Free Moloch: Or, This Gentile World by Henry Miller

the interest that a breeder might spend on a prize heifer.
    Anticipations arose of utilizing the notebook as a springboard from which to plunge into a sea of more satisfying vicissitudes.
    Meanwhile the loose, heavy yoke of marriage chafed. This fever of activity which consumed him, and drove him from one escapade to another, offering him knowledge, excitement, sexual gratification—what was it but a partially recognized rebellion against the stagnating influences of wedlock? He was unhappy with the woman he had chosen. She too was unhappy. They lacked something (was it vigor or understanding?) to repair the prosaic damages of erosion.
    Moloch got out the battered-looking journal and began to scribble in it. Prigozi amused himself by snooping about—examining applications, mulling over the office correspondence— maintaining, as he did so, a running fire of sardonic comments concerning the slipshod practices employed.
    Moloch’s grim concentration disturbed him. It was an affront to his ego.
    “Humpfh!” he grunted. “What’s the item tonight— Luther ?’
    “No!” said Moloch, hoping to thwart any further inquiries by the inflection of his voice.
    “When are you going to write that book? You have sufficient notes there to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire .... Hullo!” he chirped, looking up. “Here’s the reason for the decline now.”
    Hari Das entered. He was in civilian clothes, and hatless. His glossy jet-black hair rested with luxuriant ease upon his slender shoulders. There was a serene, jubilant air about him. His manner verged on boldness, though it contained no vestige of the brash, aggressive qualities peculiar to Prigozi. Neither was it born of secret arrogance. A lofty indifference to the world—that more nearly approximated it.
    This, then, was the “nigger” that Twilliger took exception to … old man Houghton’s “shine” … the self-appointed Redeemer of Mankind in the twentieth century!
    Hari Das was lighter in color than most of his Indian confreres, and by all odds the most attractive. Women, who are better judges in these matters than men, declared him to be astonishingly handsome. Almost unanimously their first exclamation of rapture proclaimed the charm of his perfect, gleaming white teeth. Perhaps that was why he laughed so frequently and so easily. It was a pity that he had ever condescended to don the hideous uniform of our Western garb. In his own regalia, as a member of the warrior caste, he presented a quite different front. One might easily visualize him in the role of member of Parliament, parrying suavely with the constipated intellects of the upper House- -juggling them like so many billiard balls. … In a cheap, ready-made suit a forlorn element creeps into this picture, for which he is not responsible, and which has as little to do with his personality as the frames one sometimes sees about a masterpiece.
    “I came to tell you,” he began, and lapsed therewith into an amusing and wholly spontaneous account of his trials in Chinatown. The spotty, errant emphases he employed, in conjunction with his simple gestures, imparted a peculiar and altogether charming note to his utterances.
    It was noticeable that although he had been introduced to Prigozi two days previously, when he first stopped into the employment office (Prigozi having introduced himself), he seemed to be only slightly aware now of the other’s existence. He observed the amenities by a grandiloquent wave of the hand. Whereupon he proceeded to ignore Prigozi completely. Whether this was a sign of contempt, or in line with his royal indifference, it was difficult to tell. Prigozi, of course, was irritated by this jeweled disregard. His blatant self-assurance, his flamboyant insolence, all the muddy arrogance of the fellow was swept off the board, as it were. To his extreme surprise, he eventually found himself listening respectfully and, as the tale proceeded, growing more and more