Read Online Moloch: Or, This Gentile World by Henry Miller - Free Book Online Page A

of the day he was glued to the switchboard, calling up the hundred or more offices in the city, throwing out reserve messengers which he called “waybills” after an old custom, and raising hell in general with the clerks and managers for their tardiness in telephoning the absentee and vacancy reports. Dave always kept a worksheet before him, on which he practiced the art of calligraphy. These sheets formed a chronological register of the daily happenings in the messenger department. In the upper right-hand corner of the worksheet he ruled off a little box wherein he made a faithful report of the weather. The inclusion of this meteorological report was no mere idiosyncrasy of Dave’s. It was the grand alibi of the messenger department Dave preserved these sheets with the same fervor that a lama cherishes his prayer wheel.
    Another curious habit of Dave’s was his custom upon arriving in the morning of sharpening his lead pencils. No matter how many calls came in over the wire, Dave had to sharpen his pencils first. His contention was that if he were to postpone this important task the pencils would never be sharpened. And in Dave’s mind it was a matter of the utmost importance to inscribe his characters in a delicate, legible, ornate hand. That was his proud contribution to the messenger service, the record which would remain after he had gone and testify in golden symbols to his industry and thoroughness.
    But in every other respect Dave was a rogue, a scalawag. Almost as unprepossessing as Prigozi, though infinitely more humorous, his one ambition was to parade as a Don Juan. There was never any telling on whom his fancy might fall. In his messenger days he had been known to consort with charwomen, burlesque stars, midwives—any woman, in fact, who was sufficiently declassee and repulsive to attract him. On one occasion his appetite had led him right up to the Vice-President’s sanctuary. He had been on the trail of a big Senegambian whose bust bewildered him. Such temerity can only be faintly apprehended when one realizes with what trepidation Dave usually listened to the Vice-President’s voice.
    But of this, later. Now he was about to close shop, as he expressed it, and in accordance with time-honored tradition had brought over the “slate” for Moloch to glance at.
    “You know there’s a strike brewing, Dave?”
    “I should worry,” he replied, grinning from ear to ear.
    “But that means you won’t be able to take your wife to the hospital tomorrow morning, old man.”
    “Just as you say, Mister Moloch. She can have it done next week.” He spoke as though it were a plumbing job and not an ovarian operation.
    Prigozi’s professional ardor was aroused.
    “What’s ailing your missus, Dave?”
    Dave blushed, hemmed and hawed, looked confusedly at the two, and finally stuttered:
    ” You tell him, Mister Moloch. I can’t use those big words like you can. What did you call those tubes again?”
    “You mean the Fallopian tubes?” snapped Prigozi.
    “Yeah, that’s it. How do you spell that?”
    “What do you want to know that for? You’d think your old woman was going to a spelling match instead of a hospital.”
    “Aw, I know,” said Dave, grinning and blushing some more, “but I want to spring that word on Navarro.” He turned to Moloch. “You know how Navarro looks at you when you pull a jawbreaker on him?”
    The three of them laughed heartily. The operation was a success in advance....
    “You’d better be running along,” Moloch advised. He looked up at the clock with sly humor.
    “That’s right,” said Dave. “I’m working overtime.”
    He laughed uproariously at this feeble crack.
    “Look here, Dave,” said Prigozi, collaring him forcefully, and shaking him as though he were a dead rat, “you go straight home tonight, understand? No chippy-chasing in the subway or I’ll break your neck. That wife of yours needs attention. Having your ovaries removed is no joke.”
    Dave