Reginald Clarke attributed this to their respect for his world-embracing intellect, which was at that moment engaged in an experiment. He was allowing his body to be powerfully compelled, by magnets he secreted in his long pants, through this tractable throng of syphilitics and ignoramuses that parted at his approach. "Just as a Circassian blade cleaves the water," he said, laughing contemptibly that none in this motley crowd could guess that Ronald Clarke himself was a Circassian, nor have the foggiest notion that his ancient race of Caucasians were noted for cleaving the water with their blades.
Walking a block or two after initiating his experiment, Reginald Clarke suddenly halted before a Jew's pawnshop. Arrayed in the window were silver dinner forks, ladles and other utensils now shining with arcs of electricity that leapt from the magnets in his long pants, in what Reginald Clarke called “mystical serpent eyes” because of its green aura and pomegranate scales. And as Reginald Clarke stood there the dazzling radiance before him was transformed in the prism of his mind into something great and very wonderful that might some day become poetry about kitchen utensils.Reginald Clarke’s attention was diverted just then by the notion of tiny girls dancing on the sidewalk to the smooth strains of “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man” by Donovan. As that song had been cycling through his brain for several hours, Reginald Clarke joined what seemed to be a loose circle of would-be spectators vainly searching for—without the aid of a microscope—those elusive pink-ribboned bits of femininity swaying airily to and fro in unison with the tune.
Reginald Clarke finally located the one semi-attractive dancing girl in the lot. She was really tiny, about the size of an olive, with olive-colored skin, being from a small country of olive-people who feed exclusively on olives, he deduced, just as the Circassians live entirely on rye bread. Furthermore, he noted, this girl’s race had the power to shift between energy states at will; he observed her being translated into music one instant, a slattern with disheveled hair the following instant, and a sunbeam shining on a dancing orange-leaf the next instant after that.
Reginald Clarke followed these Protean shifts with the hope that the girl might finally develop womanly curves and graceful limbs. But the music faded and “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” started to play, and the girl grew slower, almost clumsy. The look of interest in Clarke's eyes died, and it was then that he realized he had just peaked. He felt his whole form quiver, as if a tranquilizer had mysteriously entered into his blood.
Then Reginald Clarke continued his “stroll through reality,” as he termed it, with resurgent intensity, and the multiform undulations of the populace, swarming Broadway in all directions resembled that giant who was comprised of smaller giants who were in turn made up of motors, electrical wiring and gears, or Voltron. Reginald Clarke seemed to draw fresh vitality from such meaningless reflections, for not only was he a proud Circassian, but he was pretentious and self-indulgent as well, which was why he took his condescension for “keeping it real” as he perused the cheap vaudevilles on 14th Street. He looked at their Gaudy billboards with the too-self-conscious appreciation of a slumming poseur. He told himself that he loved how the signs were drenched in clamorous red, that he valued the tawdry attractions within for their repudiation of the bourgeois values Reginald Clarke espoused, in reality, no matter how much he repressed his middle class instincts.
Indeed, much to the surprise of the doorkeeper at a particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered in the lobby to be seen by as many people as possible, and finally bought a ticket that entitled him to enter this sordid wilderness of décolleté art.
The bulk of the audience were street-snipes, workingmen, bi-curious professional athletes, and television news anchors whose ruined youth thick layers of powder and paint, even in this artificial light, could not restore. Reginald Clarke, unconscious of the curiosity, surprise and envy that his breathing apparatus excited, seated himself at a table near the stage, ordering from the solicitous waiter only a cocktail and a program. The drink he left untouched, while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the announcement. When he had found what he sought, he lit a clove cigarette, paying no attention to the “No Smoking” signs, but studying the audience with cursory interest until the appearance of Betsy, Hyacinth Girl of the Caucasus.
When she began to sing, his mind wandered, not far, just to the other tables, but still astral-wandering, in the ancient Circassian tradition, as Betsy chanted crude limericks about sailors making sport with goats. The girl had a certain Laurie Anderson lilt that delighted the uncultured ear despite her otherwise unpleasant voice.
When, however, she came to the burden of the song, Clarke's manner changed suddenly. Laying down his clove cigarette, Reginald Clarke eagerly gazed at Betsy, Hyacinth Girl of the Caucasus. For, as she sang the most powerful line from “There Once Was a Man From Nantucket,” tearing blossoms from her hair, there crept into her voice a strangely poignant, pathetic little thrill, that redeemed the execrable faultiness of her singing, and brought the rude audience under her spell.
Reginald Clarke, too, was so captivated by that tremor, the infinite sadness of which suggested the plaint of cows lowing at night when lust preys on creatures marking their territory, he pulled his breathing apparatus from his face and gazed upon Betsy with his rapt attention.
The singer paused. Still those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew nervous. It was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the refrain. As she sang the final coda, an inscrutable smile curled on Reginald Clarke's lips. She noticed the man's relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her singing was hard and cracked: the tremor had gone from her voice.
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