— Succubus, said Anselm, his voice deep in his throat again.
— Sswccubus, he hissed. — Devil in a woman's body, to lead a man in vile sin, abominable lusts, carnal pleasures, blasphemy, the filthy delights of copulation. Do you think I don't know? Do you think no one knows? Not for your own delectation, you get no pleasure from it, only to corrupt and pollute the soul and body of a mortal man. Succubus to a man, incubus to a woman. He reared his acned chin.
— Come on, Esme, said Otto. — Let's get out of here. But she stood, charmed, still gently smiling.
— Go home and read Saint Augustine. On the Trinity, said Anselm, turning his thin face up to Otto. — There you'll find that devils do indeed collect human seed. Not for delectation. Succubus to a man, incubus to a woman. Damn you, damn you, damn you. If devils fell from every rank, those who fell from the lowest choir are deputed to perform these abominations, these filthy delights. Not for delectation. Do you know about the monk Helias, and how the angels answered his prayers by castrating him? Do you know about Saint Victor?
Otto had moved Esme toward the door, where the Swede stood sobbing — Behind the locked door, I could hear them laughing.
Then Otto turned, feeling something spray on him. Anselm had flung up a hand wet with beer, and was shuddering, — I exorcise thee, unclean spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ; tremble, O Satan, thou enemy of the faith, thou foe of mankind, who hast brought death into the world. He gasped; and in that moment Otto heard clearly from across the room, in Max's voice:
— I'd say he was a latent heterosexual, and looked up to find Max's eyes upon him. He stood trapped for an instant in Max's smiling eyes, then sought others, saw Stanley sunk against a chair watching Anselm.
— Thou seducer of mankind, thou root of evil, thou source of avarice, discord, and envy.
— Esme, come on. He pulled her arm.
— Hey Stanley, Anselm called suddenly over his shoulder, — who's this coon with your girl? Hey Stanley, I am one, sir, that comes to tell you.
— Esme…
— Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.
— Damn it…
— Now be nice. the Swede whispered through his tears.
— For Christ sake Anselm.
— Go home and fornicate, came from the floor. — Only know that God for His own glory permits devils to work against His will. For His own glory.
And then a crash.
They looked to see Hannah getting up from the floor, and Max went to help her. Herschel stumbled and fell against a chair, where his whole body shook, heaving from its shallow depths. — I can't stand it, I can't stand it any more. She asked me who I was, and I told her and she said How do you know who that is, is it anybody at all and. Oh God, Christ, I hate hitting somebody I don't like.
On the floor before the fireplace lay the funeral spray, lifted gaily from the door of a bereaved Italian family downstairs, trampled so that its wires stood out naked. Time had been there. The garden which one had thought could not grow, had risen in rank luxuriance, like the plants on that plantation abandoned. For even bananas must be cut and hung to mature properly; left on the stalk, they swell and burst open, attract insects, develop an unpleasant taste, beyond the bounds of cultivation, beyond the plantation, in the jungle, where in the art of evil their near relatives, the orchids, blossom, not questioning the distant Greeks on how they got their name, deriving innocently from the devil's residence in man: that part which the ange's cut from the monk Helias. Otto led Esme forth, and at the stairs she drew him down.
VI
"Father," he asked, "are the rich people stronger than anyone else on earth?" "Yes, Ilusha," I said. "There are no people on earth stronger than the rich." "Father," he said, "I will get rich, I will become an officer and conquer everybody. The Tsar will reward me, I will come back here and then no one will dare. " Then he was silent and his lips still kept trembling. "Father," he said, "what a horrid town this is."
"Why has not man a microscopic eye?" writes Alexander Pope; "For this plain reason: man is not a fly." What of Argus, equipped with one hundred eyes to watch over the king's daughter turned into a heifer by a jealous goddess; how many images of the heifer did he see? how many leaves to the bracken where she browsed? And after the death of Argus (his eyes transplanted to the peacock's tail), this wretched heifer, the metamorphosis of Io, was visited by a gadfly sent by the jealous goddess, and driven frenzied across frontiers until she reached the Nile. What did the gadfly see? And Argus, suffering the distraction of one hundred eyes: did he sit steady? or move distracted from distraction by distraction, like the housefly now dashing and retreating in frenzy against the windowpane, drawn to a new destination the instant it halted, from the shade-pull to the floor, from there to the lampshade, back to the baffling window glass. No Argus, this miserable Diptera, despite its marvelous eyes guardian of nothing; for where was the heifer? Below, perhaps. From the high ceiling the housefly careened to the molding across the room, thence to the lampshade, to a green muffler, a pair of socks on the floor, and so to the sleeping face which it attended with custodial devotion, until the blinking unmicroscopic eyes came open, and Otto lay awake.
— O God, what have I done? came borne on a girl's voice, sustained by a muted Rhadames singing before his judges from the lungs of a radio. Otto closed his eyes, not yet ready to return to this life. The fly rummaged about his cheek, remarking there the pitted damages of adolescence, an uneven surface affording foothold for claws laden with typhoid bacilli. Still, for a moment, the fly studied the caves of the nostrils leading into the crooked tanned peak of the nose. Otto threw his arm across his face. The fly rose, swirled, returned to walk across the cleft of the chin, and from that eminence sighted the convoluted marvel protruding across the way, and leaped silently to the ear.
— O God, what have I done? This was followed by a tearing sob.
Otto's hand moved quickly, to the ear; but by the time it reached there, the fly was trampling his eyebrow, its purpose of devilish torment unchanged since lo reached the Nile, where Egyptian mothers still hesitate to disturb flies settled on a sleeping child, awed by the fly god, Baal-zebub, evil and insect-breeding power of Baal, the sun himself, lover and quickener of nature.
— O God, what have I done. oouuuh. while in Egyptian background Rhadames was sealed up in the tomb, alive, where he finds Aïda waiting, sunless, and out in the sunshine metamorphosed by a pun Baal-zebub becomes Beelzeboul, the dung god, Prince of Devils.
So Otto, forced awake by three millenniums, a goddess, a princess, and a devil, swung once more at the housefly and sat up on the edge of his bed, his face anxiously distorted, listening. He waited.
— O God! What have I done! sounded through the thin wall.
He got up and lit an American cigarette.
December's thin sunlight came in at the window, hopefully revisiting this city despaired of the night before. In thousands of rooms, as many men intently removed minuscule stubble from pallid chins, with as much care for office appearance as though each worked under Saint Wulstan, whose holiness was so offended by beards that he carried a knife, and when a man so adorned knelt for his blessing the good Bisho.p of Wulster cut out a handful of it, threw it in the poor fellow's face, and told him to cut the rest off or go, quite literally, to Hell. Now they buttoned buttons for the thousandth time without question, absorbed in pragmatic interior monologues which anticipated the successes of the day to come fostered by the failures of the day before.