The Tides of Lust

  He whispered, “Hey, are you . . . ?” and stopped, astounded at the absurdity of that, too. He caught her shoulder, to get his arm around her. His heart was beating loud and slow, and the night felt very cold. Except where she lay in the cradle of his arm.

  Her hand swung up at his face. Reflexively, thinking somehow she might hurt herself, he caught it. Her hand twisted about on its very small wrist. Her lips snarled back. She made a high, screeching sound that finally broke, and broke again, till she shook with rasping sobs. And she kept hitting at his chest and head. He tried to duck and at the same time not drop her. She hit him above the eye, so he raised his head—her movements were all despair and no strength—and saw the church door open.

  A tall priest (white collar, tweed jacket), stepped out—

  She clawed at Robby’s face. He grunted and pushed her hand away, terribly relieved by the advent of someone official.

  “What the . . . Peggy-Ann! Boy, what are you doing to—” The father came quickly down the steps into the street lamp glare.

  Robby saw his expression and wondered.

  “Get away from that girl!”

  Realization struck him the same time as the priest’s foot. It hit his shoulder, glanced his ear.

  Robby fell back, scraping the heels of his palms on the wet cement. He scrambled, trying to hold the side of his head.

  The priest stood over the girl.

  The fear broke apart all that was left of Robby’s astonishment, scattered it. He rolled to his knees, rocked to his feet, and ran. He heard the priest call something after him. And kept running. Tripped once, rolled over, and came up crying. And ran again.

  PROCTOR’S ADDRESS:

  There, leave your pleasuring a moment. I have something to tell you. Yes, yes, I know elegance and symmetry would have me wait until we are all assembled. But one of the side effects of a life dedicated to sensuality is a lack of punctuality—though not dependability, once we learn to decode behavioral signs: there simply is no way I can guarantee an assemblage of all the demons I should like to raise. I am merely human. sambo, your sons would certainly enhance our number. Nazi, if you would loose that creature in the basement, what an ornament he would make us! No matter. I doubt I shall say anything our more experienced members have not already discerned for themselves. If I do outline a famliar template, then by all means go back to rutting on the fouled mattresses—as the lustier company, I notice by the grunts and sounds of sweaty bodies slapping that comes through the shadows, have already begun to do. I only beg you not to make so much noise that those who are bored with indulgence, tired, or (one hopes there are few so unfamiliar with the process as to be:) honestly curious, cannot hear. If it is to be said at all, it must be said now. Ah! I see you, our least experienced member, have left off rubbing and twisting a bit. You will do for audience, even though you will be the least efficacious in the resolution of my scheme, for you must admit, you are only a trifle braver than that silly girl you came in with and whom I had to calm down and send away an hour ago. But even you, I must warn: I lie frequently, for I am a man whose interest in the truth is only its aesthetic fascination in a landscape of lies. At any rate, let me continue.

  In the public imagination, Faust and Mephistopheles become confused. Frankenstein and the Monster blend by much the same process. Ignoring the literary import, which merely indicates the general reading stupidity of the general reading public, let us follow the psychological implications which take us another way entirely. The correspondence between man and his creations on the one hand, and those between an abstract ethical matrix and man himself: both relations are defined by the same moral mechanic. The world that we (excluding you; you have not been here long enough to be trusted) live in is essentially the real one. Pleasure is good; pain is bad. The rest is a matter of one’s subjective valuation focused through one’s objective powers of extension and empathy. We should have enough sociological resonance with the world you know to create existential tensions. There are more of us than most of you think. Correction: there are more of us than most people who will read this will think. That is a truth: and that this book contains one is what makes it dangerous. What in the eighteenth century was a metaphorical (and metaphysical) conceit is today merely rarified irony. One does not write to be understood. One does not write to entertain. The artist’s greatest value is, like the criminal’s, that he is concerned with symmetry first and values only subordinately. Instruction and entertainment are corollaries that the artistic process invariably generates. Faust is the master of effects; as a magician (and a charlatan) he will be conscious enough of his audience for that. But he has studied the magical effect in an endeavor to learn of magic itself. If he is successful, you will never know he has succeeded. But, lecteur et frere, you are not audience enough. So Faust seeks to gather to him a greater public; one who, by definition, will participate. You have been consorting with them these past hours. They generate in the tensions of the diction that describes them.

  The more perceptive among you by now have intuited (if only by the lack of space devoted to her) that Catherine is the passionate concern. Our first encounter focused on a recognition of death. At this writing, she is the only character whose fate I do not know. Bull, Nazi, Nig, Kim, Sambo, Dove, Benny, Gunner, Kirsten, you nameless beast in the cellar, and you too, we must hunt her, for she is terribly powerful. Captain, it is your addition to our entourage that steels me to face her. You bring an implication of mythic chaos with which to tempt her. She must be destroyed. She has spied on the devil, and now employs what she has learned to indulge freedoms that absolutely threaten us. Her scarcity in this narrative is the first sign of her power. You have no doubt deduced the standing competition between us. I have presented only an encounter during which, I think you will agree, she lost and I was a generous winner. There are very few of those. That there is no example I personally can bear to present where victory went otherwise, even to service that vaunted symmetry which I hold inviable:—there is the major indicator of her strength: That, as an obsession, she can so mar my intended effect of grace, gusto, and compression, simply by not showing up! It is her aesthetic and ethical elusiveness that make her the subject of the hunt. She is no figurine gratuite marked up to pay for the resonances of this tale. Her import is all I have not told you, am unable to tell you. Blame on her the distortions you have already noted in what I have tried to display. If you have any outrage left for that, then perhaps you will feel a little of what I feel for her. Yes, my view is distorted, but do not think it is small, or without compassion. Were it, believe me, it would generate no such obsession. She has spied on the devil. But so have you. So have we all, and indulged the irony of recognition, which, on a greater scale, is her only crime. Oh, she enjoys the theatre (perhaps gluts herself upon it), museums, has an entire life of the mind I have only implied. She reads of the destruction of young women in novels such as these and takes pleasure in it. She finds it amusing when innocent young men are executed for the unspeakable. But I need not go into her facility in the management of property, politics, or the division of money. Many of us have lain with her, not all against our will as did the poor monster mad in the cellar; most of us, not surprisingly have fared better than he. Notice I have spared you the evocation of sympathy for him as spur to our revenge. But, Captain, if you are compassionate . . .

  Enough. I have evoked your mythic virility with which to challenge her. But I see our number has grown considerably, even while I maunder her. Then come. Bull, here are the keys. To the cellar, to leash the beast. Nazi, you know the haunts of Nig and Dove. Up, up, all of you. Before I lay a stick to you. Come, we are ready to hunt her!

  Kirsten ran her finger around her left nipple as she stepped into the hall and lazily thought about her brother. She hung back from the hulking black ahead of her. His juices still drooled her thighs and made them slip.

  She caught sight of the long-armed, curly-headed boy; moved beside him. “Gunner . . .” whispered, and h
e turned, grinning at her like a gold cat. She took his hand, and suddenly he put his mouth on hers. She sucked in his tongue, and they stopped walking. She leaned against the wall and saw the others passing behind his shoulder, so closed her eyes. She touched his chest, let her hand slip to his trousers.

  He was bunching up her skirt. He liked it, because his tongue moved harder in her mouth. She pulled him back against the wall.

  “Hey,” he whispered, “any white man’s come in there?”

  She nodded, giggling. “But it’s way at the back.”

  Gunner took out his hand, licked, and a moment later dropped to his knees. Tongue and nose nuzzled deep in her. She held back the hem of her smock to watch him pry. She reached down to touch his scabbing shoulder, but he winced and knocked her hand away. So she closed her eyes and let thoughts drift with the thrust and warmth rising from the hard bud on the fore roof.

  He stood again, panting and wet to the eyes. She took his upswung cock and pulled her to him, lifted one leg, and guided, while he lay against her and butted at the opening. They both gasped when it slid. She held him about his shoulders, thrusting back to his thrusts, stroking his hair, while, with opposed rhythms, he tongued and plunged and tongued.

  Her mind curled through the sensational labyrinths till somebody touched her lightly and whispered, “Hurry, girl! Hurry! Proctor is waiting.”

  SIX

  ALCHEMICA

  I knew a man named Faustus of Kundling, a little town near my home. When he studied at Cracow, he had learned magic, which was formerly keenly studied there and where public lectures were delivered about this art. Later he wandered about in many places and spoke about secret things. When he wanted to create a sensation in Venice, he announced that he was going to fly into the heavens. The Devil then lifted him up in the air, but let him fall to earth again, so that he nearly gave up the ghost again.

  —Johannas Manlius, 1565,

  Locorum Communium Colectunea

  They gathered on the soaked earth behind the Hall, crushed into the narrow alley. “We’re ready,” Proctor called. “Keep together, and your voices down. Hey, there—”

  Gunner had caught at the artist’s hand.

  “What?”

  Tugging at Proctor’s wrist, Gunner demanded, “What’s down there?” He pointed to the window in the foundation.

  Proctor sat down on the steps; laughing, he clapped Gunner’s hips. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Who is it?” the boy insisted.

  Now Proctor rubbed his hands. “He was once a great scientist, but he fell in love with her whom we hunt. Do you know what he did for her?”

  Gunner shook his head.

  “He brewed her strange drugs that shatter the mind and the vision: a hallucinogen that the body cannot break down, it explodes the consciousness for an hour or more, till it is passed with the urine, intact. Always a hunchback, he became so lost in the pits of their joint depravity that he is only a fouled vision of his former self, and lives in nauseous squalor, devouring his own or any filth that falls to him, a pathetic but vicious thing, less than an animal.”

  “Let him out!” Gunner whispered.

  “I have given Bull the keys.” Proctor stuck two fingers into his shirt pocket, pulled out a small vial. He thumbed up the top and rolled a ruby capsule onto his palm. “Open your mouth.”

  Gunner did. Proctor pushed his palm over the boy’s mouth. Gunner swallowed. “What was that?”

  “Five hundred micrograms of the drug whose abuse reduced that poor fool to the creature he is.” He put another of the capsules into his own mouth, then poured some more into his palm. “A couple, Captain? You’ll get off in an hour. Here, Kim. Three for you, Sambo. A buck your size needs an extra dose.” The black reached for the capsules. The others crowded behind him, tried to push ahead.

  “Jon!” Benny pushed through the crowd. “Hey, Jon! Nazi!”

  “What is it, boy?” Proctor halted his largesse.

  “In the bar,” Benny said. “Somebody wants to see Bull! He says it’s important. It’s police business.”

  The bald lawman was just about to take the pill. He stopped.

  “Who is it?”

  “Father Michael.”

  “Now what could—shit!” He handed the pill to Benny and pushed from the crowd, frowned back at Proctor, before disappearing into the doorway.

  Proctor grunted disgustedly and stood up. “Her priest, the one she and the little redhead study with. Sometimes I think a great great grandmother of hers must have invented religion. After swallowing one of these little red pills, she pissed in some chalice, and the poor man who drank from it was never the same.” He turned to the others. “Here! I have a dozen more. Who’s hungry for visions of the beasts that lurk behind the night!” The others crowded forward.

  Bull picked up the rifle from the bar, turned around, and let the stock thump the floor. He lay the barrel up along the black denim. The tip was cold through the hair matting his belly. He moved his boot, clearing sawdust. “You want to tell me what this is all about, Father?”

  The priest, from the chair he had taken off the bar, looked up at Bull. In the shadow, his eyes returned to the leather band on the fleshy neck. “I called you at the jail. They told me you weren’t in. They suggested I try here at the Mirrors.” Bull turned his head slightly; the priest saw one of the brass studs flash on the collar. “Since it’s so near the church, I thought I’d come over.”

  “What is it, Father?”

  “Young Peggy-Ann . . . I have a study group for young women; for the ladies of this town interested in the spiritual problems of our age. And as they relate to other ages. So that they may find their proper and fitting place as women in this one. Now, the group is only two. But Peggy-Ann was late this evening. And I thought—”

  “What happened?”

  “She was molested! She was viciously molested, practically outside the church door!”

  Bull scraped at his crotch and shifted his weight. “Is she all right?”

  “Well, she’s . . . she was hysterical . . . no! No, of course she was not all right! The blood was running down her leg! She had huge bruises on her arms and breasts. She’d been cut and beaten besides. She was too terrified to defend herself. She can’t even walk. She’s too shocked, too hysterical to speak coherently. Catherine, the other woman in my group, is caring for her now at the church. Peggy-Ann had no family. They were killed in the fire on Colson Hill last Spring. You must excuse me, but I’m terribly upset by the whole business!”

  “Sure. I understand. Did she give you any idea who did it?”

  “But . . . but that’s why I’m upset! I saw who it was! I came out to look for her; and he was holding her in his arms!”

  “One of the fishermen? Them boys get some liquor in them and they just forget all manner of what’s decent—”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. He wasn’t anybody I’d ever seen from these parts. I’ve spent enough time at the docks so I know most of our boys by sight. No, it was probably a drifter. He didn’t have the look of one of our town’s boys. A skinny character, light hair.”

  “Do you think he’s liable to still be around? Did he see you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I bet he was scared off.” Bull shifted his weight. “You know, Father, probably the best thing you can do—” he worked his fist on the barrel “—is take as good care of the little girl as you can, and just forget—”

  “I don’t think you understand!” The priest stood up. “She was . . . was savagely hurt, mentally as well as physically!”

  “Well,” Bull said. “If you want me to go out looking for the bastard . . . I will.”

  The priest began to speak, then shook his head—not in negation, but frustration. “This girl, since the death of her parents, has been like a daughter to me. You once mentioned your family to me. I understand that a man must have his reasons for not living with his chosen spouse, but I know you have daughters; surely you ca
n understand this distraction of my feelings. I have nursed the growth of this girl in mind and body for a year. I merely ask you to consider what you would feel like if your little girls were so abused. You must come search for this creature with me. You . . .” In the dimness, the priest could not decipher the policeman’s expression.

  After a moment Bull said, “We’ll go looking for him.” He stood up from the bar. “Just a second, Father—I’ll be back.” He jerked up the rifle and strode out the back door.

  “The stupid bitch ran out of here and got herself messed up by some blame fool drifter after she left,” Bull announced, leaning from the door, a hand on either jamb. “Fool priest wants me to go hunting for the bastard. He’s probably skedaddled by now anyway if he done really shagged on the bitch that bad. I guess I won’t be able to go with you. Your Catherine woman is at the church. Least ways I’ll be able to keep the Father out of your hair while we’re hunting up the poor son of a bitch.”

  Bull was about to leave when the Captain stopped him with a hand around his wrist. “It wasn’t the drifter.”

  Bull frowned. “How you know?”

  “I talked to him this morning on the docks. That boy don’t rape.”

  Bull gave a cynical expression. Suddenly he turned. His fist hit Sambo’s shoulder. “Nigger, if your two bastards turn out to be at the bottom of this one too . . .”

  “Hey, Bull . . .” the black fisherman began.

  “God damn, this is the fourth or fifth time now. Shit! Look, you black bastard, you tell them salt and pepper shakers of yours they owe Bull some work for this one. I got me some little women over in the next town I want them to rough up for me. A couple of little girls, their old lady, and this bitch waitress. I been wettin’ my pants long enough dreamin’ about it. And, shit, nigger, tell ’em to watch out!”

  “Christ, Bull! All them women is a lot of work!”

  Bull nodded. “If they want to get away with this one, they better come around smilin’ with their peckers up. Lemme go take care of this stupid cocksucker and see if I can scare him out of town before he really gets in trouble.” Shaking his head, he shrugged to Proctor, then turned in the doorway.