Chapter 3

[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?"

[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.

"But there is a way to be rid of her. Hate will darken the gleam of her
body. She will vanish. But do I hate her? My madness is infatuated since
it makes her so radiant. And who am I that I laugh at my madness? It is
I who am insane. Not this other Eden maker whose mania I applauded. I,
Mallare, tear at my hair.

"I look in the mirror over my bed. Eyes red and gleaming look back at
me. This is my face, but I am no longer there. And whose are these eyes
looking back at me? The eyes of Mallare's friend, red and gleaming. His
friend who betrayed him. Hair slanting over a forehead. Mouth wide and
thin. No longer mine. They belong to the mirror. Mallare's words whimper
before them.

"Weep ... weep, impotent one. The feet of your madness walk solemnly
over you. They kick gravely at a carcass. Lie beneath them and watch
Mallare dance away, whirl away with lecherous shadows in his arms. But
she will die too. I am thinking of death. Mallare the egoist asks alms
of death!

"Windows break inside me. I look out of broken windows. I am gone and
away. Empty rooms. My hands feel walls. Mallare asks pity of darkness.
Pity him."

[VI]

She sat looking out of the window. He had gone away early in the
morning. It was growing dark now. The cold street dwindled. Windows
lighted up. People that looked from the distance like black toys moved
through the darkening street.

She could tell when he came because his walk was different. The hours
built pointed roofs to her dream. She played behind happy walls but her
eyes remained outside, watching from the window.

This was part of a game--to hide away and wait. To put on her clothes
carefully in the morning; bright silks and petticoats and a dress on
top; jewels on her fingers; bracelets and earrings; gold bands through
her hair. To make her cheeks red and paint black lines in her eyes; then
paint her lips and fingers red--these things hid her. She must be hidden
when he came--concealed behind paints and clothes so that when he looked
at her it would be someone else he saw.

A tall man with black hair. His face was white. His eyes were silent and
hidden. But when they looked at her they screeched like parrots. They
ruffled up and yellow points came into them.

He liked to walk up and down pretending she was nowhere, pretending
there was no Rita, pretending he was looking for her. Then she ran
around and one by one she took off the things--the dress, the
petticoats, the silks, the jewels and bracelets and gold bands. Each one
she took off was for him. It was a game. She came out of hiding places.
Each one she took off was a secret she confessed to him.

She sat at the window dreaming of the ways she belonged to him. Her
thought was a pantomime which prostrated itself before his memory. She
remembered sacrifices.... He would lie cold in his bed. Then she crawled
to his side. She dared not look at his eyes. They were above her and
kept themselves hidden. She vanished before the thought of them.

Then his body grew warm under her hands. Her lips made his body tremble.
He was white and naked like her. He was a fire to which she fed herself.
The moment came when there was no longer any Rita. A little ember lay
burning happily in his passion.

When he fell asleep she went away. In her own bed she lay dreaming words
that were like hiding places. Only he could lure her out of them. After
he fell asleep she carried memories of him into herself.... He had
smiled. His body had shivered. His fingers had clutched at her face. He
had picked her up and fought with her. When he did this it was as if he
lifted her to his eyes and she could look at him--as if the wind lifted
the flames about.

The street was dark. But he would come soon. He only stayed away till it
grew dark. Now it was his time again. The street and all the lights
would open the door and come into the room. And she would be waiting,
hidden away. It was exciting to wait. It was the way he kissed her--by
making her wait and pretending when he came that there was no Rita.

The night was like a story that frightened. As she watched from the
window she remembered the caravan along the roads. Fires and dark faces
and red handkerchiefs. The night along the roads changed the trees into
birds that flew away. The wagons went to sleep. Everyone slept but Rita.
The horses had dreams and whispered to themselves.

Along the roads where the caravan stopped there would be a fire at night
to watch. Rita sat alone looking at the flames. Dreams came out of the
fire and walked away. Then, hours afterward, they came back when the
fire was low. They stood around the coals and finally crawled into the
ground. Darkness remained. The wagons became ghosts. She grew sad and
wanted to go away with the night like the dreams that crept back into
the dead fire.

Now his eyes were like the hiding places she had wished. She trembled.
He was coming. She could see him out of the window, walking slowly in
the street below. She closed her eyes.

The door opened and her heart bowed itself. Her fingers, stiffened with
colored rings, pressed at her breasts. Now there was a game to play. He
walked up and down pretending Rita was hidden. He was cold and far away.
His face walked like a dead man back and forth in the room. Goliath
shuffled as fast as he could and hid himself in the curtains. She
crouched in the chair, her knees drawn up, her eyes cringing with
delight.

She could watch his face. When he was far away she had further to go to
reach him, and each step was like a kiss she gave him. His anger, his
words, his cold face and his hands striking her were wild roads down
which she ran toward a fire that waited.

He paid no attention but walked up and down and his eyes ignored her.
But he would begin to talk soon. She would undress for him. One by one,
rings, bands of gold, silks and petticoats--each that came off was like
a part of her already burning.

She stood up naked. Only she was left now. Her body caressed her with
its desires. She must go on undressing. There was something more to give
him. She would remove something of herself--her arms, her breasts, her
white thighs. She gave these to him with her dresses and jewels. They
were things for him to burn up.

He was looking at her because she had crawled to his feet. This was when
he began to talk to her--when she placed her arms around his feet and
bent her head to the floor.

"Yours," she whispered.

He was motionless and far away and tall above her. He stood like the
night. His white face was the cold moon. She waited and heard the wind
blow against the windows. She waited for him to grow warm.

His hands lifted her up. He held them around her neck, his fingers
tightening. She opened her eyes and loved him. He talked to her. She
listened and wished to die in his hands, if he desired her, if it would
make his eyes smile at her.

But his fingers loosened and he threw her down. She lay smiling on the
floor as he walked away. He went on talking, louder and louder. His
voice was like a sword swinging. He was angry. His words were soft and
quick.

She looked up only when he laughed. He was standing against the red
curtains laughing. His finger was pointing to her. He stood watching her
with his eyes screeching like parrots and laughing as he pointed.

Kneeling, she covered her face with her hands. His laughter came nearer.
His hands began to strike. Pain leaped to greet them. Pain, like wings,
raised her body to his eyes. His hands were striking and tearing. They
played a game with her body.

Candles lighted in her head. He was laughing and throwing himself
against her. She felt blood come out of her and cover her with little
flames. But he would let her come close soon. After he had struck her
and become like a fire she would crawl close to him and he would let her
give herself, what was left of herself.

His hands knocked her down again and she lay without moving. He was
still laughing and pulling at her. She kneeled and covered her face. Her
head kept nodding at him.

Now she would die. He would devour her. Her body fell and rose as if he
were swinging her around his head. His hands drove nails through her
breasts. Her voice ran away from her and screamed. But she continued to
nod her head and to come toward him out of the hiding places. His blows
were binding her body with red ropes. But soon she would lie against him
and give herself to his passion. She would feel his body burning from
the blows he had given her. She closed her eyes and screamed. He grew
larger and she was no longer able to understand the pain....

When she awoke Goliath was bending over her. He was whispering
excitedly. Sunlight made red shadows in the room.

"Where is he?" she asked.

She slid to the floor and then stood up carefully. Pain halted her and
she moaned. But her eyes continued to hunt the room.

"Where is he?" she asked again.

Goliath watched her and his head rolled excitedly. She straightened and
dragged herself to the door of his room. It was empty.

"Mallare," she cried. Her hands beat against her head, "Mallare."

Goliath remained watching her naked figure stumbling through the rooms
as she called the name. She returned to the couch and threw herself face
down. She lay moaning and tearing the cushions with her fingers.

He had gone away. He had beaten her not because he loved. He hated her.
And he had taken himself away from her. She understood. He no longer
wanted her. He had laughed and tried to kill her.

With a scream she rushed into his bedroom and threw herself against the
unused pillows. Her arms struck at them. She began to talk aloud in the
language she knew.

"Gone away, gone away," she cried. "I am yours and you gone away."

But words were too involved. She beat at the pillows and screamed. When
he came back she would kill him. While he sat in his chair writing she
would creep close and drive a knife. That was what would happen to him
because he no longer loved her and because he had beaten her to say
goodbye.

It was day outside. When it grew dark again he would come back. She
would wait, but not as before. She was no longer his.

In her room Rita bathed herself and searched for her old clothes. She
found them hidden--the wide dress with red and yellow stripes, the many
blue and scarlet petticoats that she had worn when he brought her home
from the caravan; the long black earrings, the green and orange shawl
for her head. She put these on. They hid the vivid marks on her body.

Dressed in her gypsy clothes she came into the room again. It would be
long to wait. But darkness would come and then he would open the door
again. She lay down on the couch and sighed.

[VII]

Mallare, wrapped in a heavy overcoat, his hands in thick gloves, walked
from his door into the street. The cold straightened him. The deserted
night mirrored itself in a thin coating of snow that overlay the
roof-tops.

"They sleep," he thought. His head bent toward the wind. "The streets
are empty. The night is mine. I must think of what has happened. There
is something inexplicable in what has happened. My hands fought with a
phantom. That, of course, is nonsense.

"How do I know my hands fought? Merely because I remember them
striking. Yet that may have been an illusion too!