I told Mara what he had said. We decided to have a look at the place immediately. Stanley had disappeared. Ulric thought he might have gone to the bathroom.
I went to the bathroom and knocked. No answer. I pushed the door open. Stanley was lying in the tub fully dressed, his hat over his eye, the empty bottle in his hand. I left him lying there.
«He’s gone, I guess,» I shouted to Ulric as we sailed out.
VOLUME THREE
8
The Bronx! We had been promised a whole wing of the house—a turkey wing, with feathers and goose pimples thrown in. Kronski’s idea of a haven.
It was a suicidal period which began with cockroaches and hot pastrami sandwiches and ended a la Newberg in a cubby-hole on Riverside Drive where Mrs. Kronski the Second began her thankless task of illustrating a vast cycloramic appendix to the insanities.
It was under Kronski’s influence that Mara decided to change her name again—from Mara to Mona. There were other, more significant changes which also had their origin here in the purlieus of the Bronx.
We had come in the night to Dr. Onirifick’s hideout. A light snow had fallen and the colored panes of glass in the front door were covered with a mantle of pure white. It was just the sort of place I had imagined Kronski would select for our «honeymoon». Even the cockroaches, which began scurrying up and down the walls as soon as we turned on the lights, seemed familiar—and ordained. The billiard table which stood in a corner of the room was at first disconcerting, but when Dr. Onirifick’s little boy casually opened his fly and began to make pipi against the leg of the table everything seemed quite as it should be.
The front door opened directly on to our room which was equipped with a billiard table, as I say, a large brass bedstead with eiderdown quilts, a writing desk, a grand piano, a hobby horse, a fire place, a cracked mirror covered with fly-specks, two cuspidors and a settee. There were in all no less than eight windows in our room. Two of them had shades which could be pulled down about two-thirds of the way; the others were absolutely bare and festooned with cobwebs. It was very jolly. No one ever rang the bell or knocked first; every one walked in unannounced and found his way about as best he could. It was «a room with a view» both inside and out.
Here we began our life together. A most auspicious debut! The only thing lacking was a sink in which we could urinate to the sound of running water. A harp might have come in handy, too, especially on those droll occasions when the members of Dr. Onirifick’s family, tired of sitting in the laundry downstairs, would waddle up to our room like auks and penguins and watch us in complete silence as we ate or bathed or made love or combed the lice out of one another’s hair. What language they spoke we never knew. They were as mute as the reindeer and nothing could frighten or astound them, not even the sight of a mangy foetus.
Dr. Onirifick was always very busy. Children’s diseases was his specialty, but the only children we ever noticed during our stay were embryonic ones which he chopped into fine pieces and threw down the drains. He had three children of his own. They were all three super-normal, and on this account were allowed to behave as they pleased. The youngest, about five years of age and already a wizard at algebra, was definitely on his way to becoming a pyromaniac as well as a super-mathematician. Twice he had set fire to the house. His latest exploit revealed a more ingenious turn of mind: it was to set fire to a perambulator containing a tender infant and then push the perambulator downhill towards a congested traffic lane.
Yes, a jolly place to begin life anew. There was Ghompal, an ex-messenger whom Kronski had salvaged from the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company when that institution began to weed out its non-Caucasian employees. Ghompal, being of Dravidian stock and dark as sin, had been one of the first to get the gate. He was a tender soul, extremely modest, humble, loyal and self-sacrificing—almost painfully so. Dr. Onirifick cheerfully made a place for him in his vast household—as a glorified chimney-sweep. Where Ghompal ate and slept was a mystery. He moved about noiselessly in the performance of his duties, effacing himself, when he deemed it necessary, with the celerity of a ghost. Kronski prided himself on having rescued in the person of this outcast a scholar of the first water. «He’s writing a history of the world,» he told us impressively. He omitted mentioning that, in addition to his duties as secretary, nurse, chamber-maid, dish-washer and errand boy, Ghompal also stoked the furnace, hauled the ashes, shoveled the snow, papered the walls and painted the spare rooms.
Nobody attempted to wrestle with the problem of roaches. There were millions of them hidden away beneath the mouldings, the woodwork, the wall-paper. One had only to turn on the light and they streamed out in double, triple file, column after column, from walls, ceiling, floor, crannies, crevices—veritable armies of them parading, deploying, maneuvering, as if obeying the commands of some unseen super-roach of a drill-master. At first it was disgusting, then nauseating, and finally, as with the other strange, disturbing phenomena which distinguished Dr. Onirifick’s household, their presence among us was accepted by all and sundry as inevitable.
The piano was completely out of tune. Kronski’s wife, a timid, mouse-like creature whose mouth seemed to be curled in a perpetual deprecatory smile, used to sit and practice the scales on this instrument, oblivious apparently of the hideous dissonances which her nimble fingers produced. To hear her play the Barcarolle, for example, was excruciating. She seemed not to hear the sour notes, the jangled chords; she played with an expression of utter serenity, her soul enrapt, her senses numbed and bewitched. It was a venomous composure which deceived no one, not even herself, for the moment her fingers ceased wandering she became what in truth she was—a petty, mean, spiteful, malevolent little bitch.
It was curious to see the way in which Kronski pretended to have found a jewel in this second wife. It would have been pathetic, not to say tragic, were he not such a ridiculous figure. He cavorted about her like a porpoise attempting to be elfish. Her digs and barbs served only to galvanize the ponderous, awkward figure in which was hidden a hyper-sensitive soul. He writhed and twisted like a wounded dolphin, the saliva dripping from his mouth, the sweat pouring from his brow and flooding his all too liquid eyes. It was a horrible charade he gave us on these occasions; though one pitied him one had to laugh, to laugh until the tears came to one’s eyes.
If Curley were around he would turn on Curley savagely, in the very midst of his antics, and vent his spleen. He had a loathing for Curley that was inexplicable. Whether it was envy or jealousy which provoked these uncontrollable rages, whatever it was, Kronski would, in these moments, act like a man possessed. Like a huge cat, he would circle around poor Curley, taunting him, baiting him, stinging him with rebukes, slanders, insults, until he was actually foaming at the mouth.
«Why don’t you do something, say something?» he would sneer. «Put up your dukes! Give me a crack, why don’t you? You’re yeller, aren’t you? You’re just a worm, a cad, a stooge.»
Curley would leer at him with a contemptuous smile, saying not a word, but poised and ready to strike should Kronski lose all control.
Nobody understood why these ugly scenes took place. Ghompal especially. He had evidently never witnessed such situations in his native land. They left him pained, wounded, shocked. Kronski felt this keenly, loathing himself even more than he loathed Curley. The more he fell in Gomphal’s estimation the harder he strove to ingratiate himself with the Hindu.
«There’s a really fine soul,» he would say to us. «I would do anything for Ghompal—anything.»
There were lots of things he might have done to alleviate the latter’s burdens, but Kronski gave the impression that when the time came he would do something magnificent. Until then nothing less would satisfy him. He hated to see any one lend Ghompal a helping hand. «Trying to salve your conscience, eh?» he would snarl. «Why don’t you put your arms around him and kiss him? Afraid of contamination, is that it?»
Once, just to make him uncomfortable, I did exactly that. I walked up to Ghompal and, putting my arms around him, I kissed him on the brow. Kronski looked at us shamefacedly. Every one knew that Ghompal had syphilis.
There was Dr. Onirifick himself, of course, a presence which made itself felt throughout the house, rather than a human being. What went on in that office of his on the second floor? None of us really knew. Kronski, in his elaborate, melodramatic way, gave crude imaginative pictures of abortion and seduction, bloody jig-saw puzzles which only a monster could put together. On the few occasions when we met, Dr. Onirifick impressed me as being nothing more than a mild, good-hearted man
