Chapter 3

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.

[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?"

[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.