“Why is the little snowflake crying?” asked Slim, half thoughtlessly, for the roaring of the human voice, coming from the depths of the house occupied all the ears and attention he possessed.
“Oh, she isn’t the only one,” answered September, with the tolerant mien of one who owns a prosperous harbour tavern in Shanghai. “But she is at least tame. Plum Blossom has been snapping about her like a young Puma, and Miss Rainbow has thrown the Saki bowl at the mirror and is trying to cut her artery with the chips—and all on account of this white silk youngster.”
The agitated expression on Slim’s face deepened. He shook his head.
“How did he manage to get such a hold over them …” he said, and it was not meant to be a question.
September shrugged his shoulders.
“Maohee …” he said in a singsong tone, as though beginning one of those Greenland fairy tales, which, the quicker they sent one to sleep are the more highly appreciated.
“What is that: Maohee?” asked Slim, irritably.
September drew his head down between his shoulders. The Irish and the British blood-corpuscles in his veins seemed to be falling out, violently: but the impenetrable Japanese smile covered this up with its mantle before it could grow dangerous.
“You don’t know what Maohee is … Not a soul in the great Metropolis knows … No … Nobody. But here in Yoshiwara they all know.”
“I wish to know, too, September,” said Slim.
Generations of Roman lackeys bowed within September as he said, “Certainly, sir!” But they did not get the better of the wink of the heavy-drinking lying grandfathers in Copenhagen. “Maohee, that is … Isn’t it odd, that, of all the ten thousand who have been guests here in Yoshiwara and who had experienced in detail what Maohee stands for, outside they know nothing more about it? Don’t walk so fast, sir. The yelling gentleman down there won’t run away from us—and if I am to explain to you what Maohee means …”
“Drugs, I expect, September—?”
“My dear sir, the lion is also a cat. Maohee is a drug: but what is a cat beside a lion? Maohee is from the other side of the earth. It is the divine, the only thing—because it is the only thing which makes us feel the intoxication of the others.”
“The intoxication—of the others … ?” repeated Slim, stopping still.
September smiled the smile of Hotei the god of Happiness, who likes little children. He laid the hand of the Borgia, with the suspiciously blue shimmering nails on Slim’s arm.
“The intoxication of the others—Sir, do you know what that means? Not of one other—no, of the multitude which rolls itself into a lump, the rolled up intoxication of the multitude gives Maohee its friends …”
“Has Maohee many friends, September?”
The proprietor of Yoshiwara grinned, apocalyptically.
“Sir, in this house there is a round room. You shall see it. It has not its like. It is built like a winding seashell, like a mammoth shell, in the windings of which thunders the surf of seven oceans; in these windings people crouch, so densely crowded that their faces appear as one face. No one knows the other, yet they are all friends. They all fever. They are all pale with expectation. They have all clasped hands. The trembling of those who sit right down at the bottom of the shell runs right through the windings of the mammoth shell, right up to those, who, from the gleaming top of the spiral, send out their own trembling towards it …”
September gulped for breath. Sweat stood like a fine chain of beads on his brow. An international smile of insanity parted his prating mouth.
“Go on, September!” said Slim.
“On?—On?—Suddenly the rim of the shell begins to turn … gently … ah how gently, to music—such as would bring a tenfold murderer-bandit to sobs and his judges to pardon him on the scaffold—to music on hearing which deadly enemies kiss, beggars believe themselves to be kings, the hungry forget their hunger—to such music the shell revolves around its stationary heart, until it seems to free itself from the ground and, hovering, to revolve about itself. The people scream—not loudly, no, no!—they scream like the birds that bathe in the sea. The twisted hands are clenched to fists. The bodies rock in one rhythm. Then comes the first stammer of: Maohee … The stammer swells, becomes waves of spray, becomes a spring tide. The revolving shell roars: Maohee … Maohee … ! It is as though a little flame must rest on everyone’s hair parting, like St. Elm’s fire … Maohee … Maohee! They call on their god. They call on him whom the finger of the god touches today … No one knows from where he will come today … He is there … They know he is amongst them … He must break out from the rows of them … He must … He must, for they call him: Maohee … Maohee! And suddenly—!”
The hand of the Borgia flew up and hung in the air like a brown claw.
“And suddenly a man is standing in the middle of the shell, in the gleaming circle, on the milk-white disc. But it is no man. It is the embodied conception of the intoxication of them all. He is not conscious of himself … A slight froth stands on his mouth, His eyes are stark and bursting and are yet like rushing meteors which leave waving tracks of fire behind them on the route from heaven to earth … He stands and lives his intoxication. He is what his intoxication is. From the thousands of eyes which have cast anchor into his soul the power of intoxication streams into him. There is no delight in God’s creation which does not reveal itself, surmounted by the medium of these intoxicated souls. What he says becomes visible, what he hears becomes audible to all. What he feels: Power, desire, madness, is felt by them all. On the shimmering area, around which the shell revolves, to music beyond all description, one in ecstasy lives the thousandfold ecstasy
