to his throat and their fingers, like inviolable decisions, closed on
it. The ragged one screamed. A man with a slant of black hair across his
forehead who had stood smiling at him had without sound or warning
reached out his hands to murder him. The beggar gasped and writhed, his
eyes staring with horror into the immobile face of his assailant. And
within himself Mallare continued the strange conversation.
"You see how simple it is," he said. "After you are dead I will continue
to enjoy for a time the uninterrupted image of you. You will haunt my
thought until you grow dim. But I will possess the vanishing shadow....
But now you die."
Mallare tightened his hold on the beggar's neck and the man's cries
ended. His head fell forward. Mallare held the dead figure erect,
shaking it gently and smiling at the one in his thought.
"Ah, Rita," he whispered, "it is over now."
His hands released the throat they were holding. The beggar fell to the
ground. Mallare stared at the body and then knelt beside it. His hands
passed over the dead face.
"Poor Rita," he continued. "No longer dangerous."
He bent over and kissed the matted hair of the dead man.
"Death," he said aloud as he rose, "is an easy friendship. You would
have been sorry a moment ago. But now you are neither sorry nor glad.
See, your body is a humble little gratitude."
Mallare walked away. His thought, like a cautious monitor, re-entered
the doors that had closed upon it.
"Curious," he said aloud, "she followed me and I killed her. Madness is,
alas, too logical. I remember almost nothing of the incident. It is a
part of the shadows not of me. Still I know it exists. My hands feel
tired. But there is nothing to regret. She came too close. And now she
lies dead in a strange street. They will find her and perhaps ask me
about it. What do I know? Nothing. My memory is innocent. It is after
all my superior. I must remain, unquestioning, at its side. This is a
pact."
He returned to his home. The familiar room greeted him like a
friendship. He sat down and closed his eyes. Goliath had gone to bed.
And she was no longer here.
His hands felt tired. He was alone again. But he would remember her.
Eyes like conquered Satans. They would crawl again like spiders through
his brain. Breasts like little blind faces raised in prayer. Her body
fluttering like a rich curtain before the door of enchantments. These
were still his.
"Tomorrow, Rita," he murmured aloud to his thoughts.
A figure stirred on the couch. She had watched him come in, his hair
disheveled, his body dragging. Her eyes had followed him as he sat down.
But she had waited motionless. Perhaps he had come back to kill her. She
lay shivering. Then his voice called her name.
Standing slowly, Rita waited. He was asleep but he had called her. She
moved cautiously over the heavy carpet. Mallare opened his eyes. He
looked at the burning-eyed figure of the girl his hands remembered
having killed in the strange street.
"A hallucination," his thought muttered. "But the dead do not come
back."
The scene under the green-white street lamp played its swift detail
through his mind again. He remembered the white throat, the pale,
imploring face. A shudder passed his heart. He had murdered her. Yet
here she stood once more, looking at him.
Mallare smiled.
"Ah," he thought. "Mad, completely mad. Yet it is not as unpleasant as I
feared. Why, indeed, am I startled? This is what I desired. To create
for myself out of myself. And here my phantoms have become so rich and
strong that they confront me. I desired to be God. And I have answered
my own prayer. It is an illusion. Its substance is only the life my
madness gives it. Yet I, who am the companion of my madness, may enjoy
it."
Rita shivered again as he laughed.
"Come closer," he whispered to her. "Or are you too timorous a
hallucination, Rita? Come closer and let me see. What a curious
sensation! To caress the figures of my madness! Then there is no longer
any sanity in me. For my fingers are aware of hair. Ah, dear child,
Mallare is completely mad since at last his senses betray him. But they
betray him sweetly. For though I babble to myself you have no existence,
though I smile at the thought of caressing a phantom, my senses derive a
mysterious pleasure from this contact with nothingness. Curious ...
curious ... come closer, Rita. Now smile at me. Yes, your lips move. You
are an automaton born of my words. Give me your hand. It is warm and
trembling. Ah, my phantom is in love with me. But that love, too, is an
illusion I create. No, do not come too close. Let me grow accustomed
first to my madness. You are happy, eh? How marvelous your eyes! They
were beautiful before when they crawled like round spiders through my
brain. But elusive. They fled from me, my madness pursuing them into
dark, empty corners.
"But now I have grown cleverer. It is necessary to be superbly clever in
order to fool one's senses like this. But take off your clothes, little
one. I want to see how clever I am. Has my phantom a body, too, or is it
only a face and an illusion of fabric I have created? Your velvet dress,
Rita, take it off. Ah, what a virginal phantom."
Rita, trembling before the gleam of the eyes that had opened to her,
listened anxiously. An ecstasy drifted like a cloud over her senses. He
had touched her. His hands had passed over her head as she had dreamed
they might. His eyes were smiling with intimacy at her face. But he had
warned her never to speak. She must not spoil it by speaking. She stood
swaying before him.
"Your velvet dress," he repeated.
Her hands reached dreamily to her body. He would see now how beautiful
she was. The men in the caravan had called her beautiful. But she had
run from them. That was long ago. Now she would show him how the skin
of her body looked, how her breasts made pretty curves, and how she had
washed herself in the perfumes he had given her.
"Ah," murmured Mallare, his eyes filling with wonder. "How incredibly
clever my madness has become! My little phantom undresses. Illusion--yet
my conveniently stupid senses are deceived. But what delicious
deception! See, her throat and breasts are white. Her body is white. I
may reach out and touch the flesh of her thighs. I am as indecent as God
for I have given her sex. But what a plagiarist I am! My phantom is as
charming and naive as an art student's copy. Still, she is not a woman
and therefore not hateful. Without life, even this may be considered
entertaining."
His hands moved cautiously over her body, his fingers slipping
experimentally over the flesh of her buttocks and thighs.
"Interesting," he smiled. "Like St. Anthony I create odalisques for my
seduction. Ah, but there is a difference. This is mine ... mine!"
His eyes gleamed with a quick frenzy at the naked figure.
"Speak. I desire you to speak, little one. If I can believe in the
illusion of flesh and eager eyes, then I can believe in the illusion of
sound. Come speak. I am at the mercy of my madness. If you speak to me,
little one, I will understand. My stupid senses that retain their
earthly logic will be ravished at the sound of your voice. But I will
chuckle at my cleverness. Tell me, are you mine? Can you say, 'I am
yours'? Can you give yourself to me and deceive me with the beautiful
illusion of submission? Tell me. Speak to me."
Her eyes burning toward him, Rita nodded her head.
"Yours," she whispered. "Whatever you say, I am."
"Clever, clever," Mallare muttered, "it speaks to me and I hear. It says
'yours.' I become too involved. Or perhaps this is only a dream. Of
course, what else can it be? Part of me has fallen asleep and is
dreaming. And because I am mad I fancy myself awake. And my senses obey
me. Desire whispers to them, 'Hear voices. See flesh. Feel desire,' and
like five little awkward masochists they prostrate themselves before my
madness.
"But my senses are of no great interest. There is this other--this mania
of possession of which passion, compounded of all the senses, is but an
unimportant fragment. I am a man with a woman inside him. I possess the
secret of the hermaphroditic Gods. I am complete."
Rita kneeled beside him and his hands stroked her black hair. Her face
remained raised in adoration. Mallare, observing her eyes, nodded
satisfactions at them.
"Who but Mallare could have done this?" he whispered aloud to her.
"Mallare, infatuated with himself, desires still a further adoration. So
he creates infatuated phantoms. I am tired now. My hands are tired.
Return, little one, to the couch of my madness and sleep for a time in
its shadows."
Mallare shut his eyes and his hands dropped to his side. Rita arose and
smiled at him. He had spoken strangely, but his words were no longer
mysteries since he had caressed her. She would lie now at his feet as
she had dreamed of doing. She stretched herself out on the thick carpet.
Her childish mind fondled its unexpected memories. He had looked at her
body and spoken beautiful words to it. She remembered the talk of the
old ones of the caravan. A woman belongs to a man. This meant that she
belonged to him. She had said, "Yours."
Her face smiled itself to sleep.
[Illustration: Fourth Drawing]
[IV]
_From the Journal of Mallare dated November._
"I no longer understand myself. My thoughts stretch themselves into
baffling elasticities. My brain is a labyrinth through which reason
searches in vain for itself. I walk cautiously. Yet I am lost.
"To think has become like adding a continually increasing column of
figures. I sit and add. The figures will add up into a finite sum and
this sum will be the understanding of myself. I apply myself carefully
to each figure and say, 'two and three are five. Five and seven are
twelve.' But as I reach what seems an end I find more figures waiting
me.
"I can no longer add up the fragments or interpret them. I must be
content now to sit and wait until this part of me--my relation to
myself--splinters into fragments and I become a dice box shaking with
mysterious and invisible combinations.
"It is the phantom Rita that is threatening to drive me into darkness.
Since I murdered her in the street, the hallucination has become
overwhelming. It is with me almost continually. When I open my eyes from
sleep I find it waiting at my bed. The hallucination leaves me when I am
outside, although at times a trace of it returns and I seem more to feel
its presence within me than behold it with my senses.
"Yes, I am clinging desperately to these moments of objectivity which
enable me to write. But even they threaten to betray me. For as I write
doubts dance like macabre figures among my words. The very sentences
seem to stretch themselves into ridiculous postures. And I must almost
close my eyes and stumble blindly through a storm of denouements.
"I desired to create for myself a world within which I might love and
hate--to be a God lost within his dream. Madness was necessary, so I
embraced it. But my dream becomes the product of a Frankenstein.
She--the hallucination--is more real to my senses than am I. And I can
no longer control her. My senses are unfaithful to me. They philander
clownishly with this mirage of my thought. Then what is there left? I.
This grim figure stumbling with his head down through a storm of
denouements. I persist--an unwelcome visitor, a bargain-hunting tourist
in Bedlam. I remain.
"But it is a boast that laughs back at me. For I will soon be a little
plaything of my phantom. Last night I walked until I thought I had rid
myself. Her eyes alone lingered. Her hands moved like slow dancers. But
I walked and said to myself, 'I am tired of nonsense. I am tired of this
monotonous hallucination. At least let me be unfaithful to my dream
since I am the God who created it.'
"I walked to the street where a month ago she had followed me under the
arc lamp. It was cold and I grew tired. I came back to sleep. 'Gone, she
is gone,' I whispered to myself. The room appeared empty. I was
cautious, knowing the ruses of this thing in my mind. For my madness and
I are no longer friends. My madness hides for me and plays tricks.
"But she returned. I smiled at her. It is folly to grow angry with one's
own hallucinations. That would be a double madness. As she stood before
me, my treacherous senses leaped to their sterile feast. And I smiled.
"'My egoism has betrayed me,' I reasoned. 'The love that gleams from the
eyes of this hallucination is the invention of my egoism. Alas, I love
myself too much, for the passion for Mallare with which my madness
endows this illusion of a woman, threatens me. My senses have already
abandoned me. They no longer obey the direction of my will. And I must
stand like a scold, laughing and sneering at them as they yield
themselves to her. She is more powerful, therefore, than I, even though
her existence is no more than a shadow cast in front of my eyes.'
"I reasoned in this fashion and continued to smile. It would be best,
perhaps, to humor her. Who knows but even hallucinations are subject to
wiles and coquetry. A disturbing fancy, this--one of the distortions
that insist upon raising their mocking heads from the midst of my
cautious sentences.
"She came and knelt beside me and I shook my head at her. She was
dressed in a gown I had never seen before. It was red. I spoke aloud and
said--
"'See, how abominably clever I am. My madness is a jack of all trades.
It makes new dresses for its phantoms. It arranges their coiffures. It
even puts rouge on their cheeks.'
"But as I talked her hands reached out to me. To look into her eyes that
are always alive with flames is to succumb. For then I find myself
dreaming my dream is not a dream. My senses clamor that I join them.
"'Forget. Forget,' they whisper, 'come with us.'
"But I chose to persist. I remain. To sit in an empty whorehouse and
masturbate.... No! If this hallucination grows powerful enough to trick
my senses into clownish fornications, let my madness enjoy them. Not I.
We are no longer friends, my madness and I.
"She pressed her cheek against my leg. I could feel her body trembling.
"I remained motionless and spoke to her. 'Each night you grow bolder,' I
said. I am no different from other Gods in that I seem to have endowed
you with the instinct of profanation. But at least Eve did not turn on
Jehovah with the whore tricks learned from His apple. There is
consolation, however, in the fact that I, too, can remain indifferent.
Indifference is the wisdom of God.
"'You may play with me. Yet I know that the burn of your hand on my body
is an absurdity, of interest only to my idiot senses. My arms reach out
to embrace you. Your breasts surprise my fingers. Come, sit in my lap if
you wish. No, I would rather enjoy you as before--standing before me
naked. Take off your clothes.'
"While I talked she clung to me. Her lips passed kisses over my face. I
continued, however, to observe; to remain a spectator. She removed her
clothes, tearing them from her body and laughing. And standing before me
naked but for her black silk stockings and red slippers, she held out
her arms. But I shook my head and smiled.
"'I am the victim of an overwhelming desire to masturbate,' I said to
her, 'since I find it difficult to resist you. But if I yield to the
mysterious reality you have assumed I will become too grotesque for my
vanity to tolerate. I will remain aware while possessing you that my
penis is beating a ludicrous tattoo on a sofa cushion. I choose rather
to emulate the pride of St. Anthony, who shrewdly refused to play the
whoremonger with shadows.'
"I smiled at her and she laughed. She crouched on her feet staring up at
me. Raising my eyes from her, I saw Goliath. He was standing in the
curtains of his room, watching me with a curious, open-mouthed fury. I
saw that the little monster was beginning to understand that I was mad,
and this irritated me. There was danger in him, since even through his
stupid head must have passed a wonder of what had happened to Rita.
"I frowned at Goliath and his head rolled frightenedly on his heavy
shoulders.
"'Why do you bother me when I wish to be alone?' I cried. 'Go to your
bed and leave me.'
"I stood up and went for him. His head fell and he dragged himself back
into his room. This was, perhaps, the most curious thing in the
incident. 'I am ashamed of being seen with this nude phantom,' I
thought. For a moment the mad idea came to me that she was visible to
Goliath--that he was watching us--me and this figment of mine. My anger
was shame. My senses are logical in their pretenses. How can I stand
out against them, if they grow cleverer than I, more persuasive than I,
and lead me finally into the total madness of accepting them as
Mallare--the one Mallare, the lunatic who has escaped himself? I must
not escape.
"When I returned she was still crouching on the floor. I decided to
experiment. Perhaps there was still some lingering sense in me that
would fail to succumb to this astonishing make-believe.
"'Come here. On the couch,' I ordered her.
"She obeyed. She stretched herself out and I sat beside her. The odor of
her body was distinct. Perfumes spread a clever gloss over the woman
smell, the bitter salt odor that stirred from between her closed thighs.
I smiled, for the logic of this illusion grows entertaining. But I had
decided on experiments. My hands stroked her hair, feeling of its
strands. My fingers pressed at the skull beneath the warm skin of her
head. Then I held her breasts, that had once seemed to me like two
little blind faces raised in prayer. But imagery no longer decorates my
thought. My hallucination is no longer a weaver of magical phrases. But
stark, real--its heart beating under ribs, its skin glowing with
perspiration, its nipples standing out. As I caressed her I heard her
say:
"'Yours. Yours. I am your woman.'
"Her thighs opened and her arms that had been held toward me fell to her
sides. My hand slipped between. There was warm flesh. Yes, it was flesh
to my mind. And I sat for moments allowing the illusion to stir a
passion in me. I would throw myself on this thing, hold it in my arms,
give myself to it. Where was the wrong in that, since it was only myself
I ravished--a phantom mocking me behind my eyes?
"Goliath saved me. I saw him standing once more in the curtains of his
room. His long arms were beating against his sides, the black fingers
opening and shutting like frantic talons. He stood with his head rolling
as if he were trying to stand erect. His eyes were insane.
"I sprang away, again pulled by the unmistakable emotion of shame. He
glared at me for a moment, but as my hand caught his face he toppled
over and lay whining. I picked him up and threw him into his bed and
locked the door of his room.
"When I returned she still lay. Her eyes were closed. She looked at me
and I saw she was weeping.
"'Since you are not to be reasoned out of existence, since you seem to
resist what is left of my sanity--there is nothing to do but tolerate
you.'
"I sat in my chair and spoke to her.
"'It will end in my loathing you,' I said. 'I created you in order to
possess you beyond the realism of the senses. For a time your body was
like a rich curtain before the door of enchantments which I might enter
at will.
"'But there is no longer a door. Your body alone confronts me. In this
way I am reduced to enjoying my dream with my senses. Then it means
only that I have achieved nothing more by my madness than the privilege
of masturbating with the aid of an erotic phantom.
"'Alas, the reason of it is clear. Man's fiber is fouled throughout with
sex. I sought to emancipate myself from all relation to life. The
delusion of my hopes is more to be pitied than the disorder of my
vanity. For I see now that man is a collection of adjectives loaned to a
phallus. His intellect is no more than a diverting hiatus between
fornications. His soul, yes, his very egoism on which he prides himself,
is a synthetic erection.
"'To possess! What a delusion! And for its sake I threw my genius away.
I stripped the world from my eyes that it might not intrude upon the
universe within me. A paradise in which I might strut alone. Possess
myself. Yes, and here I am, aware at last of folly. For my senses belong
to life. And though I buried myself in a madness deeper than night, they
would still cling to me. Though I castrated myself, they would
remain--five invisible testicles. It is impossible to possess. Folly to
attempt. As long as the senses remain life clings like a dead whore to
my darkness. Even my madness that I prided myself upon is a babbling
witch astride a phallus, her lips bending over it with grewsome hungers.
"'There is only one castration--death. What am I now? Mad? Yes. And
worse. Disillusioned. I have closeted myself with a lecherous animal and
it turns on me. That is the reward of the privacy I hungered after.
"'And you who lie and weep on a couch are no longer the dream of a God,
but the crude marionette created by lust for its own diversion. I
thought only to go mad. But I see I have become an idiot.'
"There was no more to say. Her weeping ended and she vanished. But she
will return. In my sleep her outline wanders like an amorous ghost
haunting the grave of my senses. Ah, I must be cautious now, more
cautious, always cautious. It would be too easy to yield. And if I
yielded and returned again my defeat would be unbearable. I think it is
easier to die. Death is no more than a premature torment. Its name alone
is a suffering. Its reality but a final illusion.
"But I persist. I still remain. There is a rhythm to things that still
seduces me. A gentle curiosity that gives the lie to my bewilderment. I
sit, an audience, shedding crocodile tears at a melodrama.
"Tomorrow ... tomorrow. Who can think that word is still himself? What
difference does it make if I grow uncomfortable and swollen with
illusions? I persist. And who knows but tomorrow will be a door in my
labyrinth ... a bottom to this pit into which I have fallen?"
[Illustration: Fifth Drawing]
[V]
_From the Journal of Mallare dated December._
"Her murder was simple. We stood under an arc lamp and my hands killed
her. I remember her face looking imploringly at me. And when I went away
I leaned over and kissed her hair. She was dead in the street. It was
simple.
"Now I must kill again. It is no longer simple. I must teach her to hate
me. She will vanish then. It is clear in my thought. My hands are
useless against her now. I have held them about her neck and she
laughs.
"All day she runs around in the room. At night she comes to my bed. Her
hands wake me up. She plays with me. I lie thinking how she may be
murdered this second time. She has grown loathsome. I allow her to cover
my body with kisses and listen to her laughter. Pollutions result. I am
powerless against her lips and terrible fingers. She devours me night
after night like a succubus. I lie and masturbate with a phantom.
"But I will discover a way to kill this thing. I close my eyes and lie
powerless while she repeats the refrain I once taught her. 'Yours ...
yours. I am your woman.'
"I have hurled her out of bed, hurled her body against the wall. She
continues to laugh like a child. I think of her as real. Goliath knows I
am mad. He watches me while I struggle with this thing. He is filled
with terror. I have told him to go, but he remains.
"She sleeps in the bed that Rita used. I have seen her there. Stood
beside her listening to her breathe. If I die she will pursue me in
death. She is more real than I. I must kill her. My hands have never
touched her since the night on the couch. I have kept myself intact. I
still remain. She is a virgin. My thought is mad. It plays with the idea
of fornication. Once, screams frightened her out of my bed. I lay unable
to resist. My body reached toward her. An anger that was like death
blinded me. I cried out and saved myself. My thought crept back from the
madness. I called myself back.
"I can no longer close my eyes to her. She grimaces in the dark. And she
is at my heels in the street. I have decided there is a way to rid
myself of her.
"Mallare ... Mallare is no more. Madness jostles him off the scene. He
annihilated a world and a new monster sprang up in its place.
"My words return. Ah, tired warriors covered with the grime of
battle--they troop back to my mind out of the dark. Mallare returns. But
what a caricature! See him like a fanatic priest driving the devil out
of his soul with whips.
"This would be a God, this hermaphroditic prostitute who fondles himself
at night. Mallare ... weep. Whips will not rid you of this monster.
Mallare, the plaything.