Chapter 2

The street through which he walked was like an unremembered dream. The
faces that passed him vanished before his eyes. He walked, seeing
nothing that was visible, hearing nothing that had sound. He had
accomplished an annihilation.

Three months had passed since he had written in his Journal the command
to find a woman. She was waiting for him now as he returned to his home.
In the three months he had devoted himself to her transformation.

Mallare no longer raged. In the lucidity of his thought was a strange
lapse. There had vanished from it all images of life except those of his
own creation. His thought emptied of its projective sense, he found it
difficult for him to translate his ideas in their relation to the world
from which they had escaped. Yet he wrote in his Journal;

"I am aware of something that no longer lives in my mind. Dim outlines
haunt me. Dead memories peer through the windows of my tower. Life
grimaces vaguely on the edges of my madness. I can no longer see or
understand. The world is a memory that expires under my thought. I am
alone. Yet how much of me must still be the world! My dearest phantoms
are, after all, no more than distorted reminiscences. I fear, alas, this
is the truth. Yet it is pleasant to be alone with one's senses, to feel
an independence."

The woman awaiting him was a curious creature. He had found her with a
family of gypsies on the outskirts of the city. She was young--eighteen.
His money had bought her release. She was called Rita and after two
weeks she had agreed to come home with him. An old man in the caravan
had said to her:

"This man is crazy. You can see that by his eyes and the way he walks. I
have listened to him for two weeks and I know he is crazy. But you go
with him, Rita. He is lonely and wants a woman. You go with him and obey
him. You are young and he will teach you. Perhaps even you will fall in
love with him. You are an ignorant child. Your mind is like a baby's.
And perhaps you will not understand that he is crazy."

Among the gypsies with whom she had lived Rita was known as a simple
one. She was never to be trusted to enter the cities they visited. She
would remain with the wagons, helping to cook and wash. When men came to
her in the evening and, sitting beside her, sang and played on guitars,
she would listen for a moment and then run off. The old ones of the
caravan said:

"She is not grown up. We must treat her like a child because there is
still only a child's heart in her. She is beautiful but without sense.
Some day she will make a good wife. But there is danger that she may
give her body to strangers. Because she does not know about such things.
We must be careful for her."

Sitting along the summer roads outside the city Mallare talked to the
child. She listened without understanding but after days had passed,
dreams of the man with the black hair slanting across his forehead came
to her when she was alone. So when the Old One of the caravan said--

"You may go with this stranger. You can go away if you wish"; she nodded
and smiled with happiness.

Mallare brought her home. And she had lived in the carnelian room that
was colored like the inside of a Burgundy bottle ever since. Goliath was
her slave. Mallare was her God.

At first he had said little to her. She wanted him to talk but he
neither talked nor paid other attention. He brought her ribbons and
dresses, trinkets, jewels, and playthings. She had a room in which to
sleep but all day she sat in the room that was hung with heavy red
curtains through which the sun filtered in a rouged and somber glow.
Vermilion fabrics covered a long couch against the wall. Red carpets,
red tapestries, tawny vases of brass inlaid with niello; crimsons and
varying reds struck an insistent octave of color around her.

Mallare was absent during the days. She wondered where he went. He would
return in the evenings with gifts. This had continued for a month. Then
had begun a more curious existence.

One night Mallare had said to her:

"You must never talk to me any more but listen always to what I say. If
you remain here you will have everything you wish. But you must not go
outside. Do you understand?"

She closed her black eyes and nodded. He continued--

"I desire to make something out of you. If you stay here you will learn
what I want you to be."

Thereafter he had sat for days at a time in the room with her. Goliath
brought them food.

To Rita the smiling man who never ceased talking to her became like one
of the Djinns the old ones of the caravan used to tell stories about, in
the nights along the roads. The words he spoke became a languorous mist
in her ears. She listened and understood only that this man with the
black hair slanted across his forehead and the silent eyes, was talking
to her. This made her happy.

At night she slept alone dreaming of the sound of his voice. Her heart
became filled with awe. The strange room with its red colors was a
Temple such as she had heard about but never seen. Mallare was a God who
sat in its center and around whom grew a world of mysteries.

When she awoke her heart grew eager. Perhaps he would let her sit closer
to him this new day. Perhaps his hands would touch her hair. She dreamed
that some time he would play a guitar and sing to her as the men of the
caravan used to do. But if that happened she would not run away as
before. She would draw close to him and kiss his hands.

But the two months had passed without change. Except that the days
became for Rita only the sound of a voice in her heart and the image of
a face staring out of her secret thoughts.

She wore fine clothing. Rings crowded her fingers until her hands seemed
little effigies of themselves. Her black hair was looped over her ears.
A gold band was around it. She would have been happy if he had sat
closer to her while he talked. Then the mystery of the words he spoke
would not have separated them. Now she could lie on the couch, her head
on her hand, her eyes burning and watch his lips move.

Her mind never asked what he was saying. His words carried him away.
They were part of the mystery of him. Out of them she gleaned fugitive
meanings as one recognizes for an instant familiar faces in a passing
crowd. But she was content to lie watching him. A lethargy filled her.
The days were like parts of a dream. At night, alone, she lay awake
remembering them as a child playing with delicious fantasies.

She was asleep on the couch when Mallare came in. Goliath shuffled away
as his master appeared. He had been standing in the center of the room,
staring at the sleeping Rita, his eyes rolled up and his huge black head
rigid.

She woke and Mallare smiled at her. Her eyes grew large and her red lips
parted.

Mallare, seating himself, studied her with calm. She was his creation.
He was giving her life. His mind was beginning to conceive her as a part
of the phantoms that lived in him and that were his world. This illusion
diverted him. His objective sense fast vanishing, he was gradually
perceiving her as a tangible outline of his own hallucinations.

She was no longer the childish-minded gypsy girl he had found with the
caravan. She was a fantasy of Mallare. There was no body to her but the
body of his curious thoughts. A silent and adoring image of his brain
stared back at him from the vermilion couch. This pleased him.

His madness had translated her into his inner world. At moments a gleam
of doubt disturbed his illusion. As he talked a consciousness of her
eyes would tangle his words. Her eyes would become two dark intruders,
and he would rise and walk away.

"I must be careful," he would mutter nervously.

Away from her the illusion would leave him and his thought would
consider lucidly the situation it had created.

"My madness plays with a dangerous toy," he pondered. "She is a woman
and her eyes are filled with desire. Perhaps she has not even understood
the things I have told her. I must be careful, however, not to betray my
illusions with this lingering sanity. When I am with her I conceive her
a phantom--a something which has stepped out of my madness to divert it.
Her body becomes like one of the dreams in my brain. Her little hands
reach like cobra heads among my intimacies. She is very beautiful that
way. In my mind I caress her as a part of myself. I speak to her and it
seems as if my words are talking to each other. Yet her eyes intrude and
frighten me."

Now, as he studied her, the illusion he desired again filled him. His
eyes turned inward saw only a dark-eyed phantom, a woman of mist that
was no more than a hallucination drifting through his thought. He
addressed this image of Rita softly.

"It is pleasant to be in love with you," he said. "Because love hitherto
has been one of the abominations. In the world I have destroyed love
existed. It was the foul paradox of egoism. Man, feeling suddenly the
torment of his incompleteness, embraced woman. He was inspired by the
mania to transform his desires into possessions.

"His heart taunted him. His brain filled with despairing vacuums. And he
said to himself, 'I have become a deserted room. A woman will enter. Her
beauty and desire will be gifts that will furnish me once more. She
will be something I possess within myself.'

"In this illusion was contained the foul paradox of egoism. For in the
world I have destroyed, egoism died in the embrace of love. The mania
for possession which flattered man into seeking woman was no more than a
shrewd mirage of his senses, that tricked him into the fornications
necessary only incidentally to himself but vital to the world which he
fancied love obliterated.

"For all these strenuous admirations of beauty--what are they but the
subterfuges by which man hopefully conceals his lacking egoism from
himself? He admires the tints of hair. His thought trembles before the
curve of a neck. Graceful images unravel in his mind at the sight of a
woman's breasts. To himself he declaims, 'I am in love with her. She is
beautiful. I will take her beauty in my arms. There is an emptiness in
me that clamors for the charm and mystery of this woman.'

"Accordingly he embraces her. There is tenderness between them. Their
bodies, indeed, seem to have become overtones that mate in a delicious
and inaudible melody. But this melody must be brought closer so that its
beauty may be more definitely enjoyed. This melody must be played on
instruments and not on thin air.

"And, selah! The egoist beautifying himself with love, finds himself
removing his shoes, tearing off his underwear, fondling a warm thigh and
steering his phallus toward its absurd destiny. The transvaluations--the
ineffable and inarticulate mysteries he fancied himself embracing--turn
out to be a woman with her legs wrapped around him. His desires for the
infinite sate themselves in the feeble tickle of orgasm. Cerberus
seduced from his Godhood by a dog biscuit!

"As for those animals whose egoism has never escaped their testicles,
they are not to be spoken of as men. Their imagination discharges itself
through their penis. They are the husbands in the world I have
destroyed. They understand neither beauty nor disillusion. The vagina is
a door at which they deliver regularly like industrious milkmen. They
are the sexual workmen to whom fornication is as much a necessity as
poverty is to incompetents.

"I alone have found the way in which to love. I love and grow richer. I
am mad. Yet how admirable my madness is! My eyes and senses are enslaved
by a radiant phantom. As I talk your outlines grow luminous. Your eyes
become like conquered Satans. They crawl inside my brain like amorous
spiders. Your lips are the libretto of a dream. Your breasts are little
blind faces raised in prayer. Your body flutters like a rich curtain
before the door of enchantments. I look within. Thus I possess you and
my senses without leaving themselves, enter the infinity of my mind."

Mallare's eyes closed. He remained rigid in his chair. A murmur that
Rita could no longer hear came from his lips, as if voices were
speaking out of a depth.

"Rita ... Rita," they said, "See, eyes prowling like golden tigers.
Cobra hands playing over my soul. Mine ... I walk with you through
gardens, deeper and endless."

The murmur ended. Rita, watching from the couch, lay trembling. Warm
tongues spoke within her body. Her breasts tightened until they felt
impaled on their own nipples. Her child's mind was alive with impulses
driving her like slow whips. She would crawl shivering to his feet. Her
breasts would press their pain against his knees. Desire like an
impossible anger filled her. She closed her eyes and felt herself moving
from the couch. She would lie at his feet.

Her hands reached out. Mallare regarded her blankly for a moment. A
wildness slowly filled his eyes. He sprang up. Goliath crouching in a
corner of the dim room watched his master raise the velveted figure in
his hands and fling it with a cry against the wall.

"Fool!" he shouted. "Intruder!"

Goliath cringed as his master rushed past him to the door. He listened
to his feet flying down the stairs toward the night.

Rita lay with her head hanging over the couch. Her lips were opened. Her
teeth gleamed like little deaths. She lay motionless as Mallare had
flung her.

Goliath shuffled to the couch. His huge black face stared over her
closed eyes.

[III]

He remembered that he had thrown the girl against the wall and he
paused. The street was black. Great shadows balanced themselves on his
eyes.

"I have escaped from myself," he muttered.

He stood trying to remember himself. But his mind was like a night.
Shapes tip-toed through its dark. A hooded figure loomed in his mind. It
swung toward him as if it were flying out of his eyes. Other figures
swept by. They assumed strange postures as they passed. His thoughts
regarded them tiredly. He desired to join the figures fleeing out of
him. Then he would vanish with them.

"I am too clever for that," he murmured aloud. "Yet it would be
pleasing. To think in dark, hooded figures; ah--they have adventures!
And I would sit like a night alive with witches."

He stared with a smile at the street.

"I no longer see or understand," he whispered. His hands felt his sides.

"Yet here I am. There is a life within me that I dare not enter. I must
remember this. Write 'Forbidden' over its black doors. To succumb to my
madness would be to lose it."

He resumed his walk.

"She intruded," he remembered. "Perhaps I have killed her. That would be
pleasant. Except that she was necessary as an image. I am the mirror and
she is an image alive in me. Her desire is a happy shadow I embrace."

Mallare's eyes opened to the night.

"Strange," he thought, "I see and yet what I look at remains invisible.
But tonight outlines dance. The night is a maniac suffering from ennui.
His dark eyes are weary with the emptiness they create. Vainly he
searches for life, his eyes devouring it, and leaving only his own image
for him to contemplate.

"I am not so mad as that. Or I, too, would sit like the night gorged
with monotonous shadows. Instead, I translate. A memory of sanity gives
diverting outline to the shadows in me. I am not a maniac like the
night. My mind closes like a darkness over the world but I enjoy myself
walking amid insane houses, staring at windows that look like drunken
octagons, observing lamp posts that simper with evil, promenading fan
shaped streets that scribble themselves like arithmetic over my face.

"These must be the things I look at. But they are my improvement. The
world is not so outrageous if one is sufficiently mad to pull it into
taffy shapes and incredible scrawls.

"But I must be warned. My madness sought to avenge itself at her
intrusion. It overcame me with its anger. She was not content to let me
possess the beautiful image of her. Although I have explained the thing
to her clearly. It is possible she does not understand. I will talk to
her again with greater lucidity. I will tell her that I do not desire
her except as a dream for my mirror. But I have said that to her."

Under the green-white sputter of a street lamp, Mallare halted. His mind
was preoccupied with unraveling the mystery of Rita. He stood, a tall
figure without a hat, a slant of black hair across his forehead, and
ignoring eyes. A beggar in a ragged overcoat shuffled, head down, toward
him.

"She is only a child," Mallare thought, "but it is evident that passion
already lifts her breasts. Her simplicity is betrayed by incipient
orgasms prowling for an outlet. This, she fancies, is love. It is
fortunate she is a virgin. Still, I must not rely too greatly on that.
For virginity is an insidious bed fellow for a maiden. Forefingers and
phallic shadows have ravished her in dreams. And if she is a virgin in
spirit as well as body, she is still a woman--and therefore dangerous.

"Ah, what loathsome and lecherous mouths women are! Offering their urine
ducts as a mystic Paradise! Stretching themselves on their backs and
seducing egoists with the unctuous lie of possession. The mania for
possession--that most refined of all instincts--the most heroic of
insanities! How easily they circumvent it! To desire is merely to love.
But to create in oneself the objects of desire--that is to be mad and
above life. Beyond it.

"I must explain this to her. If she loves me well enough she will
understand. All things are possible in love. I will explain to her that
I possess her at will without the loathsome absurdities of sex."

The beggar paused and mumbled beside Mallare. Watery, reddened eyes
waited patiently for the alms asked. Mallare had fallen into silence. He
stood regarding the beggar intently. His thought labored for a moment,
scratching in silence at doors swinging slowly shut. His thought
withdrew and Mallare was alone.

He stood up tall and stern in a darkened chamber. His eyes stared
intently at the figure of Rita. Her face, pale and alive, smiled
imploring in the mendicant's place. He talked, but the beggar, still
patient, heard no sound.

"You have followed me," said Mallare inside his chamber. "Very well. It
is useless to explain matters to you. You pursue me with your lecherous
body. I have warned you. Now I will kill you. I will take your throat in
my hands and that will be an end of you. You will fall down."

The beggar uttered a cry of terror. Mallare's hands had reached suddenly
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.