HOW AS A MALAY I WITNESS THE CONVERSION OF YOUNG KOPENSKY TO THE COCAINE
BUDDHA, LATER WHEN I AM MY AMERICAN SELF THE THIBETAN BOY TAKES ME
BEYOND THE NORTH STAR AND SHOWS ME THE TRUE BUDDHA.
July 6, 2018:—This afternoon Mara sends me to find Joseph Bartholdi
Michael, the Third, and report once more. I discover that he has been at
work according to his pledge, and with a bricklaying machine. There are
more than enough, both of machines and Springfield workers to complete
the Street of Past History on time.
And so, this evening, the Kling beauty dawdles through her black wine
and cigarettes looking at her father with an indulgent and patronizing
squint, completely at ease in the possession of his heart. Though with
so many other strains of ancestry, the Malay manner predominates
tonight, in her as in him, an outer appearance of super languor, a
suggestion of nerve force accumulating through long seasons, to be
discharged in one day of supreme achievement, or of “running amuck.”
Suddenly Mara asks her father, as though to plague him all she dares and
startle him from his languor: “How do I differ from Avanel Boone? We
are, for instance, the same age.” He answers without a quiver: “She is a
worthy daughter of Black Hawk Boone, except that she will not dye her
left hand or wear her hair on her shoulders, and you are a worthy
daughter of your father, except that you like to quiz.”
And she opens her eyes and they seem the wide gates of his Prophet’s
heaven. And they have, to him, all the dewiness of honest youth. She
asks with earnestness:—
“But _how_ do we differ?”
He defies those eyes. He says: “Both have dark hair, but Avanel’s is
straight like that of the Japanese, and yours is a storm cloud about
your head.
“But _how_ do we differ? You need not deny you have studied that girl
like a book. I have seen you watching her as though she were a growing
scorpion, looking her over and over, at the Gordon Craig Theatre.
“She is no scorpion, but an artless child. Her eyes are blue. Your eyes
are black. Avanel’s skin is white and rose. You are more golden than any
coin, or any sunrise. That is the difference.” And he smiles with an air
of mock finality.
But there is more difference and my American soul fights my Malay body
and mind, as I apprehend this distinction, while they argue of other
matters. I find torturing the very depths of me, that which loves
Avanel, though I lie in this Malay grave. Yet the comparison is not all
to the advantage of the daughter of Boone.
Avanel follows the most conventional of _Vanity Fair_ and _Vogue_
fashion plates, when not a marching, dancing priestess or an
equestrienne in white. The Kling beauty is in her library or in her
palanquin wrapped in endless easy swathings of green silk from breast to
knee. Her bare shoulders and knees and feet and hands are her father’s
pride. He thinks there is nothing like their slender modelling in all
the west. She is a singer with the Borneo harp. Avanel in her life as a
religious dancer and leader of maiden cavalry and of the Horseshoe
Brotherhood, is an unmaidenly horror to Mara, who prides herself on her
seclusion. Avanel’s omnipresence on the streets, as the town heroine,
seems to Mara America’s most complete scandal.
Yet Mara has often been out in her palanquin, behind that of her father,
ostensibly to please him, but actually to see if by chance this hated
Avanel will go by. And she has brooded in seclusion over Avanel as much
as such a gentle nature can.
Finally, and chiefly, that rare mask, the face of Mara is the same her
father wears, and so is half a world away from the open countenance of
the lady who carries Daniel Boone’s direct ancestral dagger. Yet there
are things readable in the Singaporian countenances. The sincere passion
for jungle beauty revealed in the face of Mara can be discerned. The
Asiatic necromancy, the instinct for intrigue, is hidden by the
innocence of the experiences of her sheltered days, and also, as in the
face of her really wicked father, it is hidden by that University air of
submitting absolutely to the open finalities of scholarship. And so they
will often submit, where Singapore is not concerned. But one would say
all Mara’s scholars are poets to her, and of her father all his scholars
are statesmen. Each is the other’s flattering image. Each is disarmed in
the presence of the other, artless and fond and kind.
She continues this evening by talking frankly with her father about her
suitors. I am as a well worn article of furniture. My ears do not
trouble her. Are we not all members of the order that has sworn in a
great whisper to conquer the world in the name of the holy green glass
image that dwells in the temple on the far off Raffles plain?
She asks her father which man will be of the greater service to Our Lord
of Cocaine? Will it be the son of Slick Slack Kopensky, Crawling Jim:—or
Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, who thinks he has converted my good
mistress to Mary of Bethlehem and all the saints of the western heaven.
Shall she do lip service to his faith, when he is present, till the day
of all days when Singapore ceases to whisper and comes roaring against
the world? Or shall she take Crawling Jim for all time?
She is remarkably interested in both men. I am all curiosity over her
tenderness for Jim. She calls him James. To be sure, he has undertaken a
perilous thing for a son of Springfield. He has already discarded the
wearing of anything white.
July 7:—There are not many other Singaporians in the city, and tonight
comes an all-Caucasian party except for servants, host and hostess. My
amazement about Mara’s attitude toward James now ceases. In this company
he is a new creature.
The ladies and gentlemen who come in for initiation into that curiosity,
a Sumatra chess game are many of them Jim’s most devoted henchmen in
Jim’s presumably highly democratic and now triumphant Robin Redbreast
Aviation Club. They were deft enough to capture the club for him. They
are people of breeding and assurance. As long as it existed, at the
house of the Mythical Velaska the most famous yellow dance hall, they
set the pace. Tonight they talk openly of their jolly little lynching of
Surto Hurdenburg. They talk of how to bring back to town all the
malcontents who have left because of the suppression of the Yellow
Halls. They speak of them as martyrs and heroes. And then they talk as
though they will leave also. With scarcely an exception they belong to
Springfield’s senior families, many of whom have been here as long as
the Boones, and some of them before the Michaels. Scions of the house of
Montague Rock are among them, including Montague Rock, Junior.
By their voices and a thousand impalpable signs I know that, with
scarcely an exception, they have been educated out of town at male and
female finishing schools, on funds or power secured by the secret sale
of their hereditary buried gold and buried alcohol. These schools are,
obviously, the last stand of American plutocracy, that has grown most
subtle in what appears to be its final battle. Here, at this party among
friends, with no spies, and in perfect confidence, they use with an
exaggerated freedom all the secret codes, passwords, and hints of manner
that indicate the hidden masters of the land, the tribes with buried
gold and buried alcohol.
They are well grounded in the main books of plutocratic and alcoholic
apologetics, one of which has been written by a fellow townsman, and it
appears today, in Coe’s Book Store:—“The Graces of Bacchus and Mammon”
by Doctor Mayo Sims. Every poet, architect, artist, or musician who in
any fine indirect way licks the boots of money, or sings sweetly of
strong drink, has their approval. Many such craftsmen have been induced
by gentle means to drop a delicate word for Singapore as the ultimate
land of real aristocracy, and dangerous but marvelously inspiring
cocaine.
Mara’s guests have been taught in these out of town schools to hate our
educational system from the World’s Fair of our University down to the
first grade, ward school. They are taught in their male and female
finishing schools that the whole city of Springfield and all such cities
are infamously democratic. These children are taught they must not let
one tone of voice indicate anything more than a suffering tolerance of
that system of which, in this city, Black Hawk Boone is the official
head.
As the evening progresses, all this crowd gaily says that Jim’s luck in
aviation holds in Sumatra chess, and the ladies whisper in their
delicate fashion that they hope he stays lucky when it comes to love.
Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, enters late. He says he is tired
from bricklaying and slumps into the most conspicuous chair like a
second rate actor’s idea of a martyr to patriotism. Michael, the Third,
will not play Sumatra or any other chess. He will not bet on any other
man’s chess playing. He glares at the merry Jim, or in his general
direction. He stalks around, like a stork at a dinner of foxes.
The crowd thins out, and at length the two men are left with Mara,
because J. B. Michael, the Third, has not sense enough to go. She has
given Jim Kopensky every sign and Michael, the Third, no signs at all.
She wants this exquisite scion of the Blacksmith clan to play the game,
and take his chance. But he is more at ease in his patriotic overalls,
laying bricks to hurry up the final official opening of the Fair, and
the Street of Past History.
So she helps Kopensky to back Michael to the door, which is done by a
simple process of walking toward him with a certain air.
He is overwhelmed at Jim’s assurance and vital power. But Jim is one of
those whom love makes a man for an hour in a lifetime. As I open the
door for the exquisite Michael, I divine Mara’s pity for him. But what
can a woman do? No proud Singaporian can have mercy on an unmagnetic
fool. It is not a conspiracy against the loser. It is an elemental
contest. This red oriental heart is for the man who wins this doorstep
fight. Religion and destiny wait. And J. B. Michael, the Third, of his
own weakness goes out the door in defeat.
But Mara, having, without an uttered word, chosen this James Kopensky
for what she can make of him, turns at once to the cocaine Buddha around
the corner of the hall. Religion comes next.
The triumphant Jim follows her thought. He takes a candle from the
table. He holds it in front of the august image, that seems to him more
like green air than glass. He bows, the complete devotee before that
ironical god whose doctrines are absurd, even to me, though I am for a
season in a Malay mind. But what doctrines are not absurd to that soul
that refuses to receive them?
Jim blows out the candle, and with it his former life, and, in
intention, every western desire, and all for the glory of the holy
islands of southeast Asia. He relights the candle at a taller one that
is burning in front of the image.
Just then a telegram comes. Later I am reproved for letting the boy make
the turn in the hall that enables him to see Crawling Jim light the
candle. It is a real telegram, that has to do with an out-of-town
lecture to be given by the Man from Singapore, on “The Republic of
Letters.” And so the lord of the house comes in for it, reads it, and
signs. The boy is not hustled to the door. He lingers. Our little
ceremony is quite interrupted.
At last the slow youth goes. He is the son of a Japanese Industrial
Commissioner to the World’s Fair. It seems that this man and the Chinese
Commissioner are sufficiently Asiatic to understand my master, and their
subterranean feud with him and his ally, Old Montague Rock, never has an
end. The Man from Singapore says: “They must have had their spy at the
party tonight. And this telegram has been delayed as part of their
game.”
And so, soon after, the flustered Jim bids his lady a devout good
evening.
July 8:—Mara has been nervous about the Springfield fortunes of her
accepted suitor all day, but he reports this evening that there is no
cause for apprehension, that he has not noted one more fluttering eyelid
than usual today. He is still in place, in Springfield.
Then Mara makes ardent haste to talk with Jim of the religion into which
he took a decisive, if interrupted, first step last evening. There is a
bit of a suppressed strain and the harshness of argument in her voice,
as though she were debating with all Springfield, though Springfield is
not here. She is showing Jim that the Singaporian aversion to white,
colorless things, is in no way unreasonable, since the religion was born
in a sweet shadowed jungle. The whitest thing to be found in such a
woods is the patch of dried grass in the opening of the trees under the
blasting rays of the noonday sun. The living creature who lingers there
must die. The prophet had talked so long to the religious beasts that he
learned the inner wisdom of this fear. By listening long to their
stories and their teachings, white came to mean the death of the soul to
him. When he returned to Singapore and preached his first sermon that
shadowy evening on the Raffles plain, proclaiming the religion of night,
the religion of prowling, of rich wines and sweeping hanging moss, he
gave them the Holy Green Glass Idol, and extended the doctrine of the
fear of whiteness. It was there revealed to him, as he spoke with
inspiration, that the whiter the silver, the whiter the horse, the
whiter the armor, the whiter the plume, the more dangerous the foe. And
so Mara assures Jim that all the deadliest enemies of the faith will
come in the open noonday, dressed in white. If Singapore conquers all
things white, and all the noonday races of men it will win the world. If
once it falls before an army in white, it will be utterly annihilated,
and the Holy Religion of Cocaine will perish from the earth.
Mara asks Crawling Jim if this is not perfectly reasonable, as doctrine
and as prophecy. He falls before her. He embraces her golden knees with
his crazy arms. He says it is perfectly reasonable, as doctrine and as
prophecy.
But she lifts him up and she preaches and kisses away the hours, like
any devout lady in like case.
July 9:—Mara is saying to Jim this evening that while in the by streets
of her holy city among the dregs of the world’s population, much cocaine
is taken, in the presence of grotesque libels of the Green Glass Buddha,
as a matter of fact, that is a degenerate form of the religion. It is
well enough since it keeps the outcasts happy and in subjection, more
easily led, yet fierce in battle like the old hashish-eating assassins.
But the esoteric, the masters, do not take cocaine. She speaks lovingly
of the Green Glass Buddha, but saying finally of him, with the
University Tone of Voice, that he is the god of wine. Like Dionysius he
is especially the inspiration of the drama and all the arts that gather
round it. Upon those patrons of drugs, the two greatest civilizations
have been founded and the fairest catalogue of the arts.
It seems to me this evening, that the lessons are done. Mara has called
to me to go for her father. I have ushered him into the room, and he is
receiving Jim, the son of the Mayor of Springfield, as his own son. The
Man from Singapore takes on a manner Jim has never seen. There are tears
in his carved eyes. He is the headlong devotee in the infatuation of
proselyting.
He tells Jim that those who are faithful take on the soul of the holy
green glass idol, which was long ago the pure and transparent spirit of
the first king of the boa constrictors, who, it is recorded, ruled his
tribe in integrity and crystal honor. It is in his service that
Singapore goes forth to choke the earth. From the god of glass emanate
rays of psychic force that extend world wide, and give his followers
spiritual eyes so they can do battle for him in the forest of
Christianity and civilization. The war is really between these faithful
ones and the tiger souls that infest the jungle. The vendetta of the
serpents against the tigers has gone on through the ages since before
there were men. It will not be ended till all the tigers are gone and
the Great Boa Constrictor swallows the world as though it were a rabbit.
The Man from Singapore says that the tigers feed on all men from
wantonness, while the serpents kill only those who interfere with the
spread of their beneficent kingdom and eat only when hungry. Before the
eyes of the true priests of the serpent, all buildings turn to forest
trees and all shadows to forest boughs, and all men to serpents or
tigers or some neutral beasts. Thus we know our most dangerous foes.
These are not necessarily the men who curse us. They are often our
intended friends, but actually in the way of the God of Glass. Thus
there is no real serpent among the citizens of Springfield but Montague
Rock. He is indeed a good Singaporian. All the other men in power, be
they friends or foes in the open, are tigers alike. Joseph Bartholdi
Michael, the Second, at the seat of World Government, is the worst tiger
of all. He is proscribed and doomed.
The Man from Singapore eyes Jim steadily and continues:—“Does that seem
reasonable to you? And does all I have said seem clear, logical,
infallibly convincing?”
Jim takes the hand of this man and says it is absolutely convincing. I
note that Jim looks like a composite portrait of the heirs apparent of
all the thrones left in Europe, a weak and pasty fool, but lit up by
love.
July 10:—Crawling Jim lives but in the eyes of Mara. Everything
Singaporian is reasonable while she smiles, and it is all reasonable to
her. This doctrine of swallowing the world seems merciful because
“father” says it is. And Jim seems to her like a man. He is aflame with
desire, such as only the daughter of her voluptuous and gentle mother
could provoke, and only such a strong soul as hers could harness. He is
a mirror, pouring back the rays of her own romantic glory, and she knows
it not. She is incredibly happy, for she thinks she has done a good
stroke for Singapore and her own heart. I, even as a Malay, am stirred
with a great pity for her.
Her father, also, sees Jim as a hero. The serpent Buddha has not made
this man and his daughter infallible.
July 11:—Mara is near the window looking out through the black velvet
hangings, watching for Jim, though it is not time for him to call.
Meanwhile there is indeed an interruption to her fancies, she utters not
a word, she does not flinch, while there comes north on Mulberry
Boulevard Avanel Boone and her maiden cavalry.
They are going toward the grave of Hunter Kelly, to take part in the
solemn festival in the groves there, and along the great Northwest Road,
the festival in celebration of the planting of the first Amaranth
orchard there. The girls go by like a white whirlwind, and they give the
old Springfield cry used in battle in Asia by their mothers who were
young amazons before them. It shrieks and screams and sings down the
street: “Springfield Awake! Springfield Aflame!” They know they are
going by the house of Mara of Singapore but not one eye turns her way.
But the swords, the swords, the Damascus blades, are hissing and
glittering in the air. And the Man from Singapore, apparently intent
upon his affairs does not turn to look out of the window of the book
room. He does not so much as look up from his book of Malay lyrics. He
utters one phrase: “The Cats of Cambyses, if we are to take Black Hawk
Boone at his word.”
I am temporarily of the Singaporians, in my way. I have their poisoned
eyes, it seems. So, while I have watched, horse and rider have faded
into something new and strange. They go by in semblance as beautiful
white tigers.
But what of Mara, who regards me as an article of furniture? What has
she seen? Apparently nothing but Springfield girls on a wild, lovely,
sweet, shrieking revel to which she has not been invited. She feels
“snubbed.” She is lonely, weary, in this house and city, though she has
a lover and a convert coming within the hour.
For, after these girls have gone by, she turns to the Cocaine Buddha.
She bows with hands and arms outspread. Hers is a strange cry and
prayer:—
“Master of the World, tell me, am I more beautiful than Avanel Boone?”
Which proves to me that Mara is only a girl.
July 12:—I find myself in all respects an American citizen of
Springfield, Illinois, today, as of old. The hours with Mara and her
father are as a “tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.”
As I wander through a July rain in our streets, and parks, many vague
hands seem stretched from the ground, catching me by the heels.
It is much later in the afternoon. The storm is gone, and I am walking
with the lady Avanel, and she has looked into my eyes and given me my
life again.
We confess to one another that these days are certainly not the
millennium, that many of them are as grotesque as the early geologic
ages, that had their monster sloths and lizards big as whales, and what
you will. Avanel says with her happy laughter: “Let no man declare that
the end of time is soon approaching.”
The lady Avanel has sometimes what might be called the mood of butterfly
wings, and this afternoon, as we go further north across the fields, we
are suddenly walking on a crimson cloud a little above the trees and
then that cloud on its borders takes on slowly, first from the edges,
the aspect of the wings of a giant butterfly whose body is at last the
raft on which we stand and ride. And toward the North Star we go, and
when we reach it, there sits a most grotesque and turtle-headed dwarf
that Avanel calls a gnome. The North Star is really a hill of
dandelions, and the dwarf is sitting at the foot of the hill.
We dismount from our cloud and the dwarf goes with us down a corridor in
the hill. There are on one side mirrors where details are dimmed, where
only big clear outlines of a possible new Springfield are shown, and
near by are shown plans for other similar villages in the world. On the
other side are mirrors into which we look and see greatly magnified the
raw machinery of a possible Springfield in sections that any one can
understand. Then we speed along through the passageway and at last come
through and see the light of the north sky on the other side of that
gorgeous dandelion hill.
The hill seems to be on the very edge of things, and though it has much
of the aspect of that place to the east where I saw the Great Palace of
Eve, once upon a time, the Dwarf calls this present cliff
disrespectfully: “The Jumping-off Place.” And Avanel seems amused and
exhilarated. But waves of outer darkness, into which I have looked so
often, dash upon the cliff.
The Dwarf says: “This particular Jumping-off Place is one of the
principal suburbs of Springfield, and I have seen all kinds of
Springfield people and dreams jump off here.”
Then, while we wait interminably, the gnome lets down an iron bucket by
a long rope, and brings it up full of the perpetually burning soul bones
of animals, men, and dreams that have jumped off. He says: “We live by
the death of these.” And he gathers the flames off the top as though
they were burning flowers and his hands were iron. And he pours the
bones back with a great thunder into the deep of the Jumping-off Place.
Then he eats of the terrible burning petals and makes us eat them. Then
he leads us back through the corridors and we seem to have been given
eyes to see and remember every detail of the microscopic cross section
of Springfield and he sends us back riding on the butterfly cloud, and
enjoins the Lady Avanel to help in the building of Springfield, day
after day.
July 13:—Today I meet the Thibetan Boy in Coe’s Book Store. We are both
rather aimlessly turning over the magazines, and, after I have observed
his idleness awhile, I take him out for a walk and say: “Why do you look
at me when you pass, with your eyes a story untold? All the while I have
walked the streets of this New Springfield, you have looked at me so.”
He answers slowly, almost whispering:—
“Your fathers came from the ancient Christian world. My fathers came
from the more ancient Buddhist world. Christ is my master but I cannot
deny that Buddha is my friend. This is the hour for friends. Come with
me.” We walk north on Mulberry Boulevard, past the House of the Man from
Singapore, and then west on Carpenter toward a little highway that
finally joins the great Northwest Road. But we have not gone far on the
Great Northwest Road till we flash past the Gothic double walls of our
city.
The Thibetan Boy takes me, in one instant, to the far edge of Space and
Time, way beyond the North Star and its dandelions. And as we stand on
the shaking shore of Space and Time we see and hear, rolling in from
Chaos, endless smoke and glory and darkness and dissolving foam.
Standing beside us, like a superb Gandhara sculpture that has taken on
life is that Prince Siddhartha who was the founder of Buddhism. He
stands in that aspect he had, while still a citizen and householder, and
twenty-four centuries before his green glass libel cursed mankind.
Before us is, indeed, a vision of Buddha the dreamer, superb,
thoroughbred, in all the jewels of his tribe. It is the hour before he
took chariot and drove forth from home. We are back in that hour when he
looked upon all things, and saw them as a dissolving foam, the hour
before he set forth for his victory over this crumbling universe. His
eyes are fixed upon those waves that roll in forever, that keep their
forms an instant, and are gone for all time: some of men, some of
wraiths and gods, some of planets and comets and suns.
He turns around and beckons and over the sand comes Channa, the superb
charioteer, and the horses of that chariot are nobler than the horses of
the sun. Prince Siddartha is in the chariot in an instant and they drive
out into that sea and the wheels of that chariot ride the waves. Those
horses are like lightning, climbing waves that are like hills and
mountains, till chariot, horses, and men all are veiled by the endless
smoke and glory and darkness and dissolving foam. The Thibetan boy says
to me: “It is the ‘Great Going Forth from Home,’ and thus Buddha becomes
a conquerer, and Chaos and the Universe are put beneath him.”
But the star chimes behind us are ringing new tunes and we are back in
our city again, leaving Prince Siddartha to conquer what he will.