Crazy Cock (10 page)

He went to bed and pulled the covers over him. A numbness spread through his limbs; he began to glow, to burn. Were there minutes allotted him, or only seconds? At least he ought to leave a message—one always left a message at the end. He jumped out of bed again and searched feverishly for pencil and paper.

The words raced along as if driven by a lash, staining the smooth, white surface in a continuous, erratic line. As he finished, a cold dank breath that savored already of the grave passed over him. The pencil dropped from his hand, and as the heavy lids fell over his eyes he was rapt away into another time, into a world without end, a frozen void that twanged to the doleful notes of an iron harp.

Over the frozen rim of the void there rose a fiery ball raining rivers of scarlet. He knew now that the end had come, that from this livid, smoldering circle of doom there was no retreat. He was on his knees, his head buried in the black scum. Suddenly a hand seized him by the nape of the neck and flung him backward into the mire. His arms were pinioned. Above him, digging her bony knees into his chest, was a naked hag. She kissed him with her soiled lips and her breath was hot as a bride's. He felt her bony arms tightening about him, pressing him to her loins. Her loins grew big and soft, her belly white and full; she lay against him like a heavy blossom, the petals of her mouth parted lasciviously. Suddenly, in her clawlike grip, there glittered a bright blade; the blade descended and the blood spurted over his neck and into his eyes. He felt his drums bursting and a flood pouring out of his mouth. She lowered her head and rubbed her scaly lips across his cheeks. Gory, she raised her face, and again the blade descended, slid along the side of his face, plunged into his throat and laid the gullet open. Swiftly and neatly she cut away the lobes of his ears. The sky was one great river of scarlet churning with swans and silver whales; a hollow, mocking twang filled the void and the swans flew down, their long necks vibrating like taut strings. . . .

T
HERE WAS
a bang and the door flew open. He heard his name. He turned and sighed deeply.

Hildred threw herself on the bed. “Tony, what have you done?” She gathered him in her arms and rocked him, rocked him to and fro. Like a river drowning in the sea it was. They were one again, as they had always been, as they would
be forever more. Nothing, no not anything, could ever separate them again.

And then there came a loud knock at the door. Hildred trembled, twitched in his grasp. “Lie still!” he whispered, and tightened his arms about her. Again the knock, louder this time, imperative, threatening.

Vanya enters . . . à la Modjeska. Surveys the scene with cool comprehending glance. Stands beside the bed and regards the prostrate figure as if it were an ikon of our Lord Immanuel. She speaks to Hildred in a low, intimate voice, and as she speaks she slowly raises her eyes from the bed and focuses them on some invisible object far and beyond the walls.

Solicitously Hildred bends over him. “Vanya wants to know if she can do something for you,” she says.

He pulls her close. “Tell her to go,” he whispers.

Hildred pulls herself up and looks at Vanya confusedly. “He wants to rest,” she says. “That's it, Tony, lie back and rest. We'll leave you for a little while. We'll be back soon.”

Vanya had already slipped out. She was descending the stairs.

“You'll come back alone?” he said.

“Yes, I'll come back alone,” Hildred answered.

“Then, take this,” he said, stuffing the crumpled pages into her hand.

E
XACTLY TWO
and a half hours later, Hildred returned—with Vanya. They were radiantly happy. They hummed softly as they flitted about the room. They came and sat on the edge of the bed and attended him like ministering angels.

“Why do you look so miserable?” said Hildred. “We didn't mean to stay so long.”

“The time just flew,” said Vanya, gazing straight ahead of her with that far-off expression and the cocoons in her eyes.

“I wish you would sit still,” he said, “and not talk.”

“You're nervous,” said Hildred, and then she remembered suddenly that she was to have brought something back with her.

W
HEN THEY
were gone some time he got out of bed, closed the windows, and quietly proceeded to dress himself. On the bureau, where she had thrown it carelessly when she returned, lay Hildred's bag. The pages he had given her were sticking out of the bag, a little more crumpled than before. He took them and smoothed them out, and as he did so, he noticed that they were not in order, neither were they in
the disorder which might follow upon a hasty reading. He spread them out and examined them closely. He followed the mark of her thumb—there were food stains here and there and one of them had been burned by a cigarette. But some had not been touched at all.

It was clear to him now how the time had flown. They were so hungry that they had gone to the restaurant and gorged themselves. While waiting for the food, Vanya no doubt had suggested glancing over the letter. The letter? Why Hildred had almost forgotten about it. They read it together, and Vanya tilted back in her chair and blew smoke rings while Hildred waded through the soft slush. A comment now and then—“I really think you love him!” or “What does he mean when he calls you his vulture?” Etc. And then the waiter arrived with the food and the letter was placed to one side and a little soup was spilled on it. And the waiter smiled probably as he read a few lines over Hildred's shoulder. And after they had laughed and chatted, made plans for the morrow, or perhaps for the night itself, the coffee came along. The butts piled up in the swimming saucers. And then, no doubt, they stuck their elbows on the table and leaned forward to talk brilliantly, because when they struck a pose like this the eyes of everybody in the restaurant were fastened on them. They probably admitted to each other that they were unique in the world, and the world a sordid, stupid place. And as they prattled on thus their elbows dug deeper into the table and the time flew and they were very happy sitting there together and their bellies were full.

He closed his eyes as if to bring back more vividly the scene he imagined. Now and then his lips moved. Clearly he saw it all, directed their movements and their speech. Just as a play
can be more real than reality so he was able to interpret for them what they were unable to interpret for themselves. Every detail stood out in a blinding, scorching light. Even to the last gesture when Hildred, swinging through the revolving door, a laugh on her lips, suddenly remembered that she was to bring something back with her. Yes, and the waiter running up in his greasy jacket, flourishing the crumpled pages. . . .

T
HEY WERE
running up the steps, stumbling in their haste. He remarked the astonishment on their faces when they saw him standing there, fully dressed, the letter crumpled in his fist. The next moment he heard a heavy thumping on the stairs and then a burly fellow appeared in the doorway sliding a trunk over the thick carpet.

He looked from one to the other frowningly.

“It's my trunk,” said Vanya, giggling.

He went up to Hildred, his voice quivering with rage. “What did I say about that trunk?”

Says Hildred: “Oh, this is no time to . . .”

“Get that goddamned thing out of here!”

“But Tony . . .”

“Don't Tony me! Get it out . . . quick!”

Says Vanya: “But we haven't any money left, we can't take it back.”

“Oh, you can't? Well, I'll show you.” He dragged it to the hallway, balanced it a moment at the top of the stairs, then gave it a push. There was a splintering crash. A door was flung open and a woman rushed out screaming.

“He's going mad!” cried Hildred, and she rushed down the stairs pulling Vanya after her.

T
HE NEW
home was large and gloomy. It had been a laundry once. From the crude fixtures in the ceiling hung pieces of twine which brushed against one's brow. A pale, wan light trickled in through the burlap curtains. Hildred hated the sunlight.

In the outhouse was a huge iron sink where the dirty dishes accumulated. The only source of heat was an open fireplace which was out of order. No one had thought to inquire about a gas range or to observe whether there were clothes closets, etc. Despite the drawbacks, Hildred and Vanya declared it to be a jolly place. It was the sort of den that appealed to their bohemian natures.

As soon as they had received permission they commenced redecorating the rooms. The green walls were converted to pitchblende, the ceiling ripened into a violet shudder, the electric bulbs were tinted a Venetian pink and etched with obscene designs. Then came the frescoes. Vanya began with her own room first. It was a little cell separated from the lavatory by a barred window. Directly above her cot a toilet box was suspended. The faint, gurgling tinkle of the drains soothed her nerves.

While she worked the two Danish sisters who owned the house looked on with prurient eyes. They would bring down liverwurst sandwiches and beer, and when they got better acquainted, they finally produced long black cigars which they smoked leisurely and with deep contentment. Vanya was not long in acquiring the habit. Hildred was the only one to demur; she said the cigars were vile. They probably were.

One day Vanya plucked up courage to ask the sisters to pose for her. They were flattered at first, but when it dawned on them that they were to pose in the nude, they reneged. After a little persuasion, however, they consented—not in the altogether, but in chemise and hose. And so, day after day, they stood shivering with cigars in their mouths, their bodies composed in the suggestive order of a bacchanal. Just as a Chinese artist will faithfully reproduce a broken plate, so Vanya reproduced these hungry madonnas—she verified every wrinkle, every crease, every wart.

The walls of the ménage soon began to heave, to scream and dance. Vanya's inventiveness was inexhaustible. At the far end, adjacent to the outhouse, a circus of toppling skyscrapers opened the legend; in the open spaces, on velvet greenswards, the weary megalopolitans could be seen pursuing their degenerate practices. From this Sodom it was but a jump to the Gomorrah of Paris—Paris with its kiosks and urinals, its quays and bridges, its fizzing boulevards and zinc bars. Looking at a narrow panel beneath the word “Montparnasse,” one had the sensation of standing inside a
urinoir
plastered with municipal proclamations. A tableau of figures, one below the other, presented vividly to the imagination the dire effects of venereal infection. To make the circuit of the rooms was to receive a painful crosscut of our civilization:
there was the machine, the ghetto, the palatial lobbies of the money-grubbers, the speakeasy, the funny paper, the dance halls, the insane asylums—all fused into a maelstrom of color and rhythm. And, as if this were not enough, a special area was given over to the
fantastique
. Here Vanya permitted herself the liberty of painting her unconscious. Here flowers grew with stupendous human organs; here monsters rose up out of the deep, their jaws dripping with slime, and united shamelessly; from the facades of cathedrals huge teats, bursting with milk, swelled out; children instructed the aged, their belts slung with Korans and Talmuds; words unprintable floated in a sky drunk with blood through which zeppelins sailed upside down, piloted by such queer fellows as Pythagoras and Walther von der Vogelweide; sea cows mooched along side by side with amberjacks, and painted sunsets with their tails.

Tony Bring looked on incredulously, applauded, or put in a suggestion now and then, marveling all the while at the fecundity of this genius with the dirty fingernails.

Alone, he fell into his usual vegetal ruminations, or wandered moodily from one room to another, surveying the walls absentmindedly. When Hildred returned (she was still at the Caravan) he would sit before her like a frozen clam. He was like a cipher which they erased or not, as they pleased. If he got in the way they bumped him, set him going like a pendulum. A pendulum! Something that ticked off their comings and goings. Every day the situation grew more and more cockeyed. Especially when Hildred was around. She would commence in the middle of a sentence or ask him to set the alarm when he picked up a book. She wanted them to argue with her, to gush, to rhapsodize. She wanted to sparkle, not
to chew. Words . . . words . . . words. . . . She gobbled them up, spewed them out again, added them up, juggled them, nursed them along, carried them to bed and put them under the pillow like soiled pajamas, slept on them, snored over them. Words. . . . When every other memory of her had fled there would remain—HER WORDS.

H
OURS AHEAD
of time, like a clock that's been advanced, he would commence to remind them that it was time to go to bed. Toward five o'clock, when the trucks began to rumble by and there came the familiar clip-clop of the milkman's horse, they would at last make preparations to retire. And then, when he had gotten into bed with Hildred, just as they were dozing off, Vanya would start prowling through the hall, muttering to herself. Sometimes she would knock at their door and get Hildred out of bed in order to hold a whispered conversation in the zenana.

And what did they talk about in there? Always the same rigmarole: Vanya was morbid. . . . Vanya had received bad news from home. . . . Vanya had been thinking again about the insane asylum. Sometimes it was nothing more than a fit of depression due to a bad start she had made with a canvas.

“Look here,” he said one night, as they lay fondling each other, “am I never to have an evening with you alone? Must I always share you with her?”

“But you're not
sharing
me,” said Hildred, cuddling up to him affectionately.

He suggested that they go somewhere together the next evening, to which Hildred immediately replied that it was out of the question. For one thing, she couldn't afford to take a night off.