The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [92]
Telephone wires clogged the air between the mansions and the street, connecting the rich to each other by means of this latest craze; they hardly had anything to say to each other when they were face-to-face, thought Doyle, why did they need so many telephones?
What an exhausting interior life the wealthy must lead, driven to these superhuman accomplishments by fitful longings for immortality; the thought of all that misguided passion filled Doyle with melancholy before he corrected himself: Who was he to say these titans of enterprise had it wrong? Two thousand years from now, with this great city fallen into dust, there might be little else left standing besides these sturdy secular temples for archaeologists to sift through, weaving together from their artifacts the life of a dead and distant culture. A hairbrush, an urn, a privately commissioned bust, these intensely personal possessions might one day find themselves behind museum glass, transformed into relics of worship. What if some fragment of a dream or, to put it more plainly, a few resilient molecules of its owner survived embedded in the matter of the object? That seemed to Doyle to be as close to immortality as any human could hope for; the body would fail, memories would fade, but we might live on for centuries in the form of a toothbrush or a hatpin.
After they turned west and reached the Hudson River, a ferry conveyed their coach-and-four to the palisades of New Jersey. The four men inside settled into the rhythms of a long carriage ride through the dead of night. No one but Jack knew where they were going, and he sat above them in the driver's seat, holding the reins lightly in his mangled fingers. As they rode, Presto entertained them with tales about the princes and maharanis of Gwalior and Rajputana; cursed jewels, palaces of ivory and gold, man-eating tigers, marauding elephants, and, of the most interest to Innes, the illicit mysteries of the harem: Did these girls really paint certain essential parts of themselves crimson? Indeed they did, confirmed Presto: Oiled, polished, and sheened, the houris lived a life devoted to the giving, and receiving, of pleasure. In each other's arms, as well as those of their master. Innes's mind spun like a pin-wheel in a stiff breeze: Had Presto actually visited any of these perfumed seraglios?
"But how different are these women, finally, from the well-kept wives of our Western high society?'' said Doyle, sparing Presto the indignity of confessing the obvious. "I don't mean all of them, but those who spend their lives maintaining their physical charms—facial massages, six-gallon shampoos— transforming themselves into a prize or accessory to decorate their wealthy husbands' arms."
"You can't keep up to fifty of 'em at a time, for starters," argued Innes.
"You'd be surprised," said Presto, with a salacious grin. "Provided money was no object."
"Putting the issue of multiples aside," said Doyle.
"I can think of one important distinction," said Stern. "In the West the sort of wife you're describing can leave the house if she wants to."
"Right, she's not a slave per se," said Doyle. "But what I'm getting at is, aren't they in a similar way slaves of the spirit? The wife here may leave the house as you suggest, but can she leave the situation? Fed up with her lot, can she run off and make a life of her own?"
"Why would she want to?" asked Innes.
"Theoretically speaking, old boy."
"She should be able to," said Presto. "And she certainly has legal recourse under Western law."
"But the reality is quite different: Western society is rigged to support free action on the part of the male and defended against the same rights being accorded the female. I believe it's something to do with unconscious