Doctor Sax (21 page)

“All your America,” says Sax, “is like a dense Balzacian hive in a jewel point.”

And suddenly, right there, for no forewarned reason, he reared up and seemed to explode, or up-burp like a bull about to throw five gallons of blood, “Bleu-heu-heu-ha-ha-ha” he erupts, hugely, “Mwee-hee-hee-ha-ha” he comes again from around the other side, sweeping me off my feet with fear–I jump two feet dodging the scythe of his laugh-Then I see his gigantic leer lowering as he laughs again– and utters his sepulchral sibilance—”Fnuf-fnuf-fnuf-fnaa,” he says, “this is the night of the destruction of the Snake. —The Wizard of Evil with his Nittlingen pain-gnomes, the faulty Decadent Dovists in their pillows and books of the dead, the bloodsucking unagrarian flap-wavers and aristocrats of the black sand, and all devoted monsters, spiders, insects, scorpions, gartersnakes, blacksnakes, blindbats, cockroaches and blue worms of the Snail–tonight the erupting head will sweep you with it–roses know herbs better than you–you’ll fan out in love-letters blown from an aeroplane forge in the center of my earth.”

I shivered to hear him, not knowing what he meant, nor capable of understanding. Indian file we stalked across a falling shadow in the street and jumped through yards, the park, yards, came and mingled in the ironpicket shrouds of Textile on Riverside–

“Behold them,” says Sax, “your fields, your
dark, your night. Tonight we make the worms unite in one pot of destruction.”

I take my last look–there, in the corner door steps, the old wrinkly-dinkly tar corner where I’d oft been too, but was no more … stood G.J. surveying the street, twirling a stick, thin little boy in the early evenings of his doomed lifetime, his massive curly Greek hair flying up, his big searching almond white eyes looking out like the eyes of a Negro but with Greek fierce and mad ambitioned intensity–calling on the night for love and faith, getting no answer from the wall– And Scotty was sitting on a step, picking slowly at his Mr. Goodbar peanut by peanut–with a wry, faint smile; he’s weathered the crisis of the Flood, he’ll weather others, he’ll rise at bleak dawn in a thousand lifetimes and duck his head to walk to work, chastised by labor into huge humilities beneath the sun, big-fisted godly-silent Scotcho was never going to eat his own hands nor chaw his own soul to bits–letting pass a March Saturday night by the wry regard of his attention, storing up, just sitting there, letting the eagle of eternity fly his own nose. Vinny’s walking home, up Moody, across the street–carrying groceries–flooded out, they’re staying at Charlie’s sister’s on Gershom–twenty feet behind smiling laughing shrieking skinny Vinny comes Lou, with bags, solemn; then Normie, striding, smiling, carrying a box; then Charlie and Lucky, for once walking down the street together, smiling, in the soft breeze of the evening’s events they went downtown to buy some groceries, traveled it and did it on foot like a country family, an Indian family,
a crazy family in a happy street–G.J. and Scotty wave at the Bergeracs. Cars pass; Shammy walks home, spitting and patting his belly where he just lodged a few brews, passing the boys with a polite nod. Tomorrow morning hell be in church; tonight, at Emil Duluoz’s, he’ll be loaded on Tom Collins and singing at the piano okay.

“Well,” says G.J. turning to Scotty, as Lousy ghostly comes up-flailing in the leafwild shade of Riverside with his funny sounds and little pebbles he is throwing, approaching us out of eternity, a riddlic being, headed the other side–elf—G.J. is saying “I wonder where Jacky is tonight.”

SCOTTY
: Dunno, Gus. He may be over to Dicky Hampshire’s. Or down in the alley spottin.

GUS
: Here comes Old Lousy–whenever I see old Lousy coming, I know I’ll go to heaven, he’s an angel Goddam Lousy-

Doctor Sax and I suddenly fly into the upper air like we were dodging some tremendous black force that would have knocked us far–instead we veer up, and
over
a great deal, so I don’t know where we are, and can’t see how far down, or up, or over, and what precipice and shelf it is. But it’s familiar: it’s not a baptismal font, but it’s in the shrouds and holy hands V-clasped,— Doctor Sax, elongated like a long scorpion, is flying across the moon like a demented cloud. Fiendish, teeth shining, I fly after him in a minor flare of ink– We come to the red-works of his shack, we’re standing in the middle of his house looking down at an open trap door.

“Into that innocent land go as you are now, naked,
when you go into the destruction of world snakes. Leery-head may moan, go ahead and do your groan, Leda and the Swan may moan, go a lone groan, listen to your
own
self–it ain’t got nothin to do with what’s around you, it’s what you do inside at the controls of that locomotive crashing through life—”

“Doctor Sax!” I cried “I don’t understand what you’re saying! You’re mad! You’re mad and I’m mad!”

“Hee hee hee ha ya,” he gaggled gispled, “this is the Moan victory.”

“How mad can you get?” I thought. “This old hero of the shroud is a crazy old fool. What’d I let myself in for?”

We’re standing there staring at the red glow in the trap door; there’s a wooden ladder.

“Go down!” he says impatiently. I jump down that ladder fast, the rungs are hot; I land on a hard dirt floor like clay upon which there are several great straw rugs and scrapes all stretched and torn but keeping your feet from the cold clay–all bright with designs skimmed in and wove, but dancing in the red fire light. Doctor Sax had a forge, it was well nigh impossible to hear the clang of your own heart for the hearty meaty clang of that harp-fire, it was a sodden bum-down red bed of coals, and a blower, a batwing blower, fue, powders were made to undergo hardening and boiling down tests in these works. Doctor Sax was making the herb powder that was going to destroy the Snake.

“Anoint thee, son—” he hallooed in the mud cellar— “we’re going into Homeric battles of the morn–over the dew tops of every one of your favorite pines of Dracut
Tigers slants the far red sun that’s just now rising from a bed of night-blue to a day of bluebells in the crime–and the shores of oceans will crash, in Southern Latitude climes, and the bark will plow thou hoary antique sea with a vast funebreal consonant splowsh of bow-foams —you’re in on no mean squabble the butcher’s devil.”

SUDDENLY I REALIZED his
great black cat was there. It stood four feet tall from ground to spine, with big green eyes and vast slow swishing tail like eternity on a fly–the strangest cat. “Got him in the Andes,” was all the Sax ever told me, “got him in the Andes, on a chestnut tree.” Parakeets he also had, they said exceedingly strange things, “Zangfed, dezeede leeing, fling, flang”—and one that cried in proud Spanish learnt from old bushy brow pirate who farted in his rum, “Hoik kally-ang-goo–Quarent-ay-cinco, señor, quarent-ay-cinco, quarent-ay-cinco.” A vast perwigillar balloon exploded over my head, it was a blue balloon that had risen out of the blue powders in the Forge, and so suddenly everything was blue.

“The Blue Era!” cried Doctor Sax, dashing to his kiln– His shroud flew after him, he stood like a Goethe witch before his furn-forge, tall, emasculated, Nietzschean, gaunt—(in those days I knew Goethe and Nietzsche only from titles in faded gold paint imprinted on the backs of soft brown or soft pale green old velvety Classic books
in the Lowell Library)- The Cat swished his great tail. There was no time to lose. The jig was up. I could sense flurrying excitements in the air, as though a flight of ten thousand angels in small-soul form had just flown through the room and through our heads in their heavy tearful destination ever farward round the earth in search of souls that haven’t yet arrived– Poor Doctor Sax stood drooped and sad at his forge works. The fire was blue, the blue cave roof was blue, everything, shadow was blue, my shoes were blue—”Oooh–Ah-man!” I heard a whisper from the cat. It was a Talking Cat? Doctor Sax said “Yes, it was a talking cat once I suppose. Help me with these jars”.

I uprolled me sleeves to help Doctor Sax with the jars of eternity. They were labeled one after another with bright blue and obviously other colors and had Hebraic writing on them–his secrets were Jewish, mixed with some Arabic.

“Introversions! torturous introversions of my mind!” screamed Doctor Sax jumping up and down as hard as he could and screaming at the top of his lungs, his great shroud flapping. I hid in the corner, covered my mouth and nose with fear, my hands ice cold.

“Yaaah!” screeched Doctor Sax turning and protruding his great leering green face with red eyes at me, showing blue teeth in the general blue world of his own fool powders. “Screeeech!” he hollered–he began pulling his jaw cheeks apart to make worse faces and scare me, I was scared enough–he bounced back, head down, like a hip tap dancer pulling his bops away, on swinging heels–

“Doctor Sax,” I cried,
“Monsieur Sax, m’fa peur!”
(You scare me!)

“Okay,” he instantly said and reared back to normal, flattening against a cellar stanchion pole in a black bereaved shadow. He stood silently for a long while, the Cat swished his mighty tail. The blue light vibrated.

“Here,” he said, “you see the chief powders of the preparation. I have been working on this amazing concoction for twenty years counting ordinary time–I’ve been all over the world son, from one part of it to the other–I sat in hot sun parks down in Peru, in the city of Lima, letting the hot sun solace me– In the nights I was every blessed time inveigled with some Indian or other type witch doctorin bastards to go into some mud alley in back of suspicious looking sewer holes dug in the ground, and come to some old Chinese wisdom usually with his arms hanging low from a big pipeful of World Hasheesh and has lazy eyes and says ‘You gen’men want some-theeng?’ ‘Tis a pimp, son, hides at the secret heart of mystery–has big thick lace curtains in his loot room–and herbs, me boy, herbs. There’s a blueish weird smoke emanates from a certain soft wood to be found far South of here, to be smoked–that when mixed with wild Germunselee witch brews from Orang-Utang Hills in crazy Galapoli–where the vine tree is a hundred foot high, and the orchid bunches knock your head off, and the Snake does slither in the Pan American slime–somewhere in South America, boy, the secret cave of Napoli.”

Whirl bones rattled from the arrangement he had with the forge pull–every time he yanked, and blew on the
coals, the string-chain also pulled the tripod on the ceiling that made the rattling bones whirl. There were a thousand interesting things to notice-

Reverently Doctor Sax bent on his knees. Before him was a little glass vacuum ball. Inside of it were the powders he’d taken 20 years of alchemy and world travel to perfect, not to mention everything he had to do with round-the-world doves, the trusteeship of giant secret society black cats, certain areas of the world to patrol, North and South America, for sight of Snake’s suspicious presence–manifold duties on every side.

“When I break this bubble ball and these powders come into contact with the air at the Parapet of the Pit, all my manifold duties will have melted into one white glow.”

“Will everything stay blue till we get to that Snake White?” I asked swiftly.

“No–even from inside the vacuum glass my potent powder will change the atmosphere several times this night as we jostle to our work.”

“Is the cat coming with us sir?”

“Yes–Pondu Pokie they called him in the Chilean mines —you’d never guess what his Indian name meant– It my boy meant ‘Great Cat Full of Waiting’– A beast like that is born to be great.”

He took the glass ball with its terrible innocent looking morphine-powder-like spoonful, and thrust it in his holy heart’s pocket.

He raised his face to the dark ceiling.

“—” His mouth was wide open for a great cry and he only awped with his neck muscles upstrained to the ceiling
—in blueish glows of fire.

He ducked slightly, the cat stiffened, the room shook, a great cranging noise rang across the sky towards the Castle-

“That’s the Eagle’s Lord and Master coming to the fray.”

“What? Who?”—terrified, an air raid of horror everywhere.

“They say there’s a mighty force no one of us knows about and so the eagles and birds make a great to-do and noise and especially tonight when the Invisible Power of the Universe is supposed to be nigh–we don’t know any more than the Sun what the Snake will do–and can’t know what the Golden Being of Immortality can do, or will do, or what, or where– Huge batallions of loud snake-decorated birds it was you just heard above, rattling their sabers above the Lowell night, heading for the duel with the Crooges of the Castle—”

“Crooges?”

“No time to wait son I–figs and Caesar don’t mix–run to the fore with me–come and see the moo mouth maw of death–come get your ass through the western gate of Wrath, come ride the rocky road to orgone mystery. The eyes of those who have died are watching in the night-”

We’re flying in a sad slant whirl right over Centerfield Dracut Tigers, came up-chawing from the cannon of his mad activity and balled across the air talking.

“What eyes?” I cried, leaning my head on a pillow of air; it was dew, & cool.

“The eyes of eternity, son– Look!”

I looked and suddenly in the night it was all filled with floating eyes none of them as bright as stars but like gray plicks in the texture cloak of fields and nightskies–unmistakable, they drooped and dreared to see Doctor Sax and I pass in the wake of the clanging nightbirds ahead. The eyes without seeming to move followed us like flying saucer armies as we fanned out all in great raw wild flight over the fields, sandbank and still-brown foamed river to the Castle.

AND THEN IT BEGAN TO RAIN
, Doctor Sax deposited himself sadly on a rock right down by the river at the part where Snake Hill lawns stretched down bushy and wild to the Rocky eternal Merrimac shore. “No, son,” said Sax, as the first drops pittered and I look all around at the suddenly dark night with its rainshrouds and listen for spooks from the Castle, “no, me boy, the rain comes to peter me out. Years of my life have piled a great woe-weariness in a one-time worry-house soul that stood on vibrating but solid pillars; no, now it’s doubt returns to flagle me in my old age, where once I’d conquered in youth–sun-lizard days– No this woe and rain makes me want to sit down on a rock and cry. O waves of the river, cry.” He sits down, be-shrouded– I see a little corner of his rubberboat sticking out of his cardinal black hat above its frightening cargo blackbody in drape. The river laps and ululates on
rocks. Night creeps across its misty surface to a meet with dumpshores and factory pipes. All Lowell is bathed in blue light.