think he lives on Gershom, that’s what I think.”
“It might be,—it might be,—then again–I dunno.”
I’m standing there speculating. For some odd reason having to do with his personal psychological position (psyche) Dicky became terrified of the Black Thief–he began to believe in the sinister and heinous aspects of the deal —of the–secretive—perfectly silent–action. So sometimes I’d see him and break his will with stories— “On Gershom he’s stealing radios, crystal sets, stuff in barns—”
“What’ll he steal from me next? I lost my hoop, my pole vault, my trunks, and now my brother’s wagon … my wagon.”
All these articles were hidden in my cellar, I was going to return them quite as mysteriously as they disappeared —at least so I told myself. My cellar was particularly evil. One afternoon Joe Fortier had cut off the head of a fish in it, with an ax, just because we caught the fish and couldn’t eat it as it was an old dirty sucker from the river (Merrimac of Mills)—boom–crash—I saw stars–I hid the loot there, and had a secret dusty airforce made of cross-beam sticks with crude nail landing gears and a tail all hid in the old coal bin, ready for pubertical war (in case I got tired of the Black Thief) and so–I had a light dimly shining down (a flashlight through a cloth of black and blue, thunder) and this shone dumb and ominous on me in my cape and hat as outside the concrete cellar windows redness of dusk turned purple in New England and the kids screamed, dogs screamed, streets screamed, as elders dreamed, and in the back fences and violet lots I skipped in a flowing cape guile through a thousand shadows each more potent than the other till I got (skirting Dicky’s house to give him a rest) to the Ladeaus’ under the sandbank streetlamp where 1 threw surreptitious pebbles among their skippity hops in the dirt road (on cold November sunnydays the sand dust blew on Phebe like a storm, a drowsy storm of Arabic winter in the North)—the Ladeaus searched the hills of sand for this Shadow-this thief-this Sax incarnate pebblethrower —didn’t find him–I let go my “Mwee hee hee ha ha” in the dark of purple violet bushes, I screamed out of earshot in a dirt mole, went to my Wizard of Oz shack (in Phebe backyard, it had been an old ham-curing or tool-storing shack) and drop’t in through the square hole in the roof, and stood, relaxed, thin, huge, amazing, meditating the mysteries of my night and the triumphs of my night, the glee and huge fury of my night, mwee hee hee ha ha— (looking in a little mirror, flashing eyes, darkness sends its own light in a shroud)— Doctor Sax blessed me from the roof, where he hid–a fellow worker in the void! the black mysteries of the World! Etc! the World Winds of the Universe!—I hid in this dark shack–listening outside–a madness in the bottom of my darkness smile–and gulped with fear. They finally caught me.
Mrs. Hampshire, Dick’s mother, said to me gravely in the eye, “Jack, are you the Black Thief?”
“Yes, Mrs. Hampshire,” I replied immediately, hypnotized by the same mystery that once made her say, when I asked her if Dicky was at home or at the show, in a dull, flat, tranced voice as if she was speaking to a Spiritualist, “Dicky … is … gone … far … away …”
“Then bring back Dicky’s things and tell him you’re sorry.” Which I did, and Dicky was wiping his red wet eyes with a handkerchief.
“What foolish power had I discovered and been possessed by?” I asts meself … and not much later my mother and sister came impatiently marching down the street to fetch me from the Ladeau bushes because they were looking for the beach cape, a beach party was up. My mother said exasperated:
‘I’m going to stop you from reading them damned Thrilling Magazines if it’s the last thing I do (Tu va arretez d’lire ca ste mautadite affaire de fou la, tu m’attend tu?)”—
The Black Thief note I printed, by hand, in ink, thickly, on beautiful scraps of glazed paper I got from my father’s printing shop– The paper was sinister, rich, might have scared Dicky–
21
“I AM TOO FEEBLE TO GO ON,” says the Wizard in the Castle bending over his papers at night.
“Faustus!” cries his wife from the bath, “what are you doing up so late! Stop fiddling with your desk papers and pen quills in the middle of the night, come to bed, the mist is on the air of night lamps, a dewll come to rest your fevered brow at morning,—you’ll lie swaddled in sweet sleep like a lambikin—l’ll hold you in my old snow-white arms–and all you do’s sit there dreaming—”
“Of Snakes! of Snakes!” answers the Master of Earthly Evil–sneering at his own wife: he has a beak nose and movable jaw-bird beak and front teeth missing and something indefinably young in bone structure but imponderably old in the eyes–horrible old bitch face of a martinet with books, cardinals and gnomes at his spidery behest.
“Would I’d never seen your old fink face and married you–to sit around in bleak castles all my life, for varmints in the dirt!”
“Flap up you old sot and drink your stinking brandignac and conyoles, fit me an idea for chat, drive me not mad with your fawter toddle in a gloom . . . you with your pendant flesh combs and bawd spots–picking your powderies in a nair–flam off, frish frowse, I want peace to Scholarize my Snakes–let me Baroque be.”
By this time the old lady’s asleep… Wizard Faustus hurries in his wrinkly feet to a meet with Count Condu and the Cardinals in the Cave Room … his footsteps clang along an iron underhall–There stands a gnome with a pass key, a little glucky monster with web feet or some such —heavy rags wrapped around each foot and around the head almost blinding the eyes, a weird crew, their leader sported a Moro saber and had a thin little neck you’d expect from a shrunk head… The Wizard comes to the Parapet to contemplate.
He looks down into the Pit of Night.
He hears the Snake Sigh and Inch.
He moves his hand three times and backs, he waves a bow with his wrists, and walks down the long sand hill of a grisly part of the Castle with shit in the sand and old boards and moisture down the mossy ratty granite walls of an old dongeon–where gnome children masturbated and wrote obscenities with whitewash brushes like advertisements of Presidents in Mexico.
The Wizard, with a loll of his sensual tongue, dislodges a piece of meat from his front teeth, deep in folded-arm meditation at the head of the gutted bird.
He still bears the horrible marks of his strangulation and occupation by the Devil in the 13th century:—a high collar in the old Inquisition style he wears to partially conceal signs of ravages by Satan in the long ago–an ugly twist–
22
IN THAT ORIGINAL DREAM of the wrinkly tar corner and the doorway of g.j., lousy, Vinny, scotty and me (Dicky was never in this gang) (moved to Highlands) there stands across Riverside Street the great iron picket fence of Textile running around the entire grounds connected by brick posts with the year of a Class on it, fast losing posts to space and time, and great shrub trees rising clear around the football and track field part of it–huge footballs transpired in bronze autumns in the field, crowds gathered at the fence to peek through the shrubs, others in the grandstand planks of pipe shrill keen afternoons of ruddy football in fog-bloom pinks of fantastic dusk–
But at night the waving trees made a swish of black ghosts flaming on all sides in a fire of black arms and sinuosities in the gloom–million moving deeps of leaf night–It’s a fear to walk along it (on Riverside, no sidewalk, just leaves on ground at roadside) (pumpkins in the dew of Halloween hint, voting time in the empty classroom of November afternoon)- In that field … Textile let us play in it, one time a friend of mine masturbated in a bottle in the back field and strung it out with jerks of the jar into the air, I scaled a rock at the Textile windows, Joe Fortier slingshot twenty out of existence, tremendous ingratitude to the authorities of the school, at supper summer dusk we rushed out for games of scrub and sometimes double play right on the diamond . . . high grass waved in the redness, Lousy piped from third base, flung me the double play ball,