Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories (5 page)

Looking about, I found myself in a huge cave, dark and noisome. Serpents hissed and glared at me from every side, and huge lizards and ugly shapes scrambled over the wet floor. In the far corner of the cave I saw piles of precious stones of wondrous value that glanced and sparkled in the dim light. Despite the horrid shapes about me, I resolved to secure some, at least, of these precious gems. I began to walk toward them, but found that I could get no nearer – just as fast as I advanced, so fast did they seem to recede. At last, after what seemed a year’s weary journey, I suddenly found myself beside them and, falling on my knees, began to fill my pockets, bosom, even my hat. Then I tried to rise, but could not: the jewels weighed me down. Mortified and disappointed, I replaced all but three, weeping bitterly. As I rose to my feet it suddenly occurred to me that this was in no way real – only a hashish dream. And, laughing, I said, ‘You fool, this is all nonsense. These are not real jewels; they exist only in your imagination.’ My real self arguing thus with my hashish self, which I could see, tired, ragged and weeping, set me to laughing still harder, and then we laughed together – my two selves. Suddenly my real self faded away, and a cloud of sadness and misery settled upon me, and I wept again, throwing myself hysterically upon the damp floor of the cave.

Just then I heard a voice addressing me by name, and looking up, I saw an old man with an enormous nose bending over me. His nose seemed almost as large as his whole body. ‘Why do you weep, my son?’ he said. ‘Are you sad because you cannot have all these riches? Don’t, then, for some day you will learn whoso hath more wealth than is needed to minister to his wants must suffer for it. Every farthing above a certain reasonable sum will surely bring some worry, care, anxiety or trouble. Three diamonds are your share; be content with them. But, dear me, here I am again neglecting my work! Here it is March, and I’m not half through yet!’

‘Pray, what is your work, venerable patriarch?’ I asked. ‘And why has the Lord given you such a huge proboscis?’

‘Ah! I see that you don’t know me,’ he replied. ‘I am the chemist of the earth’s bowels, and it is my duty to prepare all the sweet and delicate odors that the flowers have. I am busy all winter making them, and early in the spring my nymphs and apprentices deliver them to the Queen of the Flowers, who in turn gives them to her subjects. My nose is a little large because I have to do so much smelling. Come and see my laboratory.’

His nose a little large! I laughed until I almost cried at this, while following him.

He opened a door, and, entering, my nostrils met the oddest medley of odors I had ever smelled. Everywhere workmen with huge noses were busy mixing, filtering, distilling and the like.

‘Here,’ said the old man, ‘is a batch of odor that has been spoiled. Mistakes are frequent, but I find use for even such as that. The Queen of the Flowers gives it to disobedient plants or flowers. You mortals call it asafoetida. Come in here and see my organ,’ and he led the way into a large rocky room, at one end of which was a huge organ of curious construction. Mounting to the seat, he arranged the stops and began to play.

Not a sound could be heard, but a succession of odors swept past me, some slowly, some rapidly. I understood the grand idea in a moment. Here was music to which that of sound was coarse and earthly. Here was a harmony, a symphony, of odors! Clear and sharp, intense and less intense, sweet, less sweet, and again still sweeter, heavy and light, fast and slow, deep and narcotic, the odors, all in perfect harmony, rose and fell and swept by me, to be succeeded by others.

Irresistibly, I began to weep, and fast and thick fell the tears, until I found myself a little stream of water, that, rising in the rocky caverns of the mountain, dashed down its side into the plain below. Fiercely the hot sun beat upon my scanty waters, and like a thin gray mist I found myself rising slowly into the skies, no longer a stream. With other clouds I was swept away by the strong and rapid wind far across the Atlantic, over the burning sand wastes of Africa, dipping toward the Arabian Sea, and suddenly falling in huge raindrops into the very heart of India, blossoming with poppies. As the ground greedily sucked up the refreshing drops I again assumed my form. Suddenly the earth was rent apart and, falling upon the edge of a deep cavern, I saw far below me a molten, hissing sea of fire, above which a dense vapor hung. Issuing from this mist, a thousand anguished faces rose toward me on scorched and broken wings, shrieking and moaning as they came.

‘Who in Heaven’s name are these poor things?’

‘These,’ said a voice at my side, ‘are the spirits, still incarnate, of individuals who, during life, sought happiness in the various narcotics. Here, after death, far beneath, they live a life of torture most exquisite, for it is their fate, ever suffering for want of moisture, to be obliged to yield day by day their life-blood to form the juice of the poppy and resin of hemp in order that their dream, joys, hopes, pleasures, pains, and anguish of past and present may again be tasted by mortals.’

As he said this I turned to see who he was, but he had disappeared. Suddenly I heard a fierce clamor, felt the scrawny arms of these foul spirits wound about my neck, in my hair, on my limbs, pulling me over into the horrible chasm, into the heart of hell, crying shrilly, ‘Come! thou are one of us. Come! come! come!’ I struggled fiercely, shrieked out in my agony, and suddenly awoke, with the cold sweat thick upon me.

‘Are you, then, so fond of it that nothing can awaken you? Here have I been shaking and pulling you for the past five minutes. Come, rouse yourself; your dreams seem to be unpleasant.’

Gradually my senses became clearer. The odors of the room, the melodies of early evening, the pipe that had fallen from my hand, the faces and forms of the hemp smokers, were once more recognized.

My companion wished me to stay, assuring me that I would see many queer sights before morning, but I declined, and after taking, by his advice, a cup of Paraguay tea (coca leaf), and then a cup of sour lemonade, I passed downstairs, exchanged my present for my former dress, returned my pipe, and left the house.

The dirty streets, the tinkling car-horse bell, the deafening ‘Here you are! Twenty sweet oranges for a quarter!’ and the drizzling rain were more grateful by far than the odors, sounds, sights, sweet though they were, that I had just left. Truly it was the cradle of dreams rocking placidly in the very heart of a great city, translated from Baghdad to Gotham.

F
ROM THE THEATRE
we were taken to visit an Opium Den, as we of the East are prone to call the
tabazies
, where the Celestial seeks respite from toil and privation and homesickness in the indulgence of a habit not so horrible after all as drunkenness of another nature; since the opium smoker injures only himself, and the man crazed by liquor is dangerous to his family and the community at large!

Passing through an alley-way, we entered a perfectly dark court where nothing was to be seen but so much to be smelled that the imagination became more painful than the reality could have been. A light twinkled from some windows on a level with the sidewalk, and our guide, unceremoniously pushing open the door, led us into a small, close, but apparently clean room, filled with the fumes of burning opium – resembling those of roasting groundnuts, and not disagreeable. A table stood in the center, and around three sides ran a double tier of shelves and bunks, covered with matting and with round logs of wood with a space hollowed out, cushioned or bare, for pillows. Nearly all of these were filled with Chinamen, many of them containing two, with a little tray between them, holding a lamp and a horn box filled with the black, semi-liquid opium paste. But although everyone was smoking, it was so early in the evening that the drug had not as yet wrought its full effect, and all were wide awake, talking, laughing, and apparently enjoying themselves hugely. The largest of the Chinamen was lying upon the shelf nearest the door, preparing his first pipe. He looked up and nodded as we crowded around him, and then calmly continued his occupation, we watching the
modus operandi
with considerable interest. The pipe was a little stone bowl, no larger than a baby’s thimble, with an orifice in the bottom the size of a pin’s head. This bowl is screwed on to the side of a long bamboo stem, and the smoker, taking up a mass of the opium paste upon the end of a wire, holds it to the flame of the lamp until it is slightly hardened, and then works it into the pipe, inhaling strongly as he does so, and drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, where it remains for a moment and then is ejected through the nostrils, leaving its fatal residuum behind; for opium is an accumulative poison, and when once the system becomes saturated with it, there is no release from the misery it entails but death. The tiny ‘charge’ constituting one pipe-full is soon exhausted, and holding the last whiff as long as possible, the smoker prepares another, and another and yet another, as long as he can control his muscles, until, at last, the nerveless hand falls beside him, the pipe drops from his fingers, and his head falls back in heavy stupor, the face ghastly white, the eyes glazed and lifeless, the breathing stenorous, the mind wandering away in visions like those De Quincey has given to the world in the
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
. Looking at the stalwart Chinaman, with his intelligent face and fresh, clean costume, we tried to fancy this loathsome change passing upon him and felt quite guilty as he looked up with a twinkling smile and offering us the lighted pipe said: ‘Havee Smokee?’ and when we declined, held out the wire with the little ball on the end for us to smell. As we talked to this man, we were startled by perceiving two persons curled up in the bunk below his shelf, both smoking and watching us with their narrow slits of eyes like crouching wild beasts. They did not speak, but our friend above answered all our questions in a cool, matter-of-fact sort of a way, and with an amiable superciliousness of manner we bade him good-by and went out, his eyes following us with a look and a laugh strangely resembling a sneer. Perhaps, carrying out the proverb
in vino veritas
, there is something about the first stages of opium intoxication dispelling to customary caution and disguise, for in that sneering look and laugh we seemed at last to get the true expression of feeling which forever haunts the writer as the real meaning underlying the bland, smiling or inane exterior, presented to us by these Celestials.

We looked into another room in the same court, much smaller but better furnished, the bunks neatly fitted up with mattresses and each containing its little tray with the lamp, pipe and opium all ready for the smokers not yet arrived. Our guide informed us in a mysterious tone that there are yet other opium dens to which access is impossible except to the initiated, where may be found at a later hour of the night young men and women as ‘white as you are’ as he said, and with no drop of Mongolian blood to excuse their participation in this imported vice.

‘Not respectable Americans?’ asked someone incredulously, and the detective, with a glance inscrutable as the Sphinx, replied:

‘That’s according to what you call respectable. The women I don’t suppose are generally received in your society, but as for the men – well, a lady would be surprised, sometimes, if she knew just how the gentleman she has danced with all the evening spends the rest of the night!’

‘If Asmodeus could visit San Francisco and take us on one of his flying trips over the tops of these houses with the power of unroofing them as we passed, we should see some strange scenes,’ thoughtfully murmured the poet of the party, and Officer MacKenzie, with one of his keen glances, replied:

‘I don’t know much about flying through the air, but I reckon I can show you as strange and tough a sight if you want to see, if you like to risk it, for the ladies.’

At
BURROUGHS
’ apartment,
TER
emptied the bag of drug samples on to
BILL’S
big parlor table, and as I turned on the tape and fired up the bomber,
BILL
motioned us to fix our drinks, donned his reading glasses, and settled in for a good scrutiny of the dope labels, using a magnifying glass like a jeweler examining precious stones
.