Moloch: Or, This Gentile World (5 page)

Sorrow  concealed like an oven stopped, 

Doth burn the heart to cinders.

Kindly write me whenever you have a chance to do so. Advise me what to do. Shall I be patient, and my patience come to its
limits? Will conditions be continuously bad in the United States as they are now? Is there any hope of the sun shining to kill the dark clouds and enlighten the obscurity? I hardly believe so. Here is what I am thinking of: I find it a black spot in the white page of my life to come to America, and return back to Egypt with failure, and I would rather die than so do.

My soul is very ambitious, and it is imprisoned within the cage of clay, the body! Shall I release it to enjoy liberty and boundless freedom?

I like to return back to New York, and shall not do so unless I know what my determination there will be. I do not want to be out of work. I want to be employed by you as a sergeant to look after the clothes no matter what long my hours of work will be, as long as I shall be under your direction, and will be leading a sedentary life.

I am sure your heart will sympathize my state and you will resume your endeavorings to put me in some position, and see me settled. I want to be employed by you as a messenger and do any other inside work. Do help me, please.

I shall come back to New York when you will be able to put me in such a work and send me a word to report myself to your kindness.

You may also communicate with your friends if they may let you know definitely that they will employ me in a decent vacancy. Don’t care much about the people as I have no faith in them. I have only a very unshaking faith in you. You are the only man I adore and worship. You will be able, yourself, to solve my problem. I am sorry to trouble you with this long letter, but you remember when “Diogenes” the Greek philosopher of the old and goneby days, was wandering through the streets of Athens, bare footed, and with a lantern in his hand, to find the man.

I have wandered, and for a very considerable time, to find the man in America, and I have in
you,
the true man.

Don’t hesitate to help me as much as you can. I want you to employ me as a sergeant, or elsewhere in a decent work. Rate of living is very high, and I am unable to afford being out of work 
for such a long time. I cannot exist.
Read this letter again.
Read it over in your spare time and write an answer please. I don’t want to remain here. I like to come back to New York to see you frequently. Help me to be settled there.

Is Shukrullah still working as a messenger? It is a shame. I have taken a very long time from yours. I must close. With very good wishes and kindest regards I beg to lay under your feet my most respectful homage.

Your obedient servant always,

Sarwat.

Whilst Moloch read the last few paragraphs to himself, a rotund figure, streaming with perspiration, strutted in like a Rhode Island bantam and waddled over to another squat little figure seated at the switchboard.

“Hello, Dave!” he clucked. “Any excitement around here today? How is that boss of yours, Mister Moloch? Is he broke? I may want to borrow a few bucks from him.”

Dave, the squat little figure with the paunch of a Brahman, gave an appreciate smirk and nodded furtively in Moloch’s direction. “He’s got another funny letter....”

“Come here,” yelled Matt Reardon, suddenly spying Prigozi. “The big cheese has a letter from one of his admirers. … Read him that first paragraph, Dion … you know, that bit about ‘the internal pains—what sorrow’s hand has done in my heart,’ and so forth.”

“You here again?” Moloch exclaimed, glancing up at Prigozi. “Why don’t you find some other place to hang around in for a change?”

“I like this joint. There’s atmosphere here.”

“Camphor balls, you mean,” Reardon observed.

“
Psychopaths!
That’s what I mean,” yelled Prigozi, getting into form. “You’re a pack of nuts… the whole lot of you! Think the messengers are goofy, don’t you? Get a lot of fun analyzing ‘em, eh? Let me tell you birds something … these messengers of yours are the only normal ones in this lousy joint. I’ll modify
that—excluding Mister Moloch’s pet freaks, say. Cripes, Matt, you make some awful blunders, but that boss of yours sitting there so complacently”—he looked scathingly at Moloch to see if he were taking this in—”he’s the worst amateur psychologist I ever met. Spends a half hour talking to an applicant, and thinks he can read him like a book. I’ll bet he’s hired more nuts than … well, little Dave over there couldn’t do worse, if you gave him a chance. You people give me a pain.” (He meant Moloch particularly.) “Think you’re conducting a laboratory. Cripes! You’re turning this joint into a wet nursery!”

Moloch looked up from his papers—he had been waiting for Prigozi to finish—and remarked quietly:

“I see. Yesterday it was a clinic. Today it’s a wet nursery.”

“Yeah, and tomorrow it’ll be a lunatic asylum,” roared Prigozi.

Prigozi rambled on, heedless of the impression he made. He fluttered about like a pigeon as he talked. He was very short, hairy, unkempt, and carried himself with the furtive pseudo-important air of a physician who has made a clean-up handling abortions. A third-year medical student, he was plugging along with a bootleg practice on the side, expecting someday to become a full-fledged psychiatrist. For the present, he was wrapped up in the theories of Freud, Jung, Adler, and their ilk. The year previous he had been an enthusiast on vivisection—cut up something like twenty-three guinea pigs, which he secreted in his flat together with a skeleton, a wife, and a few sticks of furniture.

No one could quite fathom why Moloch tolerated him. Indeed, it was something more than mere toleration that Moloch evinced in his relations with Prigozi. One might be tempted to call it a fascination. What it was that fascinated, Moloch himself could not explain. With the possible exception of Dave, who forced himself to admire Prigozi because they were both members of the chosen race, everyone considered him obnoxious and repulsive. It was Matt Reardon’s idea that Prigozi dropped in to show off before the female members of the staff. He attached no importance to Moloch’s air of geniality. In his mind, Moloch was angling for something: when he got it, whatever it was he was
after, you’d see—he’d drop Prigozi like hot shot. He didn’t admire this quality in Moloch very much, even though Prigozi was a rat. He had a different conception of friendship himself. Moloch was too damned—well, “callous”—that was the word.

In the office Prigozi never dropped his coarse bantering attitude. It was all a part of his warm attachment to the “boss,” as he persisted in calling his friend Moloch.... There was no denying the fellow’s unattractiveness. To say that he was ugly is to flatter him. His skin was coarse and pockmarked, and as greasy as if it had been rubbed with lard. His nose, which Matt Reardon had once likened to a rubber syringe, was a huge priapic organ covered with blackheads. When he grew voluble and excited, thick globules of grease seeping from the enlarged pores clustered about the tip. He was forever scratching his scalp, which was infected and caused his scant hairs to fall out, leaving big red rings such as children sometimes exhibit when they get the worms. His clothes were never pressed, and seldom clean; on his coat collar there was always a thick layer of dandruff which lay like a mantle of snowfiakes about his sober wattles.

In the midst of his clowning Prigozi suddenly stopped chattering and looked fixedly at a queer creature seated on a bench in a corner of the anteroom. No one seemed to know how long the man had been sitting there. Looking at him intently, one had the feeling that he might go on sitting there indefinitely … that you could hang him up by the coat collar and leave him to cure, like a ham.

“Call that bozo over,” Prigozi ordered in a thick, suety voice. “Now we’ve got something to make a fuss about.”

“Whoa, there!” Moloch almost shoved the flat of his hand in Prigozi’s face. “Pretty late, isn’t it, for a sideshow performance?” He turned to Lawson, who sat like a Cerberus guarding the sacred portals. “What’s this chap waiting for, Lawson? I thought Matt got rid of all the applicants?”

“He insists on seeing you personally, Mr. Moloch.”

“Well, then,
that’s different
.”
Moloch brought this out with a mocking bite, as if it were the Sultan of Morocco who had requested the privilege of an audience.

Though it was oppressively warm outdoors, the mysterious figure on the bench was dressed like Tweedledum preparing for battle with Tweedledee. Over a pair of dirty flannel trousers he had on a cardigan jacket; also a heavy sweater with a long neck that went up about his ears, and on top of this a ragged ulster which was fastened together with huge safety pins. His pockets were stuffed with old newspapers which he had doubtless collected in the day’s journey as he wandered aimlessly about the city streets. In the buttonhole of his ulster was a tiny American flag.

Matt Reardon nudged Prigozi and pointed to the flag. Prigozi sniggered and settled down to observe this set-to with all his critical acumen. The lenses of his spectacles were bottle-thick and gave his eyes the appearance of two ugly fish snouts pressing against a pair of Mazda bulbs.

“Good morning, friend. Can you give me a job?”

This was the first sign they had that the mysterious one was alive, and human. He had walked listlessly up to Moloch, when that individual beckoned to him, and commenced to talk in a subdued, distracted manner, as though he had been unexpectedly pushed onto the stage during an amateur night contest and was a little uncertain whether the monologue he had prepared was just the thing or not. It was a chaotic, maundering flow of inanity that started off at random and kept going like an eight-day clock. Despite the fact that it was afternoon, almost evening, he was under the impression that it was still morning.

“Just a moment,” said Moloch solicitously, rising and extending his hand in greeting. “Do you mind telling these gentlemen your name?”

“Luther, sir. Luther Becklein. I’m a Presbyterian. My wife, she
was Catholic; we both belong to the Second Presbyterian Church
of Hoboken “

“But I thought you came from Paterson,” Prigozi wheezed, pretending that he had misunderstood.

“No, friend….” Luther was as placid as a lake. “I
used
to live in Paterson years ago. We had three nice rooms there on Second Avenue, three
lovely
rooms. Tillie was just five years old then— and smart as a Jew.…”

Moloch tittered. “As a Jew, you say?” That’s right, friend. I have no religious prejudices. I took her out of the kindergarten later and put her in a parochial school. That was when I lost my job with the window-shade people and we had to move to Hoboken. The missus had to take a jani-tress job, but I used to help her with the dishes and little things… ,”

“Like rushing the growler, I suppose,” Matt remarked in a sedate manner, meaning to imply that such a custom was eminently respectable—quite the proper thing, in fact.

But Prigozi refused to permit the conversation to drift into such channels. He was for dredging at once, to see what lay buried in the rich silt at the bottom. He moved closer to the man and laid a sweaty affectionate paw on his shoulder.

“You said a minute ago, Luther, that you used to belong to the Christian Endeavor Society once. Is that right?”

He spoke in an ominous, threatening tone, as though to convey the impression that such an admission constituted a breach of the law.

But Luther was impervious—to cajolery and threats alike.

Meanwhile, unnoticed by the others, Matt Reardon had invited Moloch’s secretary to join the group and report the conversation verbatim.

“Never mind the Christian Endeavor Society,” said Moloch, suddenly taking a hand in the pleasantries, and radiating a warm, protective assurance which increased Prigozi’s aggravation.

“Is
he
your office boy?” asked Luther, indicating Prigozi.

“No,” said Moloch dryly, “he’s an undertaker—a friend of mine. He just dropped in to pay me a visit.”

While this had been going on, Luther was busy fumbling in his pockets, evidently in search of some object of vital importance. As he emptied one pocket after the other a collection of miscellaneous trifles spilled on to the floor. Among them were two stale ham sandwiches, a pair of pliers, a vest-pocket dictionary, some tacks, three yacht-club buttons which had been polished assiduously, a harmonica, hairpins, marbles … God knows what unthinkable gimcracks he might have exhumed if he hadn’t fortunately come across the object of his search.

Tenderly he placed a worn-looking gilt-edged book in Moloch’s hands. The New Testament!

“They gave it to me at the hospital,” Luther began, in his unruffled, habitually detached manner. “I always keep it with me so as I can read a few lines before going to bed …
to keep me good
.
I don’t really need it, friend, because I never did a wrong in my life, but I believe in bein’ a good Christian…. There ain’t nobody can take my religion away from me, ain’t that right, friend?”