BABEL by the Same Author: the MASK the WALL B a B E E John Cournos
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BABEL By the same author: THE MASK THE WALL B A B E E John Cournos & Ine, BONI AND LlVERIGHT PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Copyright, 19811, by BOXI AWD LlVEHIGHT, INC. FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA First printing, September, 1922 Second printing, October, 1922 CONTENTS BOOK I: A MEDLEY I. A MEDLEY Gombarov Wakes in an Old World . 13 19 Universal Speech of Money ... 24 Universal Speech of Art .... 35 Universal Speech of Inanimate Objects 37 Universal Speech of Love .... 67 On Sponging for Art's Sake .... 71 Between a Sleep and a Sleep .... "Lon-n-n don-n-n-n !" .... 74 76 Universal Speech of Hotel Attendants Universal Speech of International Politics 77 Universal Speech of Labour ... 78 BOOK II: PUBLICANS, SINNERS, SAINTS, ARTISTS, PHILOSOPHERS, OUTCASTS H. VARIATIONS ON A SINGLE THEME 83 Joy on a 'Bus 90 Joy on Foot Joy of Bagpipes 96 Joy of Obsession 99 Joy in a Cup of Tea 7 CONTENTS Joy of Winding Streets .... 100 A Joy Refused ....... 103 Joy of Joys ........ 105 III. THE SOUL OF LONDON Elephant and Castle ...... 106 Marble Arch ........ 116 Hampstead Heath ...... 125 Soho .......... 133 IV. LETTERS, STRANGE MEETINGS, GHOSTS Enter Postman ....... 153 Enter Acquaintance ...... 162 Enter Friend ....... 164 Enter Brother ...... .177 V. BABEL'S GREAT MEN Breaker of Ikons ...... 195 Maker of Masks ....... 204 Genius as Merchant ...... 214 Merchant as Genius ...... 218 Back-to-Nature Advocate .... 222 Brain in the Fog ....... 225 Toad-in-the-Hole ....... 232 VI. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Ghost-Seeker ...... , . 236 A Pioneer ........ 248 The Intuitionists . ...... 251 Demigods in Exile ...... 256 League Against Age ...... 259 Kings Without Kingdoms .... 263 CONTENTS CHAPTER VII. WITCHES' CAULDRON In Quest of Knowledge 266 A Woman's Way 268 Fog 272 Flames 279 VIII. ACCEPTED BY THE REJECTED Reflections in Piccadilly 288 Molly 291 Anita 296 Kathleen 299 Judith 304 IX. LIFE'S CHESSBOARD : A YEAR'S MOVES The Queen Still There 326 A Respite from the Chessboard . 330 Miserable Pawn, Off the Board ! . .334 A Move to Hampstead 337 Bishop Off the Board! 340 After the Bishop the Knight ! . .341 Castle Brought Into Play .... 343 An Audacious Move 352 Real King, or Alter Ego? .... 354 BOOK in: BRAIN-STORM X. BRAIN-STORM Quest of the Golden Fleece .... 359 End of the Quest 364 Jazz Drinks, Jazz Music, Jazz Dancing 370 New Lamps for Old! 374 Rift Within the Lute 377 City of Brotherly Love Again . 380 9 CONTENTS Thick, and Faster! 383 Brain Jazz! 385 Woman's Privilege 390 "It Is You, Oh Harlot City!" ... 395 BOOK IV : BEFORE THE FALL XI. LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS "Damn Braces, Bless Relaxes" . 401 The Whirlpool 409 Fate at Her Old Tricks 415 11. IT HAD TO BE The Reckoning 422 "On to Berlin!" , , 427 10 BOOK I A MEDLEY To Olivia Shakespear BABEL CHAPTER I: A MEDLEY "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech." GENESIS, xi: i. GOMBAROV WAKES IN AN OLD WORLD ONCE more Gombarov dreamt the old, ever recurring corridor dream, which had come to him at irregular intervals since childhood, always in a new variation. There was no starting point, and he did not know how, when, and where he had gotten into a peculiar contrivance, which, if it resembled anything, resembled the device known as the "dumb-waiter." But he undoubtedly felt the terrifying sensa- tion of going down, down, down, with incredible and ever in- creasing speed, until he reached the deep, nethermost cellar, at the very foundations of what must have been an immensely tall building. The whole house for house it surely was appeared alive with ancient memories and portents of the future. It was heaving with a restlessness as of gestating, shut-in thoughts trying to break their cells, and it groaned with inexplicable, strange noises, which aroused intense apprehension in the heart of the visitor who groped his way through a labyrinth of dimly-lit corridors and passed by innumerable closed doors, each seeming to hide an alluring, ugly mystery. Every instant he expected a door or doors to open, and a Thing or Things to pounce upon him. At his side there glided rather than walked 13 BABEL as noiseless a grey presence, a vague yet familiar human shape, and intense as a shadow he had once known intimately and as it with hatred, and had forgotten. Fear possessed him, the an can possess only in dreams: there was about place atmosphere of something terrible impending which heavily oppressed him, while, with great effort, he continued his way through the unending maze of narrow, almost airless passages, holding in one hand a truncheon, in the other his familiar gold watch, which, oddly enough, had ceased exercising its customary function, but, even as he walked, gave out in a gramophonic voice a loud, screechy, disconcerting tune, a peculiarly modern, raucous medley made up of threads and snatches of songs he had heard sung at one time or another by white men blackened to resemble negroes, to the accom- paniment of banjo-strumming and clog-hopping. The dream tune woke him. Terrified and perspiring, he peered over the edge of his bed-cover and wondered where he was. The room was alive with the slow movement of the particles of the early grey light, and Gombarov's half-open eyes strayed vaguely and reluctantly, with no volition of their own, but wholly responsive to the hypnotic persuasions of dawn. There was in them the bewilderment of an awakening from a then a strained trance, effort to identify his position. His glance, grown steady at last, fell on the engravings on the wall. These, however, were sufficiently cosmopolitan to reveal no clue to his whereabouts. With he studied the diligent scrutiny large picture directly him on facing the dingy red wall. It was a familiar example of his what, through association with artists, he had learnt to know as a of bad a masterpiece art, favourite, needless to say, with that great public which, almost single-voiced, echoed the familiar "I not sentiment, may know good art, but I know 14 A MEDLEY what I like"; a sentiment which, if artistic wiseacres are to be believed, is peculiar to our age, a by-product of democratic institutions. The picture showed a wooded spot; in the fore- ground two modish females of the furbelow and bustle period stood facing one another; stripped to the waist, and poised in an attitude of duel combatants, they flourished long foils. The presence in the background of two equally modish seconds testified to the affair being properly serious, altogether commc il jaut. The breasts of the facing figure seductively confronted the spectator; the other figure flaunted its hardly less alluring back; the fluffy things of both hung down from the waist, not unlike the skins of half-shorn lambs; in short, it was a produc- tion unerringly calculated to tickle the fancy of a susceptible bourgeois world, which surely knew its own mind. As the wakened sleeper's eyes strayed leftward, they encountered another picture, which answered the secret aspiration in human beings to view forbidden fruit: it showed a young naked girl standing ankle-deep in the sea, shivering a little, perhaps con- veniently, to give her cause to stoop in a shy manner, her hands on her knees, thus achieving the effect of a virgin suddenly sighting a Peeping Tom and piquantly striving to hide what strange eyes should not see. He had seen the same pictures and furniture, for that matter at the American hotels and at his own home in Phila- delphia; so it was hardly astonishing that on waking, his first mood should have been one sharply conscious of his position nearly three months ago, when he was eking out a livelihood for himself and the large irresponsible family largely of his stepfather's begetting by selling himself, soul and entrails, to that popular organ of news and public opinion, the New World. 15 BABEL "Blast it! It must be nearly time to go to work," he mut- tered, and thought he heard his mother's footsteps. His eyes strayed to the inscriptions under the pictures: L'Affaire d'Honneur and L'Aube de Septembre. That was strange: the pictures at home were inscribed in English. "What a funny mistake!" he laughed, as he grasped the true state of affairs: that he was no longer in Philadelphia, that he had not been there for nearly three months. He was in Paris, having come by the way of Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan, now realised visions of beauty, which had once seemed impossible. What strange things dreams were, thus to destroy all sense of time and space! He felt relieved at the thought that he need not go, could not go if he had desired, to his accustomed place at the New World, where he had misspent fifteen years, the best of his life. There was comfort for him in the thought of there being three thousand miles between himself and the place he had come to regard as his prison. Yet now, as often before, a panic, a kind of blind terror, seized him. Never before had he been away from home for so long. He had been too near a nervous breakdown to experience exultation at the prospect of facing infinite horizons, endlessly stretching vistas of a large world. he Surely had but lately left a prison, had been there too to long become quickly accustomed to the dazzling light of freedom. He still felt the clank of irons, the crushing weight of his these chains; were yet with him, no longer at his ankles, but in his heart.