Читать книгу Dr. Sax - Jack Kerouac - Страница 20

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 the trapdoor is closed on the secrets of Doctor Sax, he rumbles below.

He remotes below in his own huge fantasies about the end of the world. “The end of the world,” he says, “is Coming …” He writes it on the walls of his underground house. “Ah me Marva,” he sighs… They put Marva in a madhouse, Doctor Sax is a widower … a bachelor … a crazy Lord of all the mud he surveys. He tramped the reeds of March midnight in the fields of Dracut, leering at the Moon as she raced the angry marl clouds (that blow from the mouth of the Merrimac River, Marblehead, Nor’West) —he was a big fool forever looking for the golden perfect solution, he went around having himself a ball searching mysterious humps of earth around the world for a reason so fantastic–for the boiling point of evil (which, in his—, was a volcanic thing … like a boil)—in South America, in North America, Doctor Sax had labored to find the enigma of the New World–the snake of evil whose home is in the deeps of Ecuador and the Amazonian jungle— where he lived a considerable time searching for the perfect dove … a white jungle variety as delicate as a little white bat, an Albino bat really, but a dove with a snaky beak, and habitating close to Snake Head… Doctor Sax deduced from this perfect Dove, which flew to Tibet for him at will (returning with a brace of herbs strapped to its leg by the Hero Monks of the World North) (H.M.W.N., a Post-Fellaheen organization later acknowledged by the Pope as barbaric) (and by his scholars as primitive) … deduced that the Snake had part of its body in the jungle … Came grooking from the Snow North mountains Doctor Sax, educated in a panel of ice and a panel of snow, taught by Fires, in the strangest Monastery in the World, where Sax Saw the Snake

and the Snake saw Sax-

He came hobbling down from the mountain with a broken leg, a cane, a pack, wounds, a beard, red eyes, yellow teeth, but just like an old Montana hobo in the long blue sky streets of Waco–passing thru. And in fact when Doctor Sax did get back to Butte, where he’s really from, he settled back to longnight poker games with Old Bull Balloon the wildest gambler in town … (some say, W.C. Fields’ ghost returned he’s so much like him, twin to him, unbelievably except for the—) Sax & Bull got into (of course Sax had a Butte name) —into a tremendous game of pool watched by one hundred Butteans in the dark beyond the table lamps and its bright, central green. SAX (won the break, breaks) (Crash) (the balls spin all over)

SMILEY BULL BALLOON (out of the mouth like a cigar and a yellow tooth): Say Raymond-O, don’t you think this romance has gone far enough?

SAX: Why do you say that Pops? (Neatly rubbing chalk to cue as 8-ball plunks into corner pocket in the mill.) Anything you say Pops.

BULL: Why (bending over the table to take a shot as Sax protests and everybody roars) m’boy it sometimes occurs to me, not that I haven’t been to see the doctor lately (grunting to take a shot with cue)—the perfect disposition for your well-known little ten dollar ass is over by the table benches there with the Pepsi-Cola box and farmitures, whilst I becalm myself in a dull weed (puffing cee-gar) and aim this rutabaga stick at the proper ball–white—for old yellow number one–

SAX: But I sank the 8-ball!—you can’t shoot now!

OLD BULL: Son (patting the flask of Old Granddad in his backpocket with no deprecatory gesture) the law of averages, or the law of supply and demand, says the 8-ball was a goddamn Albino 8-bawl (removing it from pocket and spotting it and lining up white cueball with a flick of his forefinger to a speck on the green beside it, simultaneously letting out a loud fart heard by everybody in the poolhall and some at the bar, precipitating various reactions of disgust and wild cheer, as the Proprietor, Joe Boss, throws a wadded paper at Old Bull Balloon’s ass, and Old Bull, position established, whips out a bottle to the light (said flask) and addresses it a short speech before taking a shot–to the effect that alcohol has too much gasoline in it but by God the old Hampshire car can go! promptly thereafter re-pocketing it and bending, neatly and briskly, with amazing sudden agility, neat and dextrous, fingertip control of his cue-stick, good balance, stance, the forefingers all arranged on the table to hold the cue just so high, just right, pow, the old man pots the yellow one-ball into the slot, plock, and everybody settles down from the humor to see a good game of rotation between two good players–and though the laffs and yaks continue into the night, Old Bull Balloon and Doctor Sax never rest, you can’t die without heroes to look after).

This was the Butte background of Doctor Sax–in Butte Raymond the miner–a miner indeed!—he searched the mine and ore-source of the Great World Snake.

He looked all over for herbs that he knew someday he would perfect into an alchemic-almost poison art that could cast out a certain hypnotic and telepathic light that would make the Snake drop dead … a terrible weapon for some old hateful bitch, people would be dropping dead all over the streets… Sax figures to blow his powder poof! for the Snake–the Snake ’ll see the light–Sax will wish it dead, the Snake will die from just seeing the telepathic light … the only way to transmit messages to a Snake, where it will understand what you “really” mean … beware, Doctor Sax. But no,—he himself screams “Palalakonuh beware!” in his noonday fits in the woods with his afterdinner peps darting his black slouchcape like ink in the sun, diving under his trapdoor like a fiend … “Palala-konuh beware!” is written on his wall. In the afternoon he naps … Palalakonuh is merely the Aztec or Toltec name (or possibly Chihuahuan in origin) for the World Sun Snake of the ancient Indians of North America (who probably trekked from Tibet before they knew they had Tibetan backgrounds or North American foregrounds spreading huge in the World Around) (Doctor Sax had cried “Oh Northern Heroes Trekking from Mongolian Glooms & Bare Korean Thumbs to the Mango Paradises of the New World South, what bleak mornings did you see over the stone humps of Sierra Nueva Tierra as you bowled in a heavy wind with posts, strapped and gear to the night camp to the clanking Prokofiev music of Indian Antiquity in the Howling Void!”)

Sax worked on his herbs and powders for a lifetime. He couldn’t rush around like The Shadow with a .45 automatic battling the forces of evil, the evil that Doctor Sax had to battle required herbs and nerves … moral nerves, he had to recognize good and evil and intelligence.

When I was a little boy the only occasion I happened to make a connection between Doctor Sax and a river (therefore establishing his identity) was when The Shadow in one of his Lamont Cranston masterpieces published by Street & Smith visited the shores of the Mississippi and blew up a personal rubber boat of his own which however was not perfected like the new one concealed in his hat, he’d bought it in St. Louis during the day with one of his agents and it made a bulky package under his arm as they cabbed for the evening scene along the water glancing anxiously at their watches for when to turn into Shadows– I was amazed that The Shadow should travel so much, he had such an easy time potting racketeers in New York Chinatown Waterfront with his blue .45 (glint) —(roar of The Shadow’s Speech in Lead)—(toppling forms of tight coat Chinese gangsters) (falling Tong Wars from the Gong) (The Shadow disappears through Fu Manchu’s house and comes out in back of Boston Blackie, whaling with his .45 at the gawkers on the pier, mowing em down, as Popeye comes in a motor launch to carry them away to Humphrey Bogart) (Doctor Sax bangs his knotty cane on the door of an Isadora Duncan-type party in the Castle in the Twenties when the batty lady owned it, when they see who’s at the door all greenfaced and leering and blazing-maniac-eyed they scream and faint, his hollow laugh rises to the maddened moon as she screams across those shredded croos in the hue up-night Bending–to the rattle of a million croaks like lizards in a–the toadies—) whoo! Doctor Sax was like The Shadow when I was young, I saw him leap over the last bush on the sandbank one night, cape a-flying, I just missed really seeing his feet or body, he was gone–he was agile then … it was the night we tried to trap the Moon Man (Gene Plouffe disguised and trying to terrify neighborhood) in a sand pit, with twigs, paper, sand, at one point Gene was treed and almost stoned, he escaped, he flew like a bat in every direction, he was 16, we were 11, he could really fly and was really mysterious and scary, but when he vanished one way and we ran under the lamp a bit so I got a little light blinded I saw and knew Gene the Moon Man over in those trees but on the other and upper bank, by shrubs, stood a tall shadowy figure in a cape, stately, then it turned and leaped out of sight,— that was no Gene Plouffe–that was Doctor Sax. I didn’t know his name then. He didn’t frighten me, either. I sensed he was my friend … my old, old friend … my ghost, personal angel, private shadow, secret lover.