Moloch: Or, This Gentile World Read online

  “Yes,” thought Moloch, “Brother Pritchard, put them out, please. And put out the sight of these hideous rows of human derelicts testifying to a greasy hat-passer for the sake of a slim handout and a flop for the night. Put out the lights that we may forget the corrugated-metal ceiling and the bughouse walls screaming “Jesus Loves You” but “Don’t Spit on the Floor.” Yes, Brother Pritchard, you put out the lights, and Sister Powell, you make ready a song!”

  Turning away from the Rescue Mission, he plunged into a side street and before long found himself standing before a dignified, time-bitten edifice separated by a well-trimmed lawn from an ivy-covered rectory. It was out of the gaunt, massive doors of this old Presbyterian Church that he emerged one June day in a velvet Eton jacket, his curly head capped by a creamy tam-o-shanter with a pompon attached and a snow-white feather peeping out of the band. Down the broad stone stoop they trooped, a flock of noisy boys and girls decked in Sunday finery, ready for the first leg of their grueling march up Bedford Avenue. It was that Anniversary Day that put the spell of Bedford Avenue upon him. That day its broad thoroughfare was thronged with cheering, smiling crowds; flags fluttered riantly, bands played, and the somnolent, staid brown fronts played their grave, sedate role. Afterwards came the ice cream and soda water, and the award of a calfskin Testament with name engraved in letters of gold.

  What a funny little youngster he must have been! A little sissy, no doubt, with his Eton jacket and a white feather in his hat. But then, it was not altogether his fault; he was not responsible for the ensemble.

  What happened that day, after he left the church and started walking home with the New Testament under his arm? What was that Jew-boy’s name that he had the argument with? Funny, it completely escaped him. Anyhow, he could recall that he knocked him down, and left him curled up under the fruit stand on the comer of Grand Street and Driggs Avenue. Later that day Eddie Carney bumped into him. He thought a heap of Eddie Carney then. And Eddie had said: “Didn’t think it was in you, kiddo,” and shook him heartily by the hand…. After that little episode he was one of the boys; he could go anywhere with them—cook chippies in the lots, help the gang in a stone fight, break windows in the tin factory at night, or knock down showcases in front of the clothing stores on Grand Street.

  He sauntered along South Third Street, staring at the fire escapes alive with bedding, iceboxes, geraniums, whatnot. Sea cows distributed their flowing buttocks over cane seats at the curb; some held laborious conversation with their neighbors across the street; some found stimulating amusement in dandling their brats. Most of them appeared to have contracted elephantiasis, or suffered from prolapsis of the womb. All of them had big udders oozing with contented milk…. One creature in a fur coat (a specimen of the porpoise family) fumbled with her little boy’s trousers as he waited impatiently to relieve his bladder. He stood brazenly watching the performance as the fond parent placidly shook the urine out of her coat sleeve. He was not afraid of embarrassing her. That was impossible. For a moment he was inclined to admire this imperviousness. Should he go up to her, tap her on the shoulder, and say: “Madam, have you no toilet in your house?” He would like to say just that, in a suave, offish manner, as though he were inviting her to join him in a plate of wheat cakes at the Ritz-Carlton. What made them foster this gutter etiquette? No use asking them, of course. No matter what neighborhood they overran, this gutter life opened up, flourished and burgeoned. If it was summer, they floundered about in fish-eyed ataraxia with nightgown and carpet slippers, wading through swill like ducks slipping through lily pads. As soon as the brats were able to toddle they were trained to piddle at the curb and discharge their mucus with two nimble Angers. Milk bottles were thrown from second-story windows and smashed to bits in the middle of the street. With nightfall evil-looking felines took possession of the street and nibbled at the putrid refuse that clogged the arteries of traffic. In spite of the foul, nauseating vomit of the streets, babes were brought down and suckled at the breast. And marvel of marvels, they blossomed like the rose! Those contented udders most likely…! How does one explain it? Is it possible that the stench of offal revives tender memories of a distant land?

  The Children of Israel. God’s chosen people! Is it these Disraeli referred to when he said: “The Jew cannot be absorbed; it is not possible for a superior race to be absorbed by an inferior”? Moloch reminded himself (to use an idiomatic expression of the ghetto) of the Jewish prophets: Isaiah walking naked through the streets of Jerusalem to show the inhabitants that the Lord would strip her bare; Ezekiel eating dung and wearing a rotten girdle as a sign that their city would decay. All of them uncouth in appearance, unclean in garb, existing on roots and wild honey, sometimes browsing on grass and flowers; skipping about in the mountains from rock to rock like goats.... And Moses, the animated Kosher sign of Israel, peeping at the hind parts of the Lord!

  Down Havemeyer Street that was broadened to make an approach for the Williamsburg Bridge. Crowded now with pushcarts creaking with nondescript freight. Here one can purchase anything from coffeepots and bedchambers to Ford parts. He walked gingerly beneath the awnings, fearful lest a bucket of swill be emptied on his head or some stray lice drop off the gray feather bedding flaunted like bunting everywhere. “An industrious people, verily. A thriving people: harmless, law-abiding, gregarious. Give their children all....” Bah! He spat in disgust. “Take them away. Take them back to Zion City, O Lord. Lead them out of this wilderness of pushcarts and catamarans And give every circumcised son a clean linen handkerchief for keeps!” He strode brusquely through the pushing swarms, elbowing his way clear, thrusting his nose toward the fleece-lined clouds to get a whiff, if possible, of unpolluted air.

  Depressed by the melancholy transformation of the old neighborhood, and furious with God’s vermin whose coprophilous tendencies he regarded as the cause, he returned to Bedford Avenue and boarded a crosstown car.

  The ride was somewhat of a relief. Immediately as they swung into Kent Avenue, and passed in review the old Broadway Ferry (which was running again), his mood changed. Peering eagerly through the old wooden gates at the fresh river life, his mind surged with glittering memories. Once again he saw the sturdy brewery wagons clattering through the open gates, and a teeming pedestrian life marching in through the swinging doors of the cafes that gilded the corners. Visions of silken mustaches dripping with cool foam, of an old-fashioned slate scoreboard over the free lunch counter, telling where the “Brooklyn” stood. Animated discussions by men in straw hats, perspiring under loud plaid suits, weighed down with heavy watch chains that were draped like Armenian letters across the solar plexus. And the horsecars at the other end of the ferry line—how they swayed and bobbed when you jumped aboard! A big coal stove in the center of the car fending off the cold with its ruddy glow. Those were the days when blizzards came and smote the city hard.

  He was still dreaming about the ferry, and the golden, mellow days of the Nineties, when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of two giant gray cruisers swinging at anchorage in the basin. A huge steel coaling dock, with lacy network of bars and girders, appeared and vanished. Beyond it all were the skyscrapers, looming up like rugged sentinels in a turquoise haze. Finally, old Wallabout Market, lying just beyond the grease-streaked waters of the creek; separated by a comfortable distance from the odors of decomposition by which the creek is identified.

  Somehow, amid the ceaseless change, the market survived. Not a building ever seemed changed, though doubtless here, too, subtle metamorphoses took place. Row upon row of low redbrick storehouses, bulging with produce, abubble with hand trucks, crates, and gunnysacks. There was something archaic about Wallabout Market. Perhaps it only seemed so, but the impression created was that of permanence, durability. It was as though Peter Stuyvesant had laid his heavy hand upon it, and defied the dago and the sheeny to remove it.

  8

  WHEN MOLOCH ARRIVED AT HIS HOME THAT AFTERNOON he found Sid Prigozi planked on the doorste
p, waiting for him. The fellow looked the same as ever, possibly a trifle worse— unkempt, greasy, hatless. His features were stretched in a sickly smirk that was intended as a badge of welcome.

  “Well, well, Mister Moloch!” at the top of his voice. “If I ain’t glad to see you. I thought you were sick in bed....”

  “You knew damned well I wasn’t.”

  “Aha! The old stuff, I see. Taking a day off again, eh? What’s up now?”

  Moloch tried to put an end to this jabbering with a sneer.

  “Christ!” he ripped out. “Do you have to visit me every time I take a day off? Do you suppose you contribute anything to my happiness by dropping around this way?”

  Prigozi had been sitting on the stoop like a bird of prey during these greetings. He got up now and commenced to dance about his friend Moloch, rubbing his hands and making India-rubber faces as he spoke. Throughout this strange performance, as he shot one remark after the other, he kept surveying the other from head to foot in no complimentary manner.

  “So I spoil your vacations, do I... Mister Moloch?”

  That “Mister “! It was like a dentist’s pet drill There were times when Moloch wanted to run at the mention of it.

  “Come on inside,” he said quietly. “We can talk better in there.”

  “No, why should we go inside?” shouted Prigozi, in his squeaky, high-pitched voice. “You’re ashamed to talk to me in public, are you? You don’t like me to dance in the street in front of your home, eh? All right, we’ll sit down here on the stoop. I’ll try to behave like a minister.” He paused. “Now tell me, Mister Moloch, just what ails you? Tut, tut! Don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong. I know there’s some dame behind it all. Out with it … who is she?”

  Moloch laughed, but not so contemptuously as he endeavored to. “Always a skirt, heh? Go on, hand me one of your windy psychological spiels.”

  “There you go! Didn’t I say so?” Prigozi bounced to his feet

  and started to pull a jig on the stoop “Out with it! Confess!

  Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes…. You’ve got a mild euphoria today, I notice; you look pale, a little haggard around the eyes.”

  “Oh, let up! I haven’t any euphoria, and I’m not disturbed about a woman.” He stopped, and reflected a moment. “Look here, if I told you the truth, what then?”

  “Well now, that all depends. The truth, you say? Do you want me to tell you something, Mister Moloch? … THE TRUTH ISN'T IN YOU! You’re a confirmed cheat. You even lie to yourself. You may be telling yourself this minute that you’re truthful with me, but if we were to go into it, the chances are we’d discover that you were humbugging again. However, I’m listening.”

  “If you could conquer the illusion that I’m a patient of yours …”

  Prigozi interrupted. “This sounds good to me. I’m staying on for the rest of the day. We’ve got to run this down, whatever it is.... Oh, don’t look so glum about it. I don’t invite myself to dinner very often, and when I do, you’ll recall that I usually pay for the meal.”

  Moloch was thinking of the reception Prigozi would get. Blanche usually handled him like a third rail.

  “I dropped by, Dion,” said Prigozi, dropping his bantering and worming, “because I wanted to have a serious chat with you. I knew you weren’t ill. Tell me frankly—can I help you in any way? What’s bothering you?”

  Moloch slapped him brusquely to hide his affection.

  “I don’t understand you,” he said. “Can’t a fellow take a day off without exposing himself to your infernal investigations? You want to know why I stayed away today. Well, look here … don’t laugh! I’m going to tell you the truth: I thought I wanted to write …”

  Prigozi melted. It was not precisely what he had expected to hear.

  “Hang it all,” he said gravely, “why don’t you stay home and write? I don’t mean for you to quit your job, but for God’s sake, stop running around nights with Marcelle, and Betty, and this one and that one. Give yourself a chance. I believe in you!”

  “You mean it?” A shyness suddenly seized Moloch. “Do you mean to say that you think I can write?” Before Prigozi could answer, he continued: “Wait a bit; let me explain. I know it sounds ridiculous to ask a question like that. One ought to know, I suppose, whether or not he can write. But I tell you, I’m all at sea. I can’t get started, for some reason. Someone, or some thing, is forever getting between me and my impulses, robbing me of my energies....”

  “You mean Blanche, I guess. Don’t misunderstand me. Not that Blanche deliberately prevents you from doing what you wish, but… well, damn it anyway, why do you permit her to get in your way?” He dropped his voice a peg. “Am I hurting you? I don’t mean to say anything offensive.”

  “You’re not. Go ahead. I’m glad you mentioned it. I’ve got to talk to someone about it. You’re not so far off the track.”

  Prigozi seemed at a loss to know just how to help Molochalong. It was seldom the latter honored him with his confidencesin such matters. With other things it was different. His appreciation was so intense that he grew flustered and said things of noconsequence, things he never meant There were other indications of his embarrassment. He turned red as a beet, his eyesbecame watery, his lips trembled and twitched as though he weremaking a proposal of marriage.

  “By the way,” he inquired, “what did you do with yourself today? You haven’t told me yet. The burlesque?”

  “Hell no! Why do you suspect that? Perhaps I went to the Aquarium.”

  “People don’t go to the Aquarium, Mister Moloch, to see belly dancers. Tell me, how was Cleo today?”

  Moloch smiled. It was a rather wan, pathetic smile.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “However, get this straight: generally I invent the burlesque shows! Sometimes I do it to get a rise out of people, sometimes to indulge my sense of the grotesque. Often it’s intended as a subterfuge, if there are women about, to make the conversation spicier, to help me establish a more intimate footing without wasting a deal of valuable time. Understand?”

  “Serious, Dion, I don’t. There’s something queer about such behavior. But then, that’s neither here nor there. Where were you then, if it was not the burlesque?”

  “Had a long walk.”

  “That all?”

  “Isn’t that enough? I’ve been out ever since breakfast; strolling about, thinking, mooning, vegetating.” He went into a lengthy exposition of his state of mind. The other listened gravely. When Moloch talked to him in this earnest, rhapsodical fashion all the windows of his soul opened. Nothing his friend might ask of him could prove too great. He was almost ashamed to confess it to himself, but it was so—for Moloch he was prepared to make a greater sacrifice than for anyone he knew … including his wife.