Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [83]
I saw distant moilings of activity of other kinds, and the light increased. The Wizard’s face was paling as he prayed in the big moment, arms aloft showing incredibly skinny wrists and little waxy stick hands trembling with ague.
I heard the word dawn, and there was a clamor, and a great crack appeared in the side of the bulging parapet. And a Roar overtook the scene, mountainous rocks began to fall from the roof of the Castle down in the Pit to hit the Snake. Doctor Sax braced himself with a suffering cry: “The rocks will enrage it! O Wizard, Idiot, Fool, King!” he was screaming.
“O Doctor Sax,” the Wizard was hallooing faintly from the other side of the Pit. “Poor innocent Sad, go crawling around don’t you with your little ideas of this and that and destiny, believe in dreams come true– Agonies of the mad!”
“O Wizard,” replied Sax–a greater, now agonized roar rose. “Wizard Wizard maybe so–but mindful I am … of the sleep of little infants … in their fleecy beds … and of their lamby thoughts–something so far from snakes —something so sweet, so downy—” And the Great Snake sent up screams. And steam hissed and billowed from the pit. “—Something so angelic–something something something!” Sax was screaming in the steam–I could see his mad red eyes, the glint of the vial in his hand.
Suddenly he spread his legs wide and opened his arms and yelled “God offers man in the palm of his hand dovelike seminal love, embowered.” There were confusions, the Dovist dungeons had been upheaved, Dovists were swarming around the parapet praying for Doves– In Sax they saw their mad liberator, their crazy hero–they heard his words. Joy! Sneers descended from the Wizard and his men. Everybody was hanging on to something now as the earth pulsed.
“What are the poor people of Lowell doing now!” I moaned—”They must be sounding the fire alarm from Lawrence clear to Nashua, they must be scared shitless,” I thought. “Oh God I never knew that a thing like that could happen to the world.” I leaned on a stone, the Pit yawned below, I looked down to face my horror, my tormentor, my mad-face demon mirror of myself.
And so the Castle of the World was Snaked.
Because then I began to look, I said to myself “This is a Snake” and when the consciousness of the fact that it was a snake came over me and I began to look at its two great lakes of eyes I found myself looking into the horror, into the void, I found myself looking into the Dark, I found myself looking into IT, I found myself compelled to fall. The Snake was coming for me!! And I began realizing that slowly like a distant landslide of an enormous mountain what I saw was the torpid malicious monstrous flick of its green tongue and Venom. Screeches rose on all sides. The Castle Rattled.
“Ah the Great Power of the Holy Sun,” called Sax, “destroy thy Palalakonuh with thy secret works”— And he offered up his vial to the Snake. I see the contraction of his fingers as he begins to squeeze. Suddenly he staggered–as if faint he swooned and drooped in his poor shroud … then the powders which immediately burst into a beautiful explosion of blue mist, huge!, flupped up a big blue conical flame and showered in particle-clouds into the luminous red pit. Soon the whole pit was boiling with a green rage. His powders were most potent, his pippiones had brought strong leaves on feeble stick bones. The Snake seemed to shudder and groan in his confining-pit, the world tumbled over– Sax disappeared from my sight in a big heave. My eyes flew to the stars in the ceiling of the Castle which was having its own night in broad daylight. I heartbroken saw the perfectly pure heaven softclouds sitting in their regular Sunday morning blue stands–early morning clouds, in Rosemont young Freddy Dube wasn’t up yet to go spend his day selling fruit and vegetables in the country, his sisters haven’t yet cleaned the crumbs from early-communion breakfast, the chicken was standing on the Funnies on the porch, the milk