Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [49]
“Let’s be gay!” sang Emilia St. Claire. “I want you all to be frightfully mad! I feel so the need for something different!”
They all proceeded to be gay, mad, different. The interpretative dancer rushed upstairs to don her Thousand-and-One Nights dancing regalia. Sergei’s beautiful hands, at the keyboard, drew forth the enchantment of a Zaggus suite. An evil Gidean in bored tones described his recent experience with the Monster of the Congo and an angelic Damascan waif in Sadi-bel-Abi: with razors and ropes. Polly insulted the young Boston College student: “Really, do you study engineering? I mean really?”
“Yes!” smiled the B.C. lad (while Roger beamed). “I’m studying for a fellowship at M.I.T. I brought some of my calculus homework up here to db a little work … ha! ha! ha! … l hope l can find time to study. Do you go to school?”
“And do you also study Aquinas? I mean, really really?”
“Sure! Ha ha!”
Polly turned away.
“Ha ha!” cried the B.C. student, his voice breaking on the last “ha.” Roger turned on Polly and hissed very much like an adder:
“You lascivious bitch!”
“Oh really Roger don’t hurl your effeminate fury at me,” complained Polly wearily.
Emilia St. Claire laughed gayly.
“You Bostonians,” she whispered raptly. “You impossible, wonderful people.”
The interpretative dancer entered the room and began to sway her nude hips while little bells tinkled in her hands. She danced, she danced! Soon, sweat was pouring from her flesh like lust. They all watched intently. A foul odor filled the room; smoke, liquers, lust, perfumes, incense from the jade Buddhas. Boaz the butler peered from behind a curtain and watched. There was no sound except the little tinkling bells, the sandaled feet, and the heavy breathing.
The East! the East! they thought. Wherefore? Tinkle, tinkle.
But outside, a mad moon peered from time to time through the ripping clouds. The wind moaned, the spruces creaked, all things were in their dark vestment. A figure approached along the drive. It crossed the lawn and neared the window. It peered inside.
Transcendenta! Transcendenta!
We shall dance a mad cadenzal
Polly roamed towards the window with a Fatima held tenderly between white, frail fingers. She said to Joyce: “My dear, when are you going to introduce that ‘Interesting’ friend of yours?”
“Oh Polly,” sang Joyce, her dark eyes glittering, “you’ll be simply fascinated. He has such poise!”
“What does he do?”—behind Polly’s words the room gurgled with conversation, lilted with little laughter; glasses tinkled, the piano tinkled, voices tinkled.
“Oh, he does nothing,” said Joyce airily, “he just does nothing.”
“But does he really?” intoned Polly indolently, and she walked to the window slowly; the eyes of the men, from their chairs, couches, standing near the fireplace, near the punch bowl, followed the slow coil of her lavish body, the full flesh that seemed to press for release from the tight velvet gown, they watched her creamy back with its sensual cleft down towards a round bursting hind (like that of a great cow abloom from summers of heavy fodder); they took note of the shoulders like two gleaming ivories, of the breastbone like the plains of snow before the mount; they watched. Their eyes gleamed. Polly’s limbs rolled lazily. She stopped at the window to gaze out at the wild night.
She screamed!
He he he he! He he he he hel She screams! She screams!
Doctor Sax was at the window. His eyes were emerald green, and they flashed at the sight of her. They lit with delight at her scream. When she fainted to the floor, Doctor Sax hurled his cape around his shoulder and glided swiftly to the front entrance. He wore a large slouch hat the very color of the night. In an instant he was ringing furiously at the door, rapping the oak panels with his knotty cane.