Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [72]
“All your America,” says Sax, “is like a dense Balzacian hive in a jewel point.”
And suddenly, right there, for no forewarned reason, he reared up and seemed to explode, or up-burp like a bull about to throw five gallons of blood, “Bleu-heu-heu-ha-ha-ha” he erupts, hugely, “Mwee-hee-hee-ha-ha” he comes again from around the other side, sweeping me off my feet with fear–I jump two feet dodging the scythe of his laugh-Then I see his gigantic leer lowering as he laughs again– and utters his sepulchral sibilance—”Fnuf-fnuf-fnuf-fnaa,” he says, “this is the night of the destruction of the Snake. —The Wizard of Evil with his Nittlingen pain-gnomes, the faulty Decadent Dovists in their pillows and books of the dead, the bloodsucking unagrarian flap-wavers and aristocrats of the black sand, and all devoted monsters, spiders, insects, scorpions, gartersnakes, blacksnakes, blindbats, cockroaches and blue worms of the Snail–tonight the erupting head will sweep you with it–roses know herbs better than you–you’ll fan out in love-letters blown from an aeroplane forge in the center of my earth.”
I shivered to hear him, not knowing what he meant, nor capable of understanding. Indian file we stalked across a falling shadow in the street and jumped through yards, the park, yards, came and mingled in the ironpicket shrouds of Textile on Riverside–
“Behold them,” says Sax, “your fields, your dark, your night. Tonight we make the worms unite in one pot of destruction.”
I take my last look–there, in the corner door steps, the old wrinkly-dinkly tar corner where I’d oft been too, but was no more … stood G.J. surveying the street, twirling a stick, thin little boy in the early evenings of his doomed lifetime, his massive curly Greek hair flying up, his big searching almond white eyes looking out like the eyes of a Negro but with Greek fierce and mad ambitioned intensity–calling on the night for love and faith, getting no answer from the wall– And Scotty was sitting on a step, picking slowly at his Mr. Goodbar peanut by peanut–with a wry, faint smile; he’s weathered the crisis of the Flood, he’ll weather others, he’ll rise at bleak dawn in a thousand lifetimes and duck his head to walk to work, chastised by labor into huge humilities beneath the sun, big-fisted godly-silent Scotcho was never going to eat his own hands nor chaw his own soul to bits–letting pass a March Saturday night by the wry regard of his attention, storing up, just sitting there, letting the eagle of eternity fly his own nose. Vinny’s walking home, up Moody, across the street–carrying groceries–flooded out, they’re staying at Charlie’s sister’s on Gershom–twenty feet behind smiling laughing shrieking skinny Vinny comes Lou, with bags, solemn; then Normie, striding, smiling, carrying a box; then Charlie and Lucky, for once walking down the street together, smiling, in the soft breeze of the evening’s events they went downtown to buy some groceries, traveled it and did it on foot like a country family, an Indian family, a crazy family in a happy