting down a paraffin
incline which was supported in space by gigantic columns of
human flesh, formed in an inextricable pattern of latticework. The
chute, he could see, emptied into the cavernous maw of a decapi
tated ogre who champed his teeth with fierce delectation. Only a
few hundred yards to go and the cruel gaping orifice would open
for the last time. Another instant and he would be enmeshed in
those frightful tusklike fangs … the monstrous jaws would be
crunching his polished bones into pulverized bits

But at the very moment of his doom the monster sneezed. The explosion snuffed out the universe.

A TWELVE-HOUR SLEEP HAD REPAIRED THE RAVAGES OF
 the previous night, the night spent in Greenpoint with Dave. Moloch found a note lying in the top drawer of his desk. It was from his new secretary, Valeska.

The office was crowded with youngsters waiting to be interviewed. It promised to be another terrific day. He glanced at the note impatiently, put it down absentmindedly, and looked at the sea of faces that swarmed up close to him. They reminded him of curious aquatic sports whose flattened snouts rubbing restlessly against the glass tanks in the Aquarium provide amusement and edification for the sightseer. His thoughts were divided between the answer that he would be obliged to make and the arithmetical problem of filling the vacancies that appeared on the slate. It was a terribly late start he had made, and the mob beyond the rail was impatient. He read the note once again.

“I’m going to hold you to your promise tonight. You must take me somewhere—I don’t care where,
but tonight!
”

“Later, Valeska … later,” he begged.

Valeska was nettled.

“But you’ll go?” she pleaded hurriedly. She appeared to be desperate about it.

“I’m not sure,” he mumbled. A perplexed look came over his face.

His perplexity was well founded. Only that morning he had promised Blanche to raise a sum of money so that she might have an abortion performed. He hadn’t the slightest idea, when he made the promise, how he would raise the money. No matter whom he thought of it seemed hopeless. Debts, little ones and big ones, old ones and new ones, confronted him at every turn. There wasn’t a soul whom he had overlooked. He got out an address book and skimmed through it; opposite every name there were figures. They ran from two dollars up to three hundred. These latter sums, running up into three figures, he no longer regarded as debts. A debt was an obligation one intended to meet someday.

Toward the middle of the afternoon Valeska made bold to broach the subject of the note.

“Look here, Dion,” she said, with strange determination, “you simply
can’t
put me off tonight. I don’t care what you had planned, you’re going out with
me!
”

“But Valeska—” He leaned as far forward as he could and murmured: “Can’t we make it tomorrow? I’ve got something
very
important to attend to this evening.”

Valeska refused to countenance the thought.

“Tell me what it is,” she whispered. “Perhaps I can suggest a way out.”

“Wouldn’t do any good,” he replied, looking more than ever perplexed. He looked at her again, baffled, wondering if she could help in any way. There was only one way she could help, he knew that only too well.

She gave him a strong look of encouragement. “You don’t
need to keep anything from me, Dion. Can I help you? What’s disturbing you?”

He told her the whole business—falteringly, apologizing at intervals, and blushing now and then like a schoolboy. She seemed neither surprised nor aggrieved.

“Must you have it immediately?”

He grasped at the straw she proffered. “Absolutely!” he replied.

He looked at her so straightforwardly she never doubted him for an instant. “Well, then … how much?” she asked.

He dissembled further, not so successfully this time—at least, he thought not.

“You don’t mean that you want to … er, that you’ll get it for me?”

“How much?” she repeated. Her voice had grown a little harder.

“At least a hundred … I guess.” He had no precise idea of what was needed. When he promised Blanche faithfully that he would raise the money for her he hadn’t the slightest hope of carrying out his promise. A hundred dollars seemed like a sensible sum now. It was a round figure and it sounded to him, as it rolled off his tongue, just the appropriate sum for a professional fee. No doubt it could be managed for less, but he was not supposed to be a connoisseur in this realm. The last time Blanche had managed everything herself. He never knew what she paid. All he remembered was that it was a sanguine affair. He resolutely shut his mind to further speculation. It left a bad taste in his mouth. The very thought of those filthy butchers on Henry Street made his blood boil....

Valeska put an end to his reflections.

“Meet me at six o’clock and I’ll give you the money. Return as soon as you can. I’ll be waiting. A hundred’s all I can manage … not a cent more. However, you won’t need to worry about returning it immediately. When I need it, I’ll ask for it.”

He was about to thank her profusely but the look she threw him made him change his mind at once.

“You don’t need to think I’m playing the good Samaritan,” she sneered. “Let’s not make any pretenses.”

When she left he tried to apply himself to his work. Questions presented themselves. He wondered where she was going to raise the dough. “Tonight, tonight!” What the devil was that all about?

“Christ,” he mumbled to himself, “I hope the old man doesn’t get wind of it.” And who was going to foot the expenses for this little expedition? “Hell,” he said to himself, “I guess there’s no need worrying about that. If she can raise a hundred as easily as that, she can raise a few more.”

He knew he wouldn’t have any trouble getting away from Blanche. Once he showed her the money he could do what he liked. But what the devil did Valeska want of him? That’s what bothered him most....

In a dancing trough in Harlem they were playing “The Circassian Walnut Waltz.” Ebony giants in emperor green were clinging fast to pale, skinny things smothered in lace and pearl smoke. The hall was one huge mirror of banjo eyes floating in a sloe gin fizz.

Moloch and Valeska were jammed together at a little table wedged in among many others. A magnificent, barbaric jazz deafened their ears. They were forced into such proximity that Valeska’s knees had no freedom of movement except between the vise of his muscular legs. Floods of rain-drenched melodies poured forth from the powerful epileptic figures on the dais. From the sluggish, drugged couples on the floor a peculiar aroma emanated, as from the marriage of camphor and patchouli. Notes like deep wounds gushed over them in founts of dragon blood.

Valeska pointed to the leader, a hypnotic topaz clown. Her bosom was heaving, her shoulders twitching in response to the frozen thuds that reverberated from the traps.

“Have another drink?” Moloch was in an ecstasy himself.

“Get some gin,” she begged. “I can’t drink your rotten booze.” She slipped him a bill under the table.

They sat there electrified, unable to take their eyes off the weird figure who directed the swaying group on the platform. He was no great mogul with his men, this leader. No panjandrum of stuffy concert hall, wielding an airy baton. A smooth, slippery dynamo, rather, charging the sentient ether with shuddering violet rays of ecstasy. His eyes had the mossy glaze of two oysters on the half shell. Wrapped in a tarnished skin, like a strong cigar; a Mumbo-Jumbo in a full-dress suit. Wearing a lyric smile.