she aims for the door with sobbing arms, opens it to the rainy night and few dull lights of Lowell ’cross the basin–but Condu stands firm, severe, prim, unemotional, Nazi-like, removing a glove–draws breath with a slight poof of the lips and a sniff-up–rattles–
“My dear, unemotional as I allegedly may be I’m sure the antics of the gnome girls don’t rival yours when old Sugar Pudding comes home.”
“Why Count,” tinkles Odessa the slave girl (Contessa in a camp) “how you do manage to be vivacious before evening blood–Raoul’s only now mixing the Divers—” (Divers of Odds & Ends).
“Is he with his old Toff in the belfry, meaning of course Mrs. Wizard Nittlingen damn blast her thorny old frap.”
“I guess so—”
“Has my box arrived from Budapest?” queries the Count (a mile away Joe Plouffe makes the Riverside corner before a gust of rain).
“… bureaucratic difficulties, Count, have prevented any likelihood of your box arriving before the Twelve-month.”
“Pash!”—slapping his gloves—”I can see this is going to be another abortive mission to find a fart for old fart face–scrawny-necked individual–who else is here?”
“Blook. Splaf his assistant goon loon. Mrawf the gone duck with his crab head—”
“And?”
“The Cardinal of Acre … has come to offer his saraband brooch to the skin of the Snake–if he can have a piece of it cut… for his brooch …”
“Tell you,” smirks the Vamp Count, “they’ll be roody well surprised when the peasantry gets a … sauce of that snake.”
“You think it will live?”
“Who’s going to loll it to revive it?”
“Who’ll want to kill it to survive?”
“The Parisacs and Priests–find them something they have to contend with face to face with the possibility of horror and bloodshed and they’ll be satisfied with wooden crosses and go home.”
“But old Wizard wants to live.”
“In that last form he took I wouldn’t bother—”
“Who is Doctor Sax?”
“They told me in Budapest he’s just a crazy old fool. No harm will come from him.”
“Is he here?”
“Is–presumably.”
‘Well–and did you have a good journey?” (moderate) “Of course for now I have a box of good American earth for you to sleep in–Espiritu dug it up for you–at a fee– it’ll be charged upstairs–and the B equivalent (because he’ll never see the money so the only thing he wants is blood) you can leave with me when you get some, and I’ll pay him–he’s been bitching and bitching—”
“I have some B right now.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“A young girl in Boston when I got off the ship at dusk, around 7, snow swirls on Milk Street, but then the rain started, all Boston was slushy, I pushed her in an alley and got her just below the ear lobe and sucked up a good pint half of which I saved in my gold jar for nightcap at dawn.”
“Lucky boy–I found myself a sweet sixteen-year-old boy in his mother’s window, counting birds at aftersupper blue dusk (the sun just sank in westerly) and I caught him right by the Adam’s apple and ate up half his blood he was so sweet–last week it was a—”
“Enough, Contessa, you’ve convinced me I did excruciatingly the right thing coming here– The Convention won’t last long–the Castle will undoubtedly rattle-but (yawn) I want to move on–unless of course the Snake does pop up in which case I’ll certainly stay to see the horrible spectacle with my own eyes–from a good distance in the air-”
“It’ll have to happen at night then, dear Count.”
“If you see Mater tell her I’ll come in to see her in the morning.”
“She’s busy at cards with Old Hatchet Craw in the Blue Belfry–entertaining Flamboy the Ambassador so large … he just got in from Cravistaw where he stole a polo pony and had it flown to the Maharajah of Larkspur, who sent congratulations– They found a new Dove in the Bengali mountains you know. Supposed to be the Spirit of Gandhi.”
This ‘dove’ business has gone out of hand,” frowned the Count. “Dovists … serious? … are they? I like my religion practical–blood is good, blood is life, they can act up with their ashes and urns and oily incense … bloodless theosophists of the moonlight–excalibur dull bottards in a frantic hinch, cock-waddlers on pones and pothosts, rattle-bead bonehead splentiginous bollyongs, cast-offs, bah, flap-slaves and blackbearded bungy doodle frummers of lug and lard. Fat. Dry. Dull. Dead. Spew!—” he spat— “But I’ll do anything the High Command wants, of course.—Have we anything striking for my box design?”
“Oh,” gushed the night eyed Contessa dripping an eave from her shoulder s dust, “a fabulous green jade monstrosity of a buckle or belch or insignia of some kind held firmly, well welded, but the main box a gorgeous 12th-century masterpiece, I believe one of Della Quercia’s last—”
“Della Quercia!—Ah!”—the Count danced, kiss-a-finger, “let it not be said”—he danced with himself around the decaying foyer all dripping with dust and here and there a bat watching, with hanging African vines of cobwebs in the great center of the hall—”that the Count Condu goes to his well-deserved rest in the fresh and dewy morn (after night times of not ill-considered debauch), goes to his—”
“—quiet spew—”
“—without ostentation, without charm and dignity.”
“It’s all a matter of taste.”
“And money, my dear, money in the blood bank.”
15
THE DOOR OF THE GREAT CASTLE is closed on the night. Only supernatural eyes now can see the figure in the rainy capes paddling across the river (reconnoitering those blown shrouds of fogs,—so sincere). The leaves of the shrubs and trees in the yard of the Castle glint in the rain. The leaves of Pawtucketville glint in the rain at night–the iron picket fences of Textile, the posts of Moody, all glint–the thickets of Merrimac, pebbly shores, trees and bushes in my wet and fragrant sandbanks glint in the rainy night–a maniacal laugh rises from the marshes, Doctor Sax comes striding with his stick, blowing snot out of his nose, casting gleeful crazy glances at frogs in mud puddles … old Doctor Sax here he comes. Rain glints on his nose as well as on the black slouch hat.
He’s made his investigations for tonight–somewhere in the woods of Dracut he lifts his door out of the earth and goes in to sleep … for a moment we see red fires of forges glowing to the pine tops–a rank, rich, mud-raw wind blows across the moon– Clouds follow rain and race the fevered Dame in her moony rush, she comes meditating hysterical thoughts in the thin air–then
