then it would change again, each change registering her inner transformation, her fluctuations, her moods, longings and frustrations. But always it remained provocative—fully alive, responsive, tingling, pulsing with love, tenderness, passion. Each day it seemed to speak a new language.
What power then could the body of another exert? At the most only a feeble, transitory one. I had found the body, no other was necessary. No other would ever fully satisfy me. No, the laughing kind was not for me. One penetrated that sort of body like a knife going through cardboard. What I craved was the elusive. (The elusive basilisk, is how I put it to myself.) The elusive and the insatiable at the same time. A body like Mona's own, which, the more one possessed it the more one became possessed. A body which could bring with it all the woes of Egypt—and its wonders, its marvels.
I tried another dance hall. Everything was perfect—music, lights, girls, even the ventilators. But never did I feel more loneliness, more desolation. In desperation I danced with one after another, all responsive, yielding, ductile, malleable, all gracious, lovely, satiny and dusky, but a despair had come over me, a weight which crushed me. As the afternoon wore on a feeling of nausea seized me. The music particularly revolted me. How many thousand times had I heard these pale, feeble, utterly idiotic tunes with their sickening words of endearment! The offspring of pimps and narks who had never known the pangs of love. Embryonic, I kept repeating to myself. The music of embryos made for embryos. The sloth calling to its mate in five feet of sewer water; the weasel weeping for his lost one and drowning in his own pipi. Romance, of the copulation of the violet and the stink-wort. I love you! Written on fine, silky toilet paper stroked by a thousand super-fine combs. Rhymes invented by mangy pederasts; lyrics by Albumen and his mates. Pfui!
Fleeing the place I thought of the African records I once owned, thought of the blood beat, steady and incessant, which animated their music. Only the steady, recurring, pounding rhythm of sex—but how refreshing, how pure, how innocent!
I was in such a state that I felt like pulling out my cock, right in the middle of Broadway, and jerking off. Imagine a sex maniac pulling out his prick—on a Saturday afternoon!—in full view of the Automat!
Fuming and raging, I strolled over to Central Park and flung myself on the grass. Money gone, what was there to do? The dance mania ... I was still thinkin’ on it. Still climbing that steep flight of steps to the ticket booth where the hairy Greek sat and grabbed the money. (Yes, she'll be here soon; why don't you dance with one of the other girls?) Often she didn't show up at all. In a corner, on a dais, the colored musicians working like fury, sweating, panting, wheezing; grinding it out hour after hour with scarcely a let up. No fun in it for them, not for the girls either, even though they did wet their pants occasionally. One had to be screwy to patronize such a dive.
Giving way to a feeling of delicious drowsiness, I was on the point of closing my eyes when out of nowhere a ravishing young woman appeared and seated herself on a knoll just above me. Perhaps she was unaware that, in the position she had assumed, her private parts were fully exposed to view. Perhaps she didn't care. Perhaps it was her way of smiling at me, or winking. There was nothing brazen or vulgar about her; she was like some great soft creature of the air who had come to rest from her flight.
She was so utterly oblivious of my presence, so still, so wrapped in reverie, that incredible as it may seem, I closed my eyes and dozed off. The next thing I knew I was no longer on this earth. Just as it takes time to grow accustomed to the after-world, so it was in my dream. The strangest thing to get used to was the fact that nothing I wished to do required the least effort. If I wished to run, whether slow or fast, I did so without losing breath. If I wanted to jump a lake or skip over a hill, I simply jumped. If I wanted to fly, I flew. There was nothing more to it than that, whatever I attempted.
After a time I realized that I was not alone. Some one was at my side, like a shadow, moving with the same ease and assurance as myself. My guardian angel, most likely. Though I encountered nothing resembling earthly creatures, I found myself conversing, effortlessly again, with whatever crossed my path. If it was an animal, I spoke to it in its own tongue; if it was a tree, I spoke in the language of the tree; if a rock, I spoke as a rock. I attributed this gift of tongues to the presence of the being which accompanied me.
But to what realm was I being escorted? And for what end?
Slowly I became aware that I was bleeding, that indeed I was a mass of wounds, from head to foot. It was then that, seized with fright, I swooned away. When at last I opened my eyes I saw to my astonishment that the Being who had accompanied me was tenderly bathing my wounds, anointing my body with oil. Was I at the point of death? Was it the Angel of Mercy whose figure was solicitously bent over me? Or had I already crossed the Great Divide?
Imploringly I gazed into the eyes of my Comforter. The ineffable look of compassion which illumined her features reassured me. I was no longer concerned to know whether I was still of this world or not. A feeling of peace invaded my being, and again I closed my eyes. Slowly and steadily a new vigor poured into my limbs; except for a strange feeling of emptiness in the region of the heart I felt completely restored.
It was after I had opened my eyes and found that I was alone, though not deserted, not abandoned, that instinctively I raised a hand and placed it over my heart. To my horror there was a deep hole where the heart should have been. A hole from which no blood flowed. Then I am dead, I murmured. Yet I believed it not.
At this strange moment, dead but not dead, the doors of memory swung open and down through the corridors of time I beheld that which no man should be permitted to see until he is ready to give up the ghost: I saw in every phase and moment of his pitiful weakness the utter wretch I had been, the blackguard, nothing less, who had striven so vainly and ignominiously to protect his miserable little heart. I saw that it never had been broken, as I imagined, but that, paralyzed by fear, it had shrunk almost to nothingness. I saw that the grievous wounds which had brought me low had all been received in a senseless effort to prevent this shriveled heart from breaking. The heart itself had never been touched; it had dwindled from disuse.
It was gone now, this heart, taken from me, no doubt, by the Angel of Mercy. I had been healed and restored so that I might live on in death as I had never lived in life. Vulnerable no longer, what need was there for a heart?
Lying there prone, with all my strength and vigor returned, the enormity of my fate smote me like a rock. The sense of the utter emptiness of existence overwhelmed me. I had achieved invulnerability, it was mine forever, but life—if this was life—had lost all meaning. My lips moved as if in prayer but the feeling to express anguish failed me. Heartless, I had lost the power to communicate, even with my Creator.
Now, once again, the Angel appeared before me. In her hands, cupped like a chalice, she held the poor, shrunken Semblance of a heart which was mine. Bestowing upon me a look of the utmost compassion, she blew upon this dead looking ember until it swelled and filled with blood, until it palpitated between her fingers like a live, human heart.
Restoring it to its place, her lips moved as if pronouncing the benediction, but no sound issued forth. My transgressions had been forgiven; I was free to sin again, free to burn with the flame of the spirit. But in that moment I knew, and would never, never more forget, that it is the heart which rules, the heart which binds and protects. Nor would it ever die, this heart, for its keeping was in greater hands.
