Free Moloch: Or, This Gentile World by Henry Miller Page B

below.

Chapter 04
    4
    IN THE SUBWAY HARI DAS RECEIVED AS MUCH ATTENTION as if he were Genghis Khan suddenly come to life. Moloch was as far removed from the usual cares of an employment manager as an igloo from the equator.
    They were not intoxicated. In the first place, neither Hari nor Prigozi had touched a drop when they entered the café after closing the office. Moloch had taken only a few glasses of gin, but those “few thimblesful” had produced the illusion of a rutilant Bakst curtain closing slowly over a drab backstage scene whose realism was not of the theater but of life, life as it is known to a Pirandello.
    On this warm Crimean screen of velvet a cutback, translated from memory, bathed in vivid stews of color, and aching with promises that had never been fulfilled, projected itself. He became insensible of the clownish behavior of the man Prigozi standing beside him at the bar.
    Indeed, Prigozi himself, the brass rails, the rubicund figure in the white apron whose back was revealed in the fantastically soaped mirrors—the entire imminent reality had melted into a snug, superheated bedroom. There was about this room the same befouling disarray, the same vile odors which we associate with the bottom of a birdcage. He saw again the woman called Blanche, before she had gone through the mock solemnities of the conjugal rite; she was lying on a crazy quilt in a crumpled silk dressing sack, green as the troubled Atlantic. Her lips exuded a flavor of burnt coffee and buttered cinammon toast. Her armpits were dark, darker than the deep olive of her neck and shoulders. He buried his head in one of the fragrant hollows with a long, deep kiss that left her quivering under the slow-curving caress of his body. Her long chestnut hair, electric with ardor, perfumed with vitality, enveloped him and tantalized him. He found himself climbing under the counterpane, his tongue sputtering with entreaties.
    “I feel so ashamed,” whispers Blanche, as she lies languidly among the heaving pillows, pop-eyed with fright and expectancy. The word “marriage” is on her lips. He erases it with swollen affirmatives, almost stifling under the thick blankets. The distorted red patterns of the wallpaper are swimming in endless vibrations of heat.
    In the midst of this reverie Prigozi nudges him. “What’s come over you?” He nods toward the bartender.
    Moloch pays, gives Prigozi the change of a five-dollar bill, and dismisses him. He manages it so easily now. Not the slightest embarrassment.
    “We’re going home,” he says, grasping Hari’s arm.
    In the subway Moloch feels called upon to explain his behavior. “I had to get rid of him, Hari. He gets on my nerves sometimes. He’s like a bad breath. One can stand so much and then. …” He made a moue and looked around as if he wanted to expectorate.
    Hari Das thought this frankness commendable. It was so un-Oriental. Moreover, he was beginning to perceive great possibilities in this friendship.
    “I must tell you something about Blanche before we arrive,” said Moloch, apropos of nothing. “She may seem like a nightmare at first… somewhat inhospitable, understand? However, you mustn’t let that disturb you. It’s just her way. She’s really a fine woman. A little nervous, perhaps … has a worried look. Probably some glandular disturbance. A splendid musician, though.”
    Hari Das tittered. Then he took a broken comb from his pocket and ran it through his greasy black hair.
    “You know you’d make a wonderful Messiah, Hari? A veritable strap-hanging Savior, by George!”
    Hari threw back his head and yawped.
    “Our women adore Saviors, Hari,” Moloch continued. “Particularly when they’re handsome. By the way, you don’t suffer from delusions, do you? You don’t hear voices … or anything like that, you know what I mean?”
    Hari accepted this as another one of Moloch’s little jokes. He enjoyed these sallies hugely.
    “I should hate to believe you were