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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fantazius Mallare, by Ben Hecht
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Fantazius Mallare
+       A Mysterious Oath
+
+Author: Ben Hecht
+
+Illustrator: Wallace Smith
+
+Release Date: November 14, 2008 [EBook #27261]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FANTAZIUS MALLARE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Wilson and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [Autograph: To my friend Harry Ridings
+   Ben Hecht 2 Oct]
+
+
+
+
+    _Limited edition for private circulation only, consisting of two
+    thousand and twenty-five numbered copies. Only two thousand
+    copies for sale. Published September 1922._
+
+    No. 832.
+
+
+        PRESS OF
+        PRINTING
+        SERVICE
+        COMPANY
+        [Illustration: Printer's device]
+        CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+                 COPYRIGHT NINETEEN-TWENTY-TWO
+                         COVICI - McGEE
+                            Chicago
+
+                      All Rights Reserved
+
+
+
+
+  FANTAZIUS MALLARE
+
+  _A Mysterious Oath_
+
+
+  BEN HECHT
+
+
+  [Illustration: Publisher's device]
+
+
+  Drawings
+  WALLACE SMITH
+
+
+  _Chicago_
+  COVICI - MCGEE
+  1922
+
+
+
+
+Drawings
+
+
+                         Opposite
+                           Page
+
+  First Drawing             20
+  Second Drawing            42
+  Third Drawing             58
+  Fourth Drawing            74
+  Fifth Drawing             88
+  Sixth Drawing             94
+  Seventh Drawing          106
+  Eighth Drawing           132
+  Ninth Drawing            168
+  Tenth Drawing            174
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+_This dark and wayward book is affectionately dedicated to my
+enemies--to the curious ones who take fanatic pride in disliking me; to
+the baffling ones who remain enthusiastically ignorant of my existence;
+to the moral ones upon whom Beauty exercises a lascivious and corrupting
+influence; to the moral ones who have relentlessly chased God out of
+their bedrooms; to the moral ones who cringe before Nature, who flatten
+themselves upon prayer rugs, who shut their eyes, stuff their ears,
+bind, gag and truss themselves and offer their mutilations to the idiot
+God they have invented (the Devil take them, I grow bored with laughing
+at them); to the anointed ones who identify their paranoic symptoms as
+virtues, who build altars upon complexes; to the anointed ones who have
+slain themselves and who stagger proudly into graves (God deliver
+Himself from their caress!); to the religious ones who wage bloody and
+tireless wars upon all who do not share their fear of life (Ah, what is
+God but a despairing refutation of Man?); to the solemn and successful
+ones who gesture with courteous disdain from the depth of their
+ornamental coffins (we are all cadavers but let us refrain from
+congratulating each other too courteously on the fact); to the prim ones
+who find their secret obscenities mirrored in every careless phrase, who
+read self accusation into the word sex; to the prim ones who wince
+adroitly in the hope of being mistaken for imbeciles; to the prim ones
+who fornicate apologetically (the Devil can-cans in their souls); to
+the cowardly ones who borrow their courage from Ideals which they
+forthwith defend with their useless lives; to the cowardly ones who
+adorn themselves with castrations (let this not be misunderstood); to
+the reformers--the psychopathic ones who publicly and shamelessly
+belabor their own unfortunate impulses; to the reformers (once
+again)--the psychopathic ones trying forever to drown their own obscene
+desires in ear-splitting prayers for their fellowman's welfare; to the
+reformers--the Freudian dervishes who masturbate with Purity Leagues,
+who achieve involved orgasms denouncing the depravities of others; to
+the reformers (patience, patience) the psychopathic ones who seek to
+vindicate their own sexual impotencies by padlocking the national
+vagina, who find relief for constipation in forbidding their neighbors
+the water closet (God forgives them, but not I); to the ostracizing
+ones who hurl excommunications upon all that is not part of their
+stupidity; to the ostracizing ones who fraternize only with the worms
+inside their coffins (their anger is the caress incomparable); to the
+pious ones who, lacking the strength to please themselves, boast
+interminably to God of their weakness in denying themselves; to the
+idealistic ones who, unable to confound their neighbors with their own
+superiority, join causes in the hope of confounding each other with the
+superiority of their betters (involved, but I am not done with them); to
+the idealistic ones whose cowardice converts the suffering of others
+into a mirror wherein stares wretchedly back at them a possible image of
+themselves; to the idealistic ones who, frightened by this possible
+image of themselves, join Movements for the triumph of Love and Justice
+and the overthrow of Tyranny in the frantic hope of breaking the
+mirror; to the social ones who regard belching as the sin against the
+Holy Ghost, who enamel themselves with banalities, who repudiate
+contemptuously the existence of their bowels (Ah, these theologians of
+etiquette, these unctuous circumlocutors, a pock upon them); to the pure
+ones who masquerade excitedly as eunuchs and as wives of eunuchs (they
+have their excuses, of course, and who knows but the masquerade is
+somewhat unnecessary); to the pedantic ones who barricade themselves
+heroically behind their own belchings; to the smug ones who walk with
+their noses ecstatically buried in their own rectums (I have nothing
+against them, I swear); to the righteous ones who masturbate blissfully
+under the blankets of their perfections; to the righteous ones who
+finger each other in the choir loft (God forgive me if I ever succumb to
+one of them); to the critical ones who whoremonger on Parnassus; to the
+critical ones who befoul themselves in the Temples and point
+embitteredly at the Gods as the sources of their own odors (I will
+someday devote an entire dedication to critics); to the proud ones who
+urinate against the wind (they have never wetted me and I have nothing
+against them); to the cheerful ones who tirade viciously against all who
+do not wear their protective smirk; to the cheerful ones who spend their
+evenings bewailing my existence (the Devil pity them, not I); to the
+noble ones who advertise their secrets, who crucify themselves on
+bill-boards in the quest for the Nietzschean solitude; to the noble ones
+who pride themselves on their stolen finery; to the flagellating ones
+who go to the opera in hair shirts, who excite themselves with denials
+and who fornicate only on Fast Days; to the just ones who find
+compensation for their nose rings and sackcloth by hamstringing all who
+refuse to put them on--all who have committed the alluring sins from
+which their own cowardice fled; to the conservative ones who gnaw
+elatedly upon old bones and wither with malnutrition; to the
+conservative ones who snarl, yelp, whimper and grunt, who are the
+parasites of death; who choke themselves with their beards; to the
+timorous ones who vomit invective upon all that confuses them, who
+vituperate, against all their non-existent intelligence cannot grasp; to
+the martyr ones who disembowel themselves on the battlefield, who
+crucify themselves upon their stupidities; to the serious ones who
+mistake the sleep of their senses and the snores of their intellect for
+enviable perfections; to the serious ones who suffocate gently in the
+boredom they create (God alone has time to laugh at them); to the virgin
+ones who tenaciously advertise their predicament; to the virgin ones who
+mourn themselves, who kneel before keyholes; to the holy ones who
+recommend themselves tirelessly and triumphantly to God (I have never
+envied God His friends, nor He, mine perhaps); to the never clean ones
+who bathe publicly in the hysterias of the mob; to the never clean ones
+who pander for stupidity; to the intellectual ones who play solitaire
+with platitudes, who drag their classrooms around with them; to these
+and to many other abominations whom I apologize to for omitting, this
+inhospitable book, celebrating the dark mirth of Fantazius Mallare, is
+dedicated in the hope that their righteous eyes may never kindle with
+secret lusts nor their pious lips water erotically from its reading--in
+short in the hope that they may never encounter the ornamental phrases I
+have written and the ritualistic lines Wallace Smith has drawn in the
+pages that follow._
+
+
+
+
+MALLARE
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: First Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+FANTAZIUS MALLARE
+
+[I]
+
+
+Fantazius Mallare considered himself mad because he was unable to behold
+in the meaningless gesturings of time, space and evolution a dramatic
+little pantomime adroitly centered about the routine of his existence.
+He was a silent looking man with black hair and an aquiline nose. His
+eyes were lifeless because they paid no homage to the world outside him.
+
+When he was thirty-five years old he lived alone high above a busy part
+of the town. He was a recluse. His black hair that fell in a slant
+across his forehead and the rigidity of his eyes gave him the appearance
+of a somnambulist. He found life unnecessary and submitted to it
+without curiosity.
+
+His ideas were profoundly simple. The excitement of his neighborhood,
+his city, his country and his world left him unmoved. He found no
+diversion in interpreting them. A friend had once asked him what he
+thought of democracy. This was during a great war being waged in its
+behalf. Mallare replied: "Democracy is the honeymoon of stupidity."
+
+There lived with him as a servant a little monster whom he called
+Goliath and who was a dwarfed and paralytic negro. Goliath's age was
+unknown. His deformities gave him the air of an old man and his hunched
+back made him seem too massive for a boy. But in studying him Mallare
+had concluded that he was a boy.
+
+Goliath had been one of the first symptoms of Mallare's madness. He had
+brought the little monster home from an amusement park one summer night.
+Goliath had been standing doubled up, his pipe stem arms hanging like a
+baboon's, his enlarged black head lifted and his furious eyes staring at
+a Wheel of Fortune.
+
+When they left the confetti-electrics of the park behind, Mallare spoke
+to the dwarf whose wrinkled hand he was holding.
+
+"If you come home with me I will make you a servant and give you a fine
+red suit to wear. Also, I will call you Goliath for no reason at all,
+since I am at war with reason."
+
+Goliath said nothing but sat staring happily out of the window of an
+automobile as they rode home.
+
+The home of Fantazius Mallare was filled with evidences of his past.
+There were clay and bronze figures and canvases covered with paintings.
+These had been the work of his hands. It was to be seen that he had once
+given himself with violence to the creation of images. And for this
+reason he was still known among a few people as an artist.
+
+In the days when he had worked to create images Mallare had been alive
+with derisions. He desired to give them outline. But the desire went
+from him. The brilliant fancies of his thought began slowly to bore him.
+The astounding images that still bowed themselves into his mind became
+like a procession of mendicants seeking alms of him. He folded his hands
+and with an interested smile watched his genius die.
+
+At the time of this curious tragedy Mallare was thirty. He kept a
+Journal in which he wrote infrequently. There was in this Journal little
+of interest. Apparently he had amused himself during his youth jotting
+down items of preposterous unimportance.
+
+"I saw a man with a red face," he would write one week. The next he
+would add a line, "There are seven hundred and eighty-five normal
+strides between the lamp-post and my front door." Turning a page a month
+later he would meticulously set down the date, the hour of the day, the
+direction of the wind and under it write out, "I have a stomach ache
+from eating peaches."
+
+The Journal bristled with innocuous informations. An acquaintance of the
+period, interested in Mallare's work as an artist, smiled and commented,
+"These are, no doubt, symbols. A psychological code into which you have
+translated great inner moments."
+
+Mallare answered, "On the contrary. They are the only thoughts I have
+had in which I could detect no reason. It has amused me to put down with
+great care the few banalities which have normalized my days. They are
+very precious to me, although they have no value in themselves.
+
+"It is the ability to think such absurdities as you have read that has
+kept me from suicide. The will to live is no more than the hypnotism of
+banalities. We keep alive only by maintaining, despite our intelligence,
+an enthusiasm for things which are of no consequence or interest to us.
+
+"That I saw a man with a red face aroused in me a gentle curiosity
+lacking in words or emotion. The desire to live is compounded of an
+infinity of such gentle curiosities which remain entirely outside of
+reason. This never-satisfied and almost non-existent curiosity we have
+toward things, masquerades under the intimidating guise of the law of
+self-preservation. Man is at the mercy of life since, his intelligence
+perceiving its monotony and absurdity, he still clings to it, fascinated
+by the accumulated rhythm of faces, impressions, and events which he
+despises.
+
+"It is a form of hypnosis, and these words I have written in my Journal
+are the absurdities by which life seduced me from abandoning it. I am
+grateful to them and have therefore preserved them carefully."
+
+The history of Mallare's madness, however, is to be found in this
+Journal. There are two empty pages that stare significantly. The empty
+pages are a lapse. It was during this lapse that Mallare smiled with
+interest at the spectacle of his disintegration. There follows, then, a
+sudden excited outburst, undated. In it the beginnings of his madness
+pirouette like tentative dancers.
+
+"Perhaps the greatest miracle is that which enables man to tolerate
+life," the passage starts, "which enables him to embrace its illusions
+and translate its monstrous incoherence into delightful, edifying
+patterns. It is the miracle of sanity. To stand unquestioning before
+mysteries, to remain an undisturbed part of chaos, ah! what an
+adjustment! Content and even elate amid the terrible circle of Unknowns,
+behold in this the heroic stupidity of the sane ... a stupidity which
+has already outlived the Gods.
+
+"Man, alas, is the only animal who hasn't known enough to die. His
+undeveloped senses have permitted him to survive in the manner of the
+oyster. The mysteries, dangers, and delights of the sea do not exist for
+the oyster. Its senses are not stirred by typhoons, impressed by
+earthquakes or annoyed by its own insignificance. Similarly, man!
+
+"The complacent egomania of man, his tyrannical indifferences, his
+little list of questions and answers which suffices for his wisdom,
+these are the chief phenomena or symptoms of his sanity. He alone has
+survived the ages by means of a series of ludicrous adjustments, until
+today he walks on two legs--the crowning absurdity of an otherwise
+logical Nature. He has triumphed by specializing in his weaknesses and
+insuring their survival; by disputing the simple laws of biology with
+interminable banalities labelled from age to age as religions,
+philosophies and laws.
+
+"Unable, despite his shiftiness, to lie the fact of his mortality
+and decomposition out of existence, he has satisfied his mania for
+survival by the invention of souls. And so behold him--spectacle of
+spectacles--a chatty little tradesman in an immemorial hat drifting
+good-naturedly through a nightmare.
+
+"It is for this ability to exist unnaturally that he has invented the
+adjective sane. But here and there in the streets of cities walk the
+damned--creatures denied the miracle of sanity and who move bewilderedly
+through their scene, staring at the flying days as at the fragments of
+another world. They are conscious of themselves only as vacuums within
+which life is continually expiring.
+
+"Alas, the damned! From the depths of their non-existence they
+contemplate their fellowman and perceive him a dwarf prostrate forever
+before solacing arrangements of words; an homunculus riding
+vaingloriously on the tiny river of ink that flows between monstrous
+yesterdays and monstrous tomorrows; a baboon strutting through a
+mirage."
+
+The history of Mallare's madness begins thus. And the pages continue.
+The writing on them seems at a glance part of a decoration in black and
+white. The letters are beautifully formed and shaded. They resemble
+laboring serpents, dainty pagodas, vines bearing strange fruits and
+capricious bits of sculpture.
+
+To the end Mallare fancied himself aware of the drift and nuance of his
+madness. Its convolutions seemed neither incomprehensible nor mysterious
+to him.
+
+An intolerable loathing for life, an illuminated contempt for men and
+women, had long ago taken possession of him. This philosophic attitude
+was the product of his egoism. He felt himself the center of life and it
+became his nature to revolt against all evidences of life that existed
+outside himself. In this manner he grew to hate, or rather to feel an
+impotent disgust for, whatever was contemporary.
+
+When his normality abandoned him, he avoided a greater tragedy. In a
+manner it was not Mallare who became insane. It was his point of view
+that went mad. Although there are passages in the Journal that escape
+coherence, the greater part of the entries are simple almost to naiveté.
+They reveal an intellect able to adjust itself without complex
+uprootings to the phenomena engaging its energies. The first concrete
+evidence of the loathing for life that was to result in its own
+annihilation appears in a passage beginning abruptly--
+
+"Most of all I like the trees when they are empty of leaves. Their
+wooden grimaces must aggravate the precisely featured houses of the
+town. People who see my work for the first time grow indignant and call
+me sick and artificial. (Bilious critics!) But so are these trees.
+
+"People think of art in terms of symmetry. With a most amazing conceit
+they have decided upon the contours of their bodies as the standards of
+beauty. Therefore I am pleased to look at trees or at anything that
+grows, unhandicapped by the mediocritizing force of reason, and note how
+contorted such things are."
+
+Mallare's point of view toward his world--the attitude that went
+mad--was nothing more involved than his egoism. His infatuation with
+self was destined to arrive at a peak on whose height he became overcome
+with a dizziness. He wrote in his Journal:
+
+"It is unfortunate that I am a sculptor, a mere artist. Art has become
+for me a tedious decoration of my impotence. It is clear I should have
+been a God. Then I could have had my way with people. To shriek at them
+obliquely, to curse at them through the medium of clay figures, is a
+preposterous waste of time. A wounded man groans. I, impaled by life,
+emit statues.
+
+"As a God, however, I would have found a diversion worthy my contempt. I
+would have made the bodies of people like their thoughts--crooked,
+twisted, bulbous. I would have given them faces resembling their
+emotions and converted the diseases of their souls into outline.
+
+"What fatuous, little cylindrical creatures we humans are! With our
+exact and placid surfaces that we call beauty. And these grave and noble
+houses we erect!
+
+"Yes, I ought to have been a God. I should have had my way with people
+then. I could have created a world whose horrors would have remained a
+consoling flattery to my cynicism."
+
+There are entries that follow whose significance is lost in a serpentine
+rhetoric. They hint at nights of critical terrors. During the writing of
+them Mallare was engaged in a desperate pursuit of himself. He was
+escaping. He perceived his thoughts racing from his grasp like Maenads
+down a tangled slope. The dread of finding himself abandoned brought his
+will into life. If he were to go mad he would leap upon his mania and
+ride it--quietly into darkness. He would be a gay rider astride his own
+phantoms. Rather that than let the first insane capering of his
+intellect unhorse him and leave him gibbering after a vanished mount.
+
+The incoherence of the Journal suddenly glides into an adagio. The panic
+has ended. And the lifeless eyed man again smiles triumphant out of the
+pages.
+
+"My room is red. It is hung with red curtains. I have bought only red
+things to put in it. The sun coming through my red curtains reddens the
+air of the room.
+
+"I prefer to live in this painted gloom because it is possible I hate
+the sunlight. I hate even my rivals the trees. Today I walked and found
+trees that resembled too closely people passing under them. One is
+impotent before such betrayal.
+
+"But here in my rooms I find an almost complete annihilation of life. I
+am bored with inventing causes for my hatred. There is a diversion on
+earth called humanity--creatures full of enamelled lusts and arrogant
+decays who go about smiling and slyly obeying laws which protect them
+from each other. But they no longer divert me.
+
+"They tell me of health and sanity. And I say sanity is the determined
+blindness which keeps us from seeing one another. More than that, of
+course: which keeps us from seeing ourselves. And health is the lame
+artifice of our bodies which keeps us from loathing one another. I see
+and I loathe. Yet I must beware of falling to sleep in explanations."
+
+A month or a year may have passed between this and the continuation.
+Whatever the period, a clarity arrived. Mallare's mind grappling with
+the nightmare shadows engulfing it, distorted his reason to give them
+outline and was saved. The writing, however, becomes more labored in
+appearance as if the letters of words were now decorations in
+themselves.
+
+"I have listened for years to the prattle of men who call themselves
+egoists. It is a title by which they have sought to identify me. To
+label a mystery suffices for its dismissal and thus they seek to dismiss
+me. There is in egoism, however, a depth to which all but myself are
+blind. I have found this depth in myself and out of it rises a
+definition which I must consider cautiously. There is but one egoist and
+that is He who, intolerant of all but Himself, sets out to destroy all
+but Himself. Egoism is the despairing effort of man to return to his
+original Godhood; to return to the undisputed and triumphant loneliness
+which was His when as a Creator He moulded the world to His whims and
+before He divided Himself into the fragments of race and nature. This is
+the explanation out of the depth.
+
+"I must be cautious and keep my eyes open. Secrets fly from the blind.
+Mount, I say, and ride this secret and observe its direction. To return
+thus to Godhood means to destroy All. And I were madder than I am to
+play with this prospect, unless, perhaps, there lie concealed in the
+elements, chemistries still unknown which might be utilized for such
+destruction.
+
+"As it is, I can with my thought deny and re-create and impose upon the
+world of reality a world of phantoms more pleasing to my nature. In my
+red room I sit and give birth to persuasive horrors. People shaped like
+dead trees. People freed from the monotonous hypocrisy with which a
+despondent Nature endows their outlines. I have become aware that
+lobsters, beetles, crabs, and all the crustacean monsters that abound
+are not the abnormal accidents of creation, any more than were the
+animate gargoyles of prehistoric eras. They are the things which an Ego
+intent upon the diversion of truth fashioned in the beginning. Each
+thing to seem as each thing was. But the courage of this Ego deserted
+Him and He grew frightened when He came to give body to His most useless
+creation--Thought. And He compromised. Yes, I could live among people
+fashioned truthfully in their own images as are the crustaceans."
+
+With this entry Mallare found it necessary to destroy the work his hands
+had created. He attacked the canvases and figures in his red room.
+Goliath who, preoccupied with his own deformities, had remained
+indifferent to his master, serving him faithfully however, listened to
+Mallare one night.
+
+Sitting in the center of the room, his black hair grown into a long
+slant across his pale forehead, Mallare talked to his servant as a man,
+still asleep, reciting a dream.
+
+"Here in this room, Goliath," he said, "are interesting works of art
+which I am about to destroy. On the canvases are dithyrambic burlesques
+in color, vicious fantasies, despairing caricatures. My fingers
+fashioned them and I remember the pleasant sleep each brought me. But
+now I must beware of sleep. My egomania, like a swollen thing, has
+become impossible to articulate or to reduce to the impotent ironies of
+clay and paint. But I must beware of falling asleep under it.
+
+"My friends have vanished as naturally as if by death. I have forbidden
+them to come. This disturbs them, but see to it, Goliath, that no one
+ever enters my room unless I bring them. Frighten them if they come.
+
+"Tonight, while there remained a little sanity, I had made up my mind to
+kill myself. But I have changed it. I will destroy instead my work. This
+is because I find the compromise easier and the destruction, perhaps,
+more interesting. I feel disinclined to abandon the things I loathe. The
+world with its nauseous swarm of life, its monstrous multiplications
+which are the eternal insult to the Omniscience I feel, still holds me.
+I am caught in a tangle and I remain suspended and inanimate, in the
+depth of a nightmare. But with your aid, Goliath, I will continue
+tenaciously mimicking an outward sanity so that people, when they see
+me, will go away happy in the assurance that I am as stupid as they."
+
+Rising from his chair Mallare attacked, one by one, the canvases and
+statues. Goliath watched him in silence as he moved from pedestal to
+pedestal from which, like a company of inert monsters, arose figures in
+clay and bronze. The first of them was a man four feet in height but
+massive-seeming beyond its dimensions. Mallare had entitled it "The
+Lover."
+
+Its legs were planted obliquely on the pedestal top, their ligaments
+wrenched into bizarre muscular patterns. Its body rose in an anatomical
+spiral. From its flattened pelvis that seemed like some evil bat
+stretched in flight, protruded a huge phallus. The head of the phallus
+was enlivened with the face of a saint. The eyes of this face were
+raised in pensive adoration. At the lower end of the phallus, the
+testicles were fashioned in the form of a short-necked pendulum arrested
+at the height of its swing. The hands of the figure clutched talon-like
+at the face and the head was thrown back as if broken at the neck. Its
+features were obliterated by the hands except for the mouth which was
+flung open in a skull-like laugh.
+
+The figure on the whole was the flayed caricature of a man done so
+cunningly that through the abortive hideousness of its outlines, its
+human character remained untouched.
+
+Mallare swung the figure by its base against the pedestal until it
+splintered and fell to pieces. He stood whispering to himself--
+
+"This was the lover. My statue of the lover. Dead, now."
+
+A dozen similar caricatures in clay and bronze vanished under his
+attack. Standing against the wall and blinking at the rutilant glare of
+the room, Goliath the dwarf waited nervously. He had become aware that
+his master was acting strangely. A look of ferocity slowly came into the
+deep black of his face. His misshapen body trembled.
+
+Mallare, the destruction ended, turned to him.
+
+"And finally a last figure," he murmured. "Goliath, too. Do you agree,
+Goliath? You will find a congenial company in the souls of these friends
+I have butchered."
+
+Goliath shook his head vigorously.
+
+"Go 'way," he answered. Mallare nodded.
+
+"Thanks," he smiled. "You reminded me in time. It is easy to mistake you
+for one of my creations. Although I never created such eyes, improbable
+eyes alive with murders. Go to bed."
+
+Alone amid the wreckage, Mallare turned to his Journal. A precise smile
+was on his lips and his eyes slanted toward the debris on the floor as
+if he were watching the fragments, fearfully. His hair made a black
+triangle against his forehead. He began to write:
+
+"I am too clever to go mad. To go mad is to succumb to the sanity of
+others. Since I avoid death, I must be wary of his misshapen brother.
+Yet, I can prove to my satisfaction tonight that I am mad. I have
+destroyed something. It was because the intricate presences of life
+awaken too many despairs in me.
+
+"Now I am alone. I must be cautious of my thought. I feel words like
+rivals in my head. Alas, I must think in words. Words are the inevitable
+canonizations of life. But worse, they are property loaned me and not
+my own. I must have my own and live with it entirely. Yet there is some
+comfort in words. They are not entirely sullied by their promiscuity.
+Words are like nuts people pass each other without ever opening. The
+insides of words are often virginal. But many words--too many
+words--constitute intelligence and intelligence is the stupidity which
+enables man to imprison himself in lies.
+
+"Years have passed and I still live. I do not look for death. Death is
+too simple a variant of destruction. My cleverness demands more of me
+than to destroy the world by hiding myself from it. And there is a song
+of windows in the high streets that sometimes relieves the black tension
+of my mind.
+
+"It is important now that I retrace my way toward a makeshift of
+Omnipotence. But for this I will have to find a woman."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Second Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[II]
+
+
+It was autumn. The air was colored like the face of a sick boy. Upon the
+streets rested a windless chill. The pavements were somber as during
+rain. There was an absence of illusion about buildings. They stood, high
+thrusts of brick, stone and glass, etched geometrically against a
+denuded sky.
+
+Fantazius Mallare walked slowly toward his home. Over his head, trees
+without leaves stamped their gnarled and intricate contours on the
+shadowed air. A pallor covered the roofs. It was afternoon but a
+moon-like loneliness haunted the autumn windows.
+
+Mallare lived in another world. Neither trees nor buildings conveyed
+themselves to his thought. Within his own world he was sane. His
+relation to the phantoms and ideas which peopled his mind was a lucid
+one. Mallare's world was his thought. He had retired within himself,
+dragging his senses after him.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Third Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Fourth Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[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?"
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Fifth Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[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."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Sixth Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[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.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Seventh Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[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! Then why are my hands
+tired? Why do my arms ache? Another illusion, of course. Logic is
+independent of truth. Logic is the persuasive repetition of ideas by
+which man hypnotizes himself. I must beware of logic. It will but tie me
+hopelessly to hallucination. I must think without evidence. I do not
+know anything. What I see, hear, smell, touch is nothing. I can no
+longer summon my senses as witnesses.
+
+"And is that unusual? I must sink to moralizings in order to understand
+myself. What is reality but the habit of illusion. Man sees the
+unexpected once and identifies it as hallucination. He sees it twice and
+calls it phenomenon. But if he acquired the habit of seeing the
+unexpected, he accepts it as reality.
+
+"In the same manner in which he builds phantoms into furniture, converts
+his Gods into sciences, his myths into laws; in that way he also reduces
+his furniture into phantoms. He converts his emotions into music, his
+nervous disorders into literature, his three elemental desires into
+thought. He is continually holding a mirror to nature and worshipping
+the childish phantoms within the mirror.
+
+"This is the basis of egoism--the mania to change realities into
+unreality. Because man is the tool of reality. Of unreality he is the
+God. It is this desire to dominate which inspires him to avoid truths
+over which he has no sway and to invent myths. Gods and virtues over
+which he may set himself up as creator and policeman. It is this which
+causes him to cloud the simplicities of nature in a maze of
+interpretations. It is by his interpretations that he achieves the
+illusion of importance. Ignored by the planets, he invents the myth of
+mathematics and reduces the universe to a succession of fractions and
+Greek letters on a blackboard.
+
+"This, of course, for man the egoist. The more humorous spectacle is the
+one in which man finds himself awed by his own lies. His Gods, his
+myths, his phantoms come home to roost. He stands blinking in a
+veritable storm of lies. His yesterday's lies, his today's lies, his
+tomorrow's lies--all his obsolete interpretations, his canonized
+interpretations; all his systems, his philosophies; all his Gods and
+Phantoms--these riot and war around him. Error endlessly assassinates
+itself in a futile effort to escape its immortality.
+
+"And in the midst of this horrendous confusion, stands man--naive and
+powerless. But he has his sanity. He blows it up carefully like a soap
+bubble and strikes a defiant posture in its center. And against the
+walls of his bubble, his phantoms storm in vain. Within his bubble he
+proceeds calmly to assert himself."
+
+It was snowing. The night, white with snow, stared like a blind man. A
+phantom world hung in the air. Houses and street withdrew silently. The
+snow covered them. Mallare walked on, staring into the heavy weave of
+flakes.
+
+"A great white leopard prowling silently," he murmured. "It snows. The
+moon has come down and walks beside me. The wind blows and the moon
+gallops away on a white horse. A gentle annihilation. The night has
+fallen asleep and this is a dream that pirouettes in its head. The
+street becomes a bridal couch.
+
+"Ah, the snow is like my madness. It snows, snows. I climb silently
+among soft branches and white leaves. Delirium sleeps with a finger to
+its pale lips. I must continue to think. The storm hangs like a
+forgotten sorrow in my heart. But my thought persists. It crawls like a
+little wind through the forgotten storm. It rides carefully from flake
+to flake.
+
+"I overtake myself. What a quaint imbecile I am. Or rather, was. In my
+effort to emancipate myself from life, I succeeded only in handing
+myself over to my senses. And my senses, I perceive, belong not to me
+but to the procreative principles of biology. They have been loaned to
+me by a master chemist. When I die my cherished soul will disintegrate
+into nothing. It will become a useless thing. It will unquestionably go
+to a Heaven which is as non-existent as itself. Heaven is the emptiness
+into which souls vanish. Very good. But my senses, these are immortal.
+They will, in some inexplicable way, I am certain, continue their idiot
+career.
+
+"I must consider them. I have learned one thing. They are indifferent to
+reality and unreality. They contain life within themselves. All that
+exists outside them is extraneous--shadows among which they divert
+themselves.
+
+"The hallucination that overpowered me but never seduced my intelligence
+became a reality to them. She was a shadow with which my senses diverted
+themselves. Then why do I look upon the business as illogical? The
+illogical thing is not that I feel tired from striking her who had no
+tangible existence, but that I should be able to reason beyond the reach
+of my senses. Yes, that I should succeed in wresting them from their
+prey. For the shadows with which the senses divert themselves are
+tyrants they may never hope to abandon. Man is at the mercy of his
+phantoms. Behold, I arrive at a conclusion which means I am bored with
+the subject.
+
+"I prefer the snow. But there is time for the snow. I must establish
+premises. Climb out of the abyss on a ladder of premises. What did I
+say about logic? Oh, yes, the persuasive repetition. One flake remains
+invisible. A thousand flakes are of no account. It is only when the
+flakes repeat themselves too endlessly for my eye to distinguish that I
+finally ignore them and walk contentedly in a storm. Thus with logic.
+When I have surrounded myself with an infinity of assurances, my error
+vanishes in the constant repetition of itself. And I am reassured. And
+sane.
+
+"Yet I must think simply. The snow seduces me into fellow labyrinths.
+I've destroyed her. My senses were in love with her. They responded to
+her kisses. She was a Thought able to ravish my body. This is what the
+pathologists would identify as a triumph of the psychic sex center. What
+charming palaverers--the pathologists! Man crawls in a circle around
+himself and fancies himself an invader--a pathologist.
+
+"A matter of no interest. What I have done, as the Christian Scientists
+ably put it, is to rid myself of this Thought. But why was it necessary
+to strike at it with my hands, to tear it with my fingers? This worries
+me. But did I do these things? I must convince myself that I didn't. I
+remember sinking my hands into her body, pulling at her flesh. I
+remember blows given. She screamed. I struck her and flung her down.
+These things I recall.
+
+"But they do not interfere with my convictions. For of what are they
+proof? The blows I gave were no more than a shrewd make-believe. To my
+senses she was real, and it was necessary therefore to destroy her
+realistically. It was easy for my mind to ignore this Thought. I was
+never its victim. I merely created it. My senses that belong to life and
+not to me, however, became victimized.
+
+"I do not recall myself as a spectator of the struggle. I remember it
+now as I might remember participating in an honest fight. A very clever
+ruse. It is evident I loaned myself. I surrendered adroitly to my
+idiotic senses. Therefore for that hour I was completely mad. What
+happened in the room? Ah, what a grotesque memory it makes. Mallare
+knocking his fists against the air. Mallare throwing himself around like
+an epileptic. Sinking his fingers into nothing--a shadow boxer
+pummelling frenziedly at space. That was madness.
+
+"But it served its purpose. For I've destroyed her. Rita, Rita is gone.
+Yet there's a curious twist in that. I am lacking one memory. One very
+important memory hides from me. I calculate its time and place, but,
+like a recalcitrant comet, it fails to enter the appointed void. Alas, I
+no longer remember killing her in the street.
+
+"But I am certain I did. Why, certain? Because my logic establishes the
+fact. Still, I would feel better about something, if my memory were more
+docile. But what is memory? The soul of dead illusion. Since it
+withholds itself, I will create a memory.
+
+"There was a lamp shining over my head. I was walking. And then I stood
+still. Oh, yes, shadows. I grew eloquent with shadows. And she appeared
+in the midst of this eloquence. My hands choked her. She had followed me
+into the street and I choked her. But I do not remember this. At least,
+the thing grows elusive and unsatisfactory. Why? Ah, the snow covers me.
+I will cover my confusion with a sigh like the snow.
+
+"No, I see the thing now. Was she ever real? There were gypsy wagons and
+an old man. A camp fire and this girl with the green and orange shawl.
+Yes, these were realities. But how do I know? Hm, I place my finger on
+the sore spot. There is a point where reality and unreality meet. And
+this point has vanished from my mind. I pursue it. A matter of
+remarkable importance. It evades me; therefore I will arbitrarily locate
+it. The point between reality and unreality is the arc lamp in the
+street. Up to that point Rita was real. I killed her at that point and
+she became unreal. This statement cures me. Nevertheless, my sanity is a
+myth. I have invented it, by arbitrarily identifying the moment of its
+departure. But it is better that way than to blunder on without knowing
+how mad I am or whether I am mad at all, or whether I ever have been
+mad. A lie believed in is an antidote for confusion.
+
+"It doesn't matter. Excellent logic. She is destroyed. And I am none the
+worse, except for a disillusion more--and an uncertainty. My uncertainty
+is removed by logic, or at least concealed by it. And I am sane. I
+return to life--another Napoleon walking backwards. My experiments have
+led me around a circle. I meet myself where I started, but naked of
+hopes.
+
+"It snows and I am amiable. Something has happened. My hatred, where is
+that? This street is pleasant. The light of the snow cheers me. I am, in
+fact, buoyant. Ah, I understand. A balloon come down to earth and vain
+once more of its buoyancy--its ability to bob along the pavement.
+
+"It is curious. I delude myself that I am thinking. But my alleged
+thoughts do not further my ideas. They merely convert them into little
+pictures easy for me to understand and diverting to look at.
+
+"Still, if I am happy ... but how does one know one is happy? I suspect
+my happiness. It is a clown's suit in which my mourning disguises
+itself. Mallare has fallen out of his black heaven. And he picks himself
+up like a good burgher. He grunts and chuckles and looks at the skies,
+alas, without curiosity. Lucifer, fallen, finds diversion as a janitor
+in red tights. Ergo, I have proved something. I am in Hell and with
+Lucifer I know its secret--happiness.
+
+"Where is Mallare who fancied himself a madman? Who sought to climb over
+his senses and found himself impaled by a tower of Babel? Where are his
+angers, his disgusts that were the noble shadows thrown by his egoism to
+blot out a world? Ballad of rhetorical questions. My vanity preens
+itself with reminiscences. I smile. I am depressed and content. Answers
+whisper. Mallare is on his feet. His experiments are ended. His mania to
+possess himself is a snow that falls forgotten in his past. Vale, the
+lunatic. Vale, the man in the moon. Ave, Mallare.
+
+"It snows. I walk. I think. I smile. And this too for a time is a
+diversion--that people no longer distract me. I carelessly restore the
+world. Let there be people, I say. And, alas, there are. I abdicate. I
+hand my Godhood back to the race.
+
+"Morning begins like another snow in the distance. Ah, here comes one
+tired-eyed out of a house. It is astounding to think that he is human
+like myself. He and I are actors in the same play, yet ignorant of each
+other's lines. But I may guess at his part. He is frightened. He looks
+furtively toward me. And he walks rather lamely. Aha, a fornicator! He
+has left a warm bed, illegally occupied for the night. A woman in a
+rumpled night dress moaned under him. The plot is simple. How pleasing
+it was for a moment. She came so close. She was like an incredibly
+intimate secret. He gasped physiological instructions. And--finis! The
+captains and the kings depart. The recessional of the douche! Do you
+love me yet, do you love me yet?
+
+"And now he walks in the cold street. He must hurry away. There are
+complications, but they make a minor drama. Off stage business. He is
+aware of contrasts. A moment ago--her arms, her gasps. A moment ago
+warmth, intimacy. And now, the snow, the cold, and life. Memory like
+fool's gold jingles in his pocket. Life is real, life is earnest. He
+regrets his orgasms. They will interfere with business.
+
+"The male rampant! What a sinister comedian! The mythical despoiler. Hm,
+his head bows down. The snow disturbs him. Sad, weary, remorseful, he
+drags himself home. He has lessened his virility and it worries him.
+There is a plot in this. Some day I will write it out--a love story of
+the sexes. Poor, weary one, he has enriched Delilah.
+
+"Ah, I am amused. It will be pleasant to observe people once more.
+Sanity has its rewards. Its laughter is a charming hint of madness that
+one may enjoy harmlessly.
+
+"What a lecherous spectacle a row of dark houses is! Bedrooms filled
+with bodies--incredible nudities. Bed springs creaking. The hour of
+asterisks. Window blinds down. Doors locked. Lights out. The city
+lingers in the snow like a feeble burlesque. Houses and shops and street
+car tracks gesture reprovingly. Civilization bows its head in the night
+like an abandoned bride. Man, like an ape hunting fleas, preoccupies
+himself again with his nerve centers.
+
+"Darkened houses, silence--Rabelais and Boccaccio debate the immaculate
+conception. Eros, patron saint of the laundryman, conducts ancient
+rituals.
+
+"Ah, these indefatigable and unctuous fornicators, rolling their eyes
+piously between orgasms; embroidering noble mottoes on their pleasure
+towels! [These prim exquisites, carefully and with raised eyebrows,
+folding their toilet paper into proper squares!] Who can be angry with
+them? God drove them out of Paradise--punishment enough. They revenge
+themselves with a monotonous enthusiasm. Ah, these fellatian moralists!
+It is folly to take their hypocrisies to heart. The plot is too
+delicious for tears. These two-fisted citizens, these purity braggarts
+masturbating with one finger unemployed and pointing scornfully at their
+neighbors!
+
+"Charming street. It offers consolations, simple ones, to be sure. But
+nevertheless, consolations. My madness was not as mad as this dark
+street. This is a prettier witches' night than the one I aspired to. I
+am amused and my amusement is an insult that inspires me. If one cannot
+become God, one can at least sit and sneer happily at the handiwork of
+his rival.
+
+"The dawn comes into my head. Poor Mallare, who must readjust his
+vocabulary to coherences. The night flies away. How simple this little
+scene becomes. Mysteries vanish. Doors open. Window blinds raise
+themselves. And now people stick their heads out into the cold. Wagons,
+trucks, crowds begin. They hurry to work, older by a night.
+
+"My sanity laughs at them, but sadly. I detect an obligato to my mirth.
+The comedy is poignant only because I am a part of it. These hurrying
+ones with their tired faces and eager shoulders are my brothers and
+sisters sharing with me the spectacle they make. They are a
+disillusioning mirror in which I see myself a million times. Yes, they
+look back at me, and their weariness, their hopelessness saddens me. Man
+sees himself by gazing into the world--and is overcome. It is only a
+lunatic who can keep merry in the face of so monstrous an image.
+
+"My happiness is without merriment. I return quickly. I have already the
+habit of coherence. In a few hours I will go back again and begin with
+canvas and paint once more. My madness is a lost argument. I am a little
+tired. But, alas, he who has danced and slept with Medusa goes home
+weary.
+
+"It will take time before my amusement ripens into rages. And without
+rages work is impossible. I will wait. Now I am too indifferent for
+anything but happiness. It is easy to walk and forget one's self and
+one's senses. It will come back. Mallare will return and expend himself
+naively in decorations once more.
+
+"When I am strong again I will hunt up a woman. Poor Rita, whom I have
+murdered twice, illustrating the paradox of possession. Man, the slave
+of his senses, possesses only what his five masters offer him as gifts.
+
+"I will find a clever one this time whom jests do not frighten. One who
+does not burn incense before her vagina and cover it with an altar
+piece. How unctuously women embrace ideas which increase the value and
+importance of their urinal ducts! Modesty, morality, prurience, piety,
+are the effulgent underwear behind which they increase the mystery and
+charm of the mons veneris. Alas, they are the artists of sex and not
+men. Man has even thrown away the seductive cod-piece. The origins of
+ideas are varied and multiple. But whatever their origins, it is women
+who utilize them. What an incredible sex! Vaginomaniacs.
+
+"I will hunt up a vulgar woman, one who does not piously regard her
+vulva as an orifice to be approached with Gregorian chants. I must be
+careful to avoid those veteran masturbators marching heroically under
+the gonfalons of virginity. It is a difficult business, finding a woman.
+A modest one will offend my intellect. A shameless one will harass my
+virility. A stupid one will be unable to appreciate my largess. An
+intelligent one will penetrate my impotency.
+
+"But why women? The devil take them all. I am almost tired of the
+disillusions they have to offer. The homely ones go away grateful for
+something they never received. The pretty ones go away chuckling
+secretly over something they never gave. It is a confused and
+unintelligible waste of time. It will be enough to paint, to talk, to
+sip tea, to wander about proselyting in behalf of improvised Gods. I
+will divert myself, making love to women out of range of their bedrooms.
+I will engage them conversationally and ravish them with erect and
+quivering adjectives. It is not necessary to undress a woman to know
+her. She reveals herself almost as piquantly in moods. I will be the
+father of moods. And, as a recreation, I will sit and watch the days in
+their unchanging flight. I bristle with rhetoric. It is a symptom of
+sanity. I am grateful for this ability to bore myself."
+
+It was morning. Mallare paused against a window. He stood, staring into
+the life of the street. His eyes were drawn and the corners of his wide,
+thin mouth smiled feebly.
+
+Snow was falling. The morning dissolved itself. Traffic drifted busily
+and without sound behind the snow--an excited pantomime that filled the
+air with misplaced, ventriloquial whispers.
+
+Mallare remained smiling into the gentle storm. Snow covered his head
+and shoulder.
+
+"The snow falls," he thought tiredly. "It snows, snows. White flakes
+lose themselves and are grateful for the earth. An invisible ending that
+flatters them. Well, I have walked all night and rid myself of wisdoms.
+I am hungry. It's possible I haven't eaten for months. In order to eat,
+however, I need money."
+
+He slipped one of the gloves from his hand and felt in his pocket. A
+satisfied smile came to his eyes.
+
+"Excellent," he thought. "Or I would have celebrated my sanity by
+starving to death."
+
+Withdrawing his hand from his pocket, he found himself regarding it. It
+grinned back at him like a stranger. It was red.
+
+"Blood," he murmured. His eyes glanced quickly around and he replaced
+the glove. He continued to walk.
+
+"Blood," he repeated to himself. The word made an ending in his thought.
+He walked slowly staring at it. His silence lifted. A voice crept into
+him and began to speak from a distance.
+
+"Careful," it murmured. "Be cautious. Remember you were mad. You had
+almost forgotten. There is something to think about, now. You will walk
+slowly and think. It's not as easy as it seemed. Be careful.
+
+"Your fists fought with a phantom. Blows, wild blows. The grotesque
+memory--the madman pummelling the air. That was you. And your hands are
+bruised. They've been bleeding. Her breasts and head were something
+else. Your fists struck mercilessly at chairs and walls. When your hands
+are washed you will find bruises over them that have been bleeding."
+
+He walked on nodding his head slowly. Later he stopped. The snow was
+piling itself over the grass of a small park. The swollen shapes of
+trees and benches rested in the storm.
+
+Mallare sat down on a bench and removed his gloves. Both hands were red.
+Smiling tiredly, he began to rub them with the snow. His eyes waited as
+the color dissolved. His hands were clean. He looked at them and
+nodded.
+
+"There are no bruises," he murmured. "The blood came from something
+else."
+
+He paused and watched the snow.
+
+"It is curious," he whispered aloud. "Then I am still mad. Careful ...
+mad. For there was blood ... and not mine. So it would seem I have been
+seducing myself with optimisms. A true madman. Yes, a lunatic mumbling
+excitedly to himself in the snow all night, saying:
+
+"Sane. Mallare is quite sane."
+
+He laughed softly.
+
+"Oh, yes. I'm too clever for you, Mallare. Very much too clever. You
+present a pair of red hands to me. I wash them carefully in the snow.
+They become white. Interesting phenomena."
+
+He chuckled softly and stared at the snow and swollen trees.
+
+"The old circle again," he murmured. "And I begin the absorbing hide and
+go seek with my senses. Who am I and where do I end? And who are they
+and where do they begin? Let us study the phenomenon of red hands.
+Primo--how do I know there was blood? My eyes said, 'blood.' And the
+snow is red. But that is only because my eyes, infatuated with an idea,
+repeat the information.
+
+"But I, Mallare, who am no madman's pawn, no lickspittle secretary to my
+senses, I say, 'no blood.' I am the Pope. I excommunicate the
+phenomenon.
+
+"Ah, if there is blood, I fought with one who could bleed. And even my
+cleverness could not supply arteries in a phantom. Ergo, there is no
+blood. I am still mad. I see that which is not. But it is nothing to be
+disturbed about. In fact, it is a diversion."
+
+The snow slowly covered the figure of Mallare. His drawn eyes balanced
+themselves amid the flakes.
+
+"It snows, snows," he murmured after a pause. "And I remember something.
+What is it I think! Rita ... Yes, there would be blood if Rita were ...
+Hm, the murdered one. There was something I didn't remember while I
+walked.
+
+"I can't. Not that way. Careful, Mallare. Be careful. There are thoughts
+impossible to think. Yes, impossible."
+
+Again silence filled him. His drawn eyes widened.
+
+"Mallare," he whispered, "you are a madman. I know. This chokes. Yes. It
+was I--I, Mallare. It is I who have been mad. I have been mad myself.
+Not you. No, not you! But the God--the Strange Pose. I can't. An
+impossible denouement. My head breaks. Her blood ... Rita."
+
+He stared open mouthed at a question that circled toward him out of the
+snow. Words babbled in his head. He shook himself away from them and
+stared.
+
+"She was alive!" he cried aloud. "My phantom lived. It was I who was the
+phantom. And she--alive!"
+
+His face whitened, his eyes remained inanimate and gleaming with terror.
+Then the figure of Mallare fell forward and lay curved in the snow.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Eighth Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[VIII]
+
+_From the Journal of Mallare dated January._
+
+
+"I am the one who contemplates. I am the Knowing One. There is nothing I
+do not know. It is amazing to be Mallare. I have triumphed over five
+worlds. I look down upon a rabble of Mallares. There are five
+Mallares--five sullen looking madmen. One of them sits and listens to
+voices. Another of them wanders about, staring with sad eyes at
+intolerable visions. Another of them lies on his back, babbling
+excitedly with the darkness. Another of them eats and sleeps like a
+prosperous grocer. And there is a fifth Mallare who weeps. A baffling
+rogue who puts his arms around me and blubbers on my shoulder like a
+lodge brother. He says nothing, and of them all I dislike him the most.
+
+"His silence is mysterious. His tears are uncomfortable. A distressing
+ass, weeping, blubbering. He implores me. Aha, I have it. I know his
+secret. He is memory--a memory of myself following me around like a
+heart-broken mother a wayward son.
+
+"Five Mallares, five sinister comedians to entertain me. And I, what can
+I call myself--pure reason? No, a disgusting title. Rather, Unreason,
+since I am after all the Indifferent One. But all this is a quibble
+inspired by modesty. I am God. I am that which men have worshipped--the
+aloof one, the pitiless and amused one.
+
+"The five tribes of Mallare rage and curse beneath me, fill the air with
+profanations, weep and gibber in the night. But I sit inviolate and wait
+for them--even for that blubbering one whose tongue is thick with tears
+and whose idiot eyes implore me--and they return. They raise their faces
+to me, their God, and fall prostrate before my smile.
+
+"Yes, it is the weeping one who causes me the most trouble. A reluctant
+worshipper who annoys me. He clings like another phantom. A meddlesome
+imbecile who keeps buttonholing me and pouring out tales of woe. And who
+keeps my name on his lips. I can see it moving on his lips. But he is
+dumb. I have his secret though. This dumb one came to me in the snow. I
+was faint. Hunger had thrown me to the ground. When I stood up he was
+beside me. His lips moved excitedly but they made no sound. And we
+walked home together.
+
+"'Who is this pathetic intruder?' I thought. 'He walks beside me
+gesturing with his lips and weeping, weeping. He falls on my neck and
+embraces me. His eyes roll with panic. What new variant of madness is
+this?'
+
+"It is curious that of all the Mallares he alone is speechless. The
+others keep up their incessant babbling and screaming--true citizens of
+Bedlam. But this dumb one who attached himself to me in the snow, even
+his lips have stopped moving now, except to form my name slowly as he
+blubbers on my shoulder.
+
+"I am kind to him and forgiving. I smile. I even coax him to speak, to
+move his lips once more. In the snow when he followed me home I was able
+to detect words his silence spoke.
+
+"'Blood on your hands,' he repeated. 'Think, think, Mallare.'
+
+"I humored him and looked at my hands. They were clean. And I answered
+him soothingly.
+
+"'You are an interesting quirk,' I said. 'My senses that fancy they have
+killed a woman have given birth to an illusion of guilt. And you are
+that illusion. My madness dresses itself in logic like a fishwife
+hanging rhinestones in her hair.
+
+"'Be calm,' I said, 'Mallare has slain only a phantom, and the murder of
+illusions is a highly respectable privilege whose exercise is rewarded
+on earth as well as in heaven.'
+
+"But this creature was not to be diverted from himself.
+
+"'He is another one of them,' I thought. 'He walks and implores and
+wrings his hand and babbles, 'blood, blood that was real.' And there is
+nothing to be done with him. Another pathologic symptom asks the
+hospitality of Mallare, and I must make the proper pretense of
+graciousness and cordiality.
+
+"'But first I must identify my guest. Take his measure out of the corner
+of my eye and understand him. Very well, I have been the victim of a
+hallucination which my senses accepted as real. And which I was able to
+murder only by pretending I too believed it real. Therefore, having
+committed this illusory crime, there results this illusory sense of
+guilt.'
+
+"And thus we walked home, this dumb one and I, his absurd grief
+confusing me. I will confess. My name on his lips frightened me at
+first. As it sometimes does now. For he has become more than an illusion
+of guilt. He is, this sly fellow, a memory, inarticulate and envious.
+He envies me because I am clever enough to laugh at my madness. However,
+I will consider him later, in his various guises, for of all the
+Mallares, dumb though he is and ludicrous with inane tears, he interests
+me the most.
+
+"We walked home and I finally fell to belaboring him. A pest, a
+mendicant, a croaking idiot--I cursed him out roundly and refused him
+further attention. This is the wisest course sometimes. It is dangerous
+to humor too carelessly these sprawling Mallares. They are slyly at war
+with my omnipotence. I can understand the anger of God. Sacrilege
+confuses Him. And We are all alike--We Gods. We are forced into an
+attitude of indifference in order that We may keep Ourselves
+intact. Thus We look down with Consummate dispassion upon Our
+hallucinations--Our worlds. And it is this dispassion that men worship
+in Us, unable to understand Our lack of interest and terrified by Our
+aloofness they prostrate themselves before an infinite mystery.
+
+"Yet, though the theology of God has become the secret of My unreason, I
+find Myself dangerously susceptible. It is when I seek to appease My
+loneliness by raising one of the babbling ones to My side. He enters My
+black heaven with a pretense of gratitude, fawning before Me and
+accepting My fellowship with humility. There follows then a moment of
+insidious diversion. Slowly a confusion fills Me. Yes, even I am open to
+confusion. It is a pity I have for the babbling one.
+
+"I listen to his complaints. The sad-eyed Mallare staring at intolerable
+visions. Mallare, the dark chatterer. Or this other one--My friend the
+weeping lodge brother. Yes, I pity them and soothe them. But I find
+Myself singularly moved. Their prayers move Me. They begin to whisper
+that I return with them. I am tempted to follow them, to let them take
+My hand and lead Me into their strange houses.
+
+"But I smile in time and My smile, fixed and profound, overcomes them.
+They prostrate themselves once more before the mystery of My
+indifference. And I remain the God of Mallare.
+
+"On this day the dumb one sprawled along home with me, there were many
+curious things happened. I had walked all night in the snow weary with
+hunger. Rita, who had driven me into a moment of fury--I had destroyed
+her for the time. A strange destruction during which I pummelled the air
+like a veritable madman. But the ruse had served to rid me of the
+hallucination for the night. Finally, tired with walking and hunger, I
+fell from a bench in the park.
+
+"When I awoke I recalled at once the grotesque struggle of the night.
+And with this dumb, weeping creature dogging my steps, I returned home.
+She was still with me. I smiled, although I confess there was despair in
+my thought. For I had fancied the miserable business of the night had
+put an end to the hallucination. No, she was still there. She was
+waiting for me on the couch.
+
+"But my mind had not deceived itself. It was as I had thought. I had
+planned to rid myself of her by hating this phantom until my hate had
+darkened it. Then there would be nothing but an imperceptible shadow of
+her remaining, one with which my senses could no longer seduce
+themselves.
+
+"And when I came into the room I saw my plot was working. For her eyes
+no longer gleamed. A radiance had left her.
+
+"'My hate begins to operate upon this chimera,' I thought. I frowned at
+her and sat down, worn out with the walking of the night.
+
+"'I have undermined the infatuation of this phantom,' I thought. I would
+have been elate but it occurred to me there was an inconsistency. This
+dumb one, this sniveling one, persisted. 'And how should he, who was
+dependent upon her death for his existence, persist in her presence?'
+This was a question for Mallare, the indifferent one. This was a query
+to answer.
+
+"Ah, I will write more about this blubberer, for the answer to him is
+piquantly involved. It is like a head with too many hats. But not
+now--I will not write about him now. I will only bear him in mind.
+
+"She watched me from the couch and I became aware of something. I
+studied her cautiously. Her eyes no longer gleamed with love. There was
+a radiance absent.
+
+"'Aha,' I thought, 'she hates. Mallare recovers the strings to his
+Frankenstein. His puppet dances again to his will. See, my senses no
+longer leap to her. They tremble warily before the hate in her eyes.'
+
+"I watched her as she watched me. And then an incredible thing happened.
+She arose from the couch and came slowly toward me and she held a knife
+in her hand. She came toward me with the knife at her side.
+
+"'Clever,' I thought. 'In fact, a miracle of cleverness. This phantom
+has gone mad. It is madder than I. It fancies itself able to slay me. It
+advances upon me with its dagger of mist and it intends to fall upon me.
+This mysterious logic that grows of itself like a fungus in darkness,
+where will it end? Already it towers around me--a monstrous weed rising
+out of my madness, and I am chilled by its shadow.'
+
+"And I continued to think:
+
+"'I desired to be rid of her. My desire finally overleaped my befuddled
+senses. And now this desire has become a new soul for my phantom. Yet I
+planned no details in my desire. I did not will this melodramatic
+denouement. Then it is obvious that my desire is like a seed filled with
+hidden life. I blow a thought into my phantom and that thought develops
+and hatches. This is a phenomenon to be written about.'
+
+"As I thought she came closer and finally stood over me. Her eyes, I
+observed, were completely mad. Yes, they were like horrible fires. And
+her face was a marvel of mimicry. The cleverness of my thought appalled
+me. I said nothing, however, and watched her. She began to talk. I had
+become used to this phase of the hallucination. But this time my senses
+shuddered at her words. They who had been so eager to sate themselves
+in the possession of this chimera and who had betrayed my omnipotence,
+they now suffered the penalty of their blindness. For it was evident
+that to them, this chimera was still real. She was an avenger towering
+with a knife above them.
+
+"But Mallare smiled.
+
+"'See,' he murmured aloud, 'here is the reward of your folly. You would
+philander with this shadow. You would disport yourself in abominable
+fornications with this hallucination. Very well, I am amused at your
+clownish terror even more than I was amused at your burlesque ecstasies.
+Tremble now for here is a Medusa, a Messalina come to destroy you.
+Whimper and grovel, but observe in your idiot cowardice how Mallare, the
+indifferent one, sits and smiles--still supreme, still a spectator
+ravished by the dark comedy.'
+
+"I could not resist this moment of triumph. I laughed although there was
+no one to enjoy my laughter. And I watched her. She was still talking,
+deep, meaningless words. For it was her habit to talk in the gypsy
+language when moved. Often this fact baffled me. But I perceive now that
+my thought was a seed containing my omniscience in microcosm. God does
+not invent languages but He understands them since it is unnecessary for
+Him to know, in His indifference, what they are saying. And the language
+my phantom spoke, although foreign to me, was nevertheless an integral
+part of my thought--another of the manifestations with which God naively
+astounds Himself. It is His only diversion.
+
+"I was curious concerning the effect upon my senses of this illusory
+attack. And, I must confess these things simply, there came to me the
+idea that Mallare might be slain by the cowardice of his senses. There
+would be nothing illogical in that. For if this chimera had been able to
+trick them into the illusion of love, it was entirely natural that it
+should be able to trick them now into the illusion of death. With the
+exception that death is an illusion even Mallare, the indifferent one,
+might not survive.
+
+"Ah, Mallare, Mallare! He wanders pensively amid treacherous
+shadows--Mallare--an image debating subtly the existence of its mirror.
+I sigh. But it is one of the relaxations of God--to pity Himself His
+uselessness.
+
+"Her talk came to an end and she raised her knife. Die or not, the thing
+was too incredible a farce to leave me unmoved. Yes, I laughed out of
+sheer delight. The drollery of this phantom hacking at Mallare with a
+non-existent dagger ... a mad windmill charging Don Quixote! Superb!
+
+"I perceive now a moral in the situation that I did not think of at the
+time. Sacrilege is a vital danger to God. His omnipotence is dependent
+upon the submission of His creatures. And they who, inspired with the
+quaint illusion of their own reality, turn upon Him--ah, they destroy
+themselves. But their destruction impoverishes their God.
+
+"At the time, however, the spectacle alone and not its significances,
+preoccupied me. I laughed and reached my hand to the dagger. A sadistic
+gesture, for I desired to give my senses a taste of its reality and
+thus enjoy their squirming. Marvelous dagger! The point of it was sharp.
+Mallare can invent daggers, beautiful daggers that poise
+melodramatically over his heart, that move slowly in quest of his life's
+blood! S'death, a property man of parts!
+
+"'Clever dagger,' I murmured. 'Do you enjoy the illusion of yourself as
+much as this chimera wielding you quivers with the illusion of impending
+murder?'
+
+"It paused before me and I nodded. My laughter had halted it. It was
+evident that my thought operating in this phantom was confused by my
+laughter. I nodded again.
+
+"'It would be logical and extremely pleasant,' I thought, 'if this
+creature, shrinking before the sacrilege of destroying its creator,
+turned on itself and accomplished a more probable assassination.'
+
+"She stood before me and I was pleased to see her hatred increase. It
+was amazingly vivid. I observed the viciousness of her features. Her
+face had become contorted. Its fury was like a mask. But she had
+dropped the knife. I could not refrain smiling an encouragement at
+her--the naive applause an author bestows upon his puppets.
+
+"But the plot still contained surprises. Yes, astonishing denouements
+began to crowd the stage. For she started to undress. Here was a trick
+that baffled Mallare. I winced with distaste.
+
+"'The consistency which I have hitherto admired in my madness seems
+rather dubious.' I thought. 'The melodrama of illusions grows too
+improbable. This fine tragedy crumbles into the ludicrous. She forgets
+her hate. She is again Rita, the infatuated one. A lightning change that
+smacks of inferior vaudeville. She is about to undress and resume her
+deplorable assaults upon my idiot senses. A poorly written business. I
+have a notion to walk out.'
+
+"But I remained smiling at the absurdity, too tired to leave my chair. I
+was pleased to notice that her nudity did not this time appeal to my
+doting madness. This marked an improvement--a foretaste of victory. The
+disintegration had begun.
+
+"Her body was interesting. It was covered with bruises. There were
+stains on its flesh. At the sight of them the lodge brother, the
+sniveling one who had followed me home in the snow, set up a veritable
+caterwauling. Here was terrible evidence of the fellow's guilt. The
+bruises of course. An accomplished penitent, this blubberer, able to
+transform himself from a Sense of Homicidal Guilt into a mere feeling of
+General Remorse.
+
+"She was not dead. Yet he lingered. And now, at the sight of her
+bruises, he rushed forward with inferior regrets. He will bear study,
+this weeping one. Of all the sprawling Mallares, he alone lacks logic.
+But I will come to him later. The plot is more entertaining than this
+incongruous spectator weeping and hissing out of turn.
+
+"She began to talk once more and wildly. The sense of it dawned on me.
+She was calling Goliath. He came shuffling from his usual hiding
+place--the curtains. A diverting little monster. I bear him no ill will.
+Although I grow slightly envious of his madness. Yet his madness is a
+terrific flattery. It is involved and piquant and one of the things that
+remain for me to study cautiously. The madness of Goliath and, of
+course, this gentleman Niobe.
+
+"He came out, a fact at the time that astonished me. For I had not been
+aware of his madness. He stood with his bent and bulbous body shaking
+and his hands resting like a baboon's on the floor. I was noticing the
+excitement of his huge head when it came to me with a curious
+feeling--he was looking at her. Yes, Goliath my servant was looking not
+at me. But at her!
+
+"'Careful, Mallare, be careful,' I thought. The insane sniveling of this
+lodge brother distracted me. His arms came around me and he rested his
+head on me and wept. Insufferable ass! It was impossible to think. I
+remained with my eyes watching and repeating cautiously to myself the
+warning.
+
+"Here was a trick too baffling for Mallare. Mallare must suspend
+himself, close his eyes and climb slowly back into his black heaven.
+
+"'Then Goliath too is a phantom,' I thought. 'But careful, be careful,
+Mallare. That is too easy. And you remember. It is dangerous to hide
+from too many memories. They will become shadows that nibble at you. He
+is not a phantom. Goliath is no chimera. He lives. He has reality.
+
+"'Then how does it come,' I continued thinking, 'that he sees that which
+is visible only to you? His eyes are fastened on her who is to be seen
+only inside the caverns of Mallare. He raises his arms. His hands touch
+her. I am imagining Goliath. Goliath is not in the room. This is a
+memory of him that has wandered onto the scene of my madness.'
+
+"Here my thinking ended. I sat contemplating the imbecile, the
+blubberer. He pressed himself upon me with his shameless importunings.
+He snivelled and his lips moved with my name. I watched them say,
+'Mallare' and repeat 'Mallare' till I grew dizzy with the pantomime of
+my name. I will study this later and discover the secret of his lips. My
+name drifting continually over them has a way of hypnotizing me. But
+later--later.
+
+"I began thinking once more.
+
+"'This lodge brother weeps while Goliath takes liberties with my
+phantom. There is a connection there. But it is unimportant for the
+present. I must discover something else.'
+
+"Then, like a victory too long withheld, it came to me. He was mad.
+Goliath, my servant, was mad. But more than that--a telepathic madness.
+I have elaborated my understanding since. Goliath suffers from a
+contagion. His constant attendance upon me has proved fatal to his
+stupidity. His senses are the victims of my puppets. He has entered my
+world and my madness creates for him, as it does for me, shadows that
+deceive him. But there is no Mallare in him. Unlike me, he does not sit
+in amused judgment upon himself.
+
+"It is an interesting phenomenon--this strange mesmerism. It remains to
+be studied. Goliath and I are mad brothers. This understanding arrived
+in time. Or else I would have flung myself in despair upon the
+ever-imploring bosom of my lugubrious sniveler.
+
+"Rita was real to Goliath. I watched him excitedly and continued to
+think. I addressed myself:
+
+"'Observe,' I said, 'here you have a distressing visualization. Goliath,
+your dwarf, mimics your madness. And it is not pleasant to look at. His
+eyes roll with passion. His fat lips chew upon lewd expectations. His
+fingers raise themselves like frightened blasphemies to her breasts. And
+he watches you. Yes, his eyes sneak glimpses of you. For you are his
+rival! You and this nigger monster are vaginal comrades. It is pleasant
+to see that you have the decency to feel enraged.' Five infatuated
+Mallares sputtered and wept and gnashed their teeth.
+
+"As I talked I turned my attention to her. In my excitement over Goliath
+I had ignored her. Her hands were fumbling with the clothes of this
+doting rival. But her eyes were on me. They blazed.
+
+"'This pantomime of shadows grows involved,' I thought. But I was
+experimenting with rhetoric. For the thing was absurdly simple. Hate
+still animated my phantom. And this was her revenge. She was about to
+give herself to the black dwarf Goliath. She was about to commit sexual
+hari-kari.
+
+"I watched her hands remove his clothes, his red jacket, his fine shirt.
+He jumped up and down like a distracted child, his own hands bewildered
+with too many activities. They fondled her, they tugged at his trousers.
+They became insane and flapped at his sides. She helped him, her eyes
+still watching me.
+
+"'At last I produce a horror worthy of myself,' I thought. 'The mist
+dagger was melodrama to be smiled at. But this--ah, here we have a
+refinement that reduces death to a minor obscenity. She attacks me now
+with a weapon worthy my indifference. It is true, my senses writhe less
+frightenedly. But I, Mallare--yes, Mallare the Supreme One--honor her
+assault with a shudder.
+
+"'Ah, who but Mallare could have invented so subtle a blasphemy, so
+accomplished an enemy. It is an old theological quibble, but I
+understand it now. God is the greatest atheist. He is proud of a
+disbelief in Himself.
+
+"'Yes, this phantom is the atheism of Mallare. And it is at last a true
+child. A parental pride excites me. Like Mallare, her father, she rises
+above herself. I have breathed the soul of hate into her. My hatred
+alive with a cleverness of its own speaks to itself.
+
+"'It says, 'I am the hatred of Mallare. I desire to murder him. I am his
+phantom, but the suffering and insult he has heaped upon me grow
+unbearable. His cruelty and coldness have filled me with fury. I would
+have killed him but that would have been almost an infidelity. For his
+senses have been my lovers. I remember them with tears. I decided not to
+kill him because that would have meant to kill his senses. But this
+other one, this Insufferable and Aloof One--this Serene One staring
+amusedly at me out of His black heaven--how send my hatred against him?
+Ah, I will conspire with his senses. I am no more than an idea in the
+head of God. But the head of God is but an idea that encircles me. I am
+a phantom within a phantom. Thus I must make myself nauseous. I must
+make myself too hideous. I must make myself so monstrous that the Idea
+which contains me will feel an anguish. And this anguish will be the
+applause to my hate.'
+
+"I sat shrewdly silent, for the moment was approaching. At last I
+perceived myself behind the logic of this Frankenstein. For it was I--I,
+Mallare--that was attacking myself with this hatred. It was Mallare who
+was arranging this little plot for himself. And why? Because then the
+head of Mallare, nauseated by the vileness of the assault, would
+disgorge forever the hallucination of Rita. It was an emetic Mallare had
+found necessary to administer to himself.
+
+"Ah, my cleverness grows incredible. I am too Supreme to grasp Myself.
+There are still unexplored crevices in My infinity, and out of these
+continue to issue surprises that divert Me.
+
+"Goliath was undressed. His black body, lumped and like some mad
+caricature of itself, gleamed in the light.
+
+"'See,' I said. 'Note this bulbous little black man. For he is a
+caricature not of himself but of you. He is a rival before whom your
+senses wince as before some unflattering image. Yes--the image of
+Mallare stands saluting his charming chimera with an interesting
+Ethiopian erection. For though they differ in many externals, Mallare
+and Goliath are one. They are ornamented insulations for an identical
+current. And here, throbbing under an erection is the current of Mallare
+and of an infinity of Mallares.
+
+"'Ah, the penis of this dwarf is repellent because that which Mallare so
+fondly called his own--his desires--is revealed to him as grotesquely
+promiscuous. Yes, the penis is the democratic tabernacle of Life. Under
+its little Moorish roof, the senses of the race kneel in common prayer.
+
+"'Observe it, Mallare. It is the rendezvous of expiring illusions, the
+gathering place of the anonymities which utilize man, beasts and plants.
+See how this curious dwarf staggers like a bewildered stranger in its
+shadow. He is an outcast. He is useless. He is no longer necessary. Life
+which made a pretense of him, enters its tabernacle and closes the doors
+on him. Here is the great secret. Here stands the grim tyrant before
+whose delicious wrath man bows himself into annihilations.
+
+"'Ah, what a marvelous tabernacle! It moves and Goliath follows. It
+points and Goliath runs after it. An infatuated tabernacle that fancies
+itself going to Heaven! It is proud. It struts. Goliath shuffles after
+it like a forlorn little nigger in the wake of a circus. It leaps. And
+Goliath gallops after it. Aha! he lies on his back impaled. But she!'
+
+"They were on the couch. She sat beside him but her eyes still sought
+me. Noises issued from Goliath. He rolled on his back, kicking crooked
+legs and yelping.
+
+"I watched her white body spread over him. Her eyes left me and my
+rhetoric dwindled into a sigh. I was alone with a spectacle. Goliath,
+masturbating with a phantom--but not as Mallare had done. No, not as
+Mallare who had lain indifferent beside his Frankenstein. For Goliath's
+arms were around her, his legs entwined her. His body, an insanity in
+itself, made a mate beneath her more incredible than she. There was
+silence. Then she screamed!----
+
+"Yes, Mallare closed his eyes. A coldness tip-toed out of his heart. She
+was laughing. Her laughter entered his ears--a noise that was like a
+witch's flight of sound. But who was it laughed? Mallare, Mallare
+laughed. It was his voice in the phantom that laughed at him. It was his
+hallucination he had loved that now gave itself to a little monster. And
+it was his hate that designed this laugh, a thing that pierced the
+heaven in which he sat. Mallare closed his eyes, a God shuddering before
+His own atheism. Yes, rhetoric now. It is easy to write. My words
+embroider themselves.
+
+"But then, when the laugh struck Mallare! Ah, there was curious mutiny.
+They went away. The little Mallares who worship me went away, all but
+one. The dumb one. Yes, I write of him again. He came to me then and his
+tears were more horrible than the scream I had heard. His weeping came
+too close. His weeping grew too loud. His arms embraced me and he held
+his face too close to mine. And my name rose from his lips.
+
+"I was alone with him and my fingers fought with his throat. This
+blubberer who had followed me home in the snow, yes this insufferable
+melancholiac who rained his tears into my Heaven--Mallare would have
+killed him.
+
+"But he was too sly. He slipped away and sprawled around the room. He
+beat his hands against walls and tore at his hair. I followed watching
+him and coaxing him to come close once more. I smiled at him to come
+near again. But no, he avoided me. He stood against the curtains facing
+me and pointing his finger at me. His mouth was open but no sound came
+from it. There was only the noise of my phantom laughing.
+
+"He stood pointing and I watched my name come like a dead shout from his
+lip. His throat was alive with my name.
+
+"'Mallare!' it said.
+
+"I smiled at him. And I worshipped aloud so that he might hear. I
+whispered to him to come close--this lugubrious blasphemer who wears my
+name in his throat. But his face grew white. His arms dropped and he
+leaned against the curtains. His eyes closed and he fell. The
+Indifferent One remained. The smile of Mallare remained contemplating
+the prostrate ones.
+
+"The couch was still alive. But it was dark. Her outline was already
+disintegrating. Goliath's fingers stared from her back.
+
+"'The dark comedy ends,' I thought. 'My phantom dissolves in a suicidal
+orgasm. And the little monster beneath her collapses amid too sudden
+memories. Finis! The revenge that I so cleverly manipulated is
+accomplished. And now Mallare disgorges a hallucination become too
+nauseous. I have fouled this pretty one so that my senses might abandon
+her. And see, they whimper under me. The dumb one lies in a corner and
+even his tears are ended. And this sad eyed one, weary with intolerable
+visions, and this one whose ears are filled with voices--all of them
+whimper under me. But I must feel no pity for them. Mallare rides away
+like a star....
+
+"'And she dissolves. Vale Rita! The red and yellow dress again. Yes ...
+yes--the green and orange shawl again. Put them on. Bravo Rita! Tragedy
+bows in a decorative anti-climax. Little one, Mallare banishes thee from
+His heaven where thou becamest too intimate. Because thou sought to
+seduce His worshippers. Vale!--Mallare disgorges thee. Spit not at Me,
+little one, for I am only a smile. Spit at this dumb one, this
+blubberer, who has forgotten himself in a new sleep.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And Goliath weeps. She is gone and his madness regrets her vanishing.
+He sits by day and watches out of the window. At night I have found him
+staring at the couch where he lay with my shadow. He kneels beside it
+with his grotesque arms flung out, embracing memories.
+
+"His madness flatters me. Yet it is a thing to be studied. His eyes are
+insane. They roll continually in their sockets. He beats himself,
+knocking his fists against his head. And I have discovered him on the
+floor doubled up, his head buried in his arms. He does not hear me but
+remains, while I move around, immobile as an idol. Yes, little Goliath
+is mad. But he cannot recover the illusion whose memory haunts his dark
+soul. He suffers. He beats his head and his tears are futile. For she
+was mine. Mallare created her. Mallare destroyed her. There is a
+temptation at times to return her--not to Mallare but to this poor
+dwarf who expires under his grief.
+
+"I am tempted by his madness. Goliath has found no God in his black
+heaven. I would be his God and create for him as I may for Myself. But I
+am wary of such altruism. He is still My servant and looks after Me. But
+My smile watches him with caution. His eyes roll too much.
+
+"Since I rid myself of her, there has been no mutiny. I sit and
+contemplate problems that have grown too simple for me. And when I am
+bored with studying Goliath's madness, I divert myself with my friend,
+the lodge brother. A baffling imbecile who withholds himself slyly. I
+have not yet come to an understanding with him. There are too few facts
+to go on. He is silent. He weeps. My name sleeps forever on his lips.
+And once he babbled to me of blood on my hands. These are the only
+realities that form a key to him.
+
+"His presence remains a discomfort. We sit and stare at each other. And
+I talk quietly to him.
+
+"'You are an inconsistent ass,' I say. 'You were first an obvious
+pathologic symptom--an illusory conscience born to adorn the grief of my
+senses that fancied they had murdered Rita, the phantom. But then when
+you found her alive, what did you do? Did you vanish as, in all logic,
+you should? For Rita was not murdered and therefore where the necessity
+of a conscience to celebrate her crime?
+
+"'But you remained and grew more dolorous. Then you are something else.
+I suspect you of being the adroit ambassador the madmen have sent into
+my heaven to plead their cause. Yet why do you not plead? As an
+ambassador you are a tongue-tied, sniveling idiot. Therefore again, you
+escape logic. And without logic my madness becomes slyly
+incomprehensible to me.
+
+"'We watch each other like two careful wrestlers, eh? But what hold do
+you want? Tell me and I will let you try your strength. No--tears,
+nothing else. You weep, weep until the sight of you is an impossible
+ennui.
+
+"'Ah, perhaps you are a memory of Mallare. Something forgotten. Logic
+approaches you as I think. Something forgotten. And you are overcome at
+my infidelity. Like Goliath you mourn a vanished one. But there is this
+difference. Whereas Goliath is real and the object of his mourning is a
+phantom--you and not I are the phantom. Yes, a phantom mourns me. But
+speak then. I have no objection to memory. Let me hear what this is all
+about and I will admit what you say. I will admit it all beforehand.
+
+"'But no. You expect something else. You expect Mallare to fall at your
+feet and embrace you. I can see that in your eyes--a monotonous
+expectation that grows ludicrous. Yes, your tears grow ludicrous. I
+tolerate you for only one purpose. You are a problem that diverts me.
+For if I desired I could do with you as I did with Rita. There are ways
+to make you too nauseous.
+
+"'Yes, I might invent another hate for myself. My hands might tear you
+as they tore her. And then, filled with a fury against me, you too
+might turn to Goliath. He is still mad, my dwarf, and susceptible to the
+phantoms I send him. Do you want to go to him as she did? Aha! You
+wince. Remember then that Mallare has it in his power to send you to his
+dwarf, to make you take her place over his terrible body. And Mallare
+will do this if you annoy him too much. And then, sickened with you as
+he was with her, he will disgorge another shadow. Let us be frank about
+this. I warn you.'
+
+"Thus I sit and talk quietly to this weeping one. And when I stop I
+watch his lips move with my name.
+
+"'Mallare,' they say.
+
+"This is his only answer to my overtures. But I will win him over. He
+will come close to my smile and kneel finally before me. He will confess
+who he is and what my name means.
+
+"I grow tired. Goliath stands by his shrine and weeps. He waits beside a
+couch as if it were another Mallare able to give birth to a phantom.
+Poor dwarf, unlike Mallare he has not learned that suffering is an
+illusion, that couches and Medusas are illusions. Unlike Mallare there
+is no smile hanging its star above him.
+
+"Sleep comes. A forgotten world babbles with shadows outside my windows.
+It is time to say goodnight to my friend, the lodge brother. Turn your
+tears to the cold moon, my friend. Mallare goes away. Far away into a
+house where he is alone."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Ninth Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+[IX]
+
+
+_The last entry in the Journal of Mallare--undated._
+
+"Talk to me, Mallare. Tell me. Where am I? He grows larger, this dumb
+one. He moves away, growing larger. He defies distance. He grows too
+large to see. But his tears remain.
+
+"Whisper to me, Mallare. He vanishes and I must sneak after him. Call me
+back. He is strange. His darkness lures me out of my heaven. A little
+whisper will save me. You will say to me, 'Here is God.' I will come
+back.
+
+"My words tire of him. He will not listen. His tears! dear God, are You
+so human that they silence You? He has come into my loneliness. And
+there is no use debating with him any longer. Since he followed me home
+in the snow his weeping has never wavered. I must talk not to him but to
+Mallare. I must debate with Mallare. But where is he, this Supreme One?
+Mallare, where art thou?
+
+"Yes, my madness becomes an increasing novelty. I remain. But I grow
+smaller. I am too small. Where is my smile? It hides from me. But his
+tears fall. This dumb one knows how to weep. Alas, I drown.
+
+"Come to my side. I will whisper. I am in love. Yes, do not be
+astonished. I am in love with her. You recall her? She was like a
+curtain fluttering before the door of enchantments. Her breasts were
+like little blind faces raised in prayer. Yes, Rita, my radiant one. The
+phantom I constructed. The Phoenix that arose in my soul. And that I
+slew again. I am in love. But my magic no longer works. She does not
+return.
+
+"I will whisper. I kneel with Goliath beside the couch. Ah, Mallare,
+Mallare--I am mad with love. I weep and beat my head. And this other one
+calls me away. His shape grows larger and his darkness lifts me toward
+it. He pulls me from the couch. Talk to me, Mallare. I am mad, but talk
+to me and I will understand. Dear, shining Mallare ... Tell me 'no' and
+I will break my love. I will put my fist through the window out of which
+I watch for her. And it will be finished.
+
+"But I weep. My eyes have caught his trick. I weep for her. Do you
+understand this? My beautiful one whom I disgorged. Yes, Rita. I die
+with love of her. I kneel by the bed that knew her. Whisper back to me,
+Mallare, that I am mad. And I will laugh. But without you I grow too
+small to laugh.
+
+"There is pain in the shadows. I ask, where am I? Go way, then, Mallare.
+Leave me. I persist without Mallare. I remain. Let me dissolve into
+this. Let me sprawl before the door of enchantments. It is illusion.
+Let it be. She will come out. Rita, my vanished one, come back to me.
+It is I who ask. Not the Cold One, not the Indifferent One, not Mallare.
+But I ... I.
+
+"I will hold you in my arms. I will feed your mist with kisses. My body
+will warm you. I will be kind. I am not Mallare. He is gone. He hides.
+He will not come back. I will kneel before the door that sings with you.
+I am mad with love. See, Rita, I am like Goliath. My eyes roll. I am mad
+and you may come to me without fear.
+
+"Windows break in me again. I remember this from long ago. Hey, you
+blubbering one! Do you want me! Hey, you brother sniveler, come back! I
+laugh. Do you understand this? A laughter without definitions. Ah,
+forgive me. You sat and wept and I scolded. Come back and sit again. I
+will fall at your feet. Your eyes asked that. But now--where are your
+feet? There is no shape. How am I to know where? Come back. Here, sit in
+this chair beside me. God! In silence, I utter my name. But it is a
+name that has flown away, flown away.
+
+"Hey, you, bring me my name. The little name, the one that made a
+pantomime on your lips. The one that stared at me with letters. Bring me
+my name, I will understand its meaning. My other name has flown away.
+Listen. Let me whisper. Bring it to me and I will place it like a gate
+before the door of enchantments. I will kneel to it. Windows break in my
+head. Mallare ... are you Mallare? No, you are this. You are a babble of
+words that stands on its nose.
+
+"Laugh at me, Mallare. Let me hear your laugh far away. Or I go. Listen,
+Mallare. I turn my back on this darkness. I do not kneel at empty
+couches. No. I wait for you. You were my God. You, the One who
+contemplated. Yes, my arms are out to You. Come ... a whisper out of
+silences. Hey, Mallare. I dissolve. I become a little phantom. A useless
+little phantom. I drift like Rita. And they attack me. Hands, voices and
+trembling ones. They are brave because it is dark. Your worshippers,
+Mallare, they turn on me. They break windows. Pity me. This is the
+cross.
+
+[Hebrew: Eli, eli, lama azavtani?]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Tenth Drawing]
+
+
+
+
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+    |                                                              |
+    | Transcriber's Note                                           |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Details of minor typographical corrections are provided in   |
+    | the source of the associated html version.                   |
+    |                                                              |
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fantazius Mallare, by Ben Hecht
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