Shillmaster Snek, reporting.
Of all unnatural things, if that word can be used in any context, there is none more unnatural than silence, there is none so terrifying; for silence means more than itself, it means also immobility; it is the symbol and signature of death, and from it no one knows what may come in an instant; for silence is not quietness, it is the enemy of quietness; against it your watch must climb the tower and stare in vain; against it your picket must be set, and he will thrust a lance to the sound of his own pulses; he will challenge the beating of his own heart, and hear his own harness threatening him at a distance.
"As we grow older and see the ends of stories as well as their beginnings, we realize that to the people who take part in them it is almost of greater importance that they should be stories, that they should form a recognizable pattern, than that they should be happy or tragic. The men and women who are withered by their fates, who go down to death reluctantly but without noticeable regret for life, are not those who have lost their mates prematurely or by perfidy, or who have lost battles or fallen from early promise in circumstances of public shame, but those who have been jilted or were the victims of impotent lovers, who have never been summoned to command or been given any opportunity for success or failure.
"Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured, lifted to the lips and tasted. If one's own existence has no form, if its events do not come handily to mind and disclose their significance, we feel about ourselves as if we were reading a bad book. We can all of us judge the truth of this, for hardly any of us manage to avoid some periods where the main theme of our lives is obscured by details, when we involve ourselves with persons who are insufficiently characterized; and it is possibly true not only of individuals, but of nations."
"If you want to regulate your life or judge history, you should at least know how God spends his day s. He has set aside a place, four cubits by four, and there he studies Talmud for the first three hours. From the fourth to the sevventh hour, God sits and judges the world, but since he sees the world is guilty, he rises from the seat of Judgement and goes to sit on the throne of Mercy. During the third part of the day he sits there and feeds all the creatures of the world from the rhinoceros to the flea. During the fourth part of the day God plays with the Leviathan."
A larcenous fireman - And they were all larcenous, I believe, Or most of them were: the year is 1900 and his mouth is as dry as the mouth of a patient to whom atropine has been administered - makes one at the burning of the last great cityblock patroonship on Manhattan's Fortress Fifth; and his heart is very zealous for the good, for the good and inconspicuous, and for whatever is subject to a quick exchange at the pawns on Canal Street. O, a fat wish, certainly.
And it burns inside him as the fats and membranes of a caul might burn, full of fry on a votive griddle.
But the Man of the House gets in the way with his "Save them." "Save my Little Ones." - This,
while his favorite horses scald: Matched bays, the pride of the avenue, they kick down their stable door, rise up, and dance on the hoses.
Hook and ladder: this building is only twelve years old.
And the fortune it was built to trumpet less than fifty.
Yet an Admiral had waltzed here and a Prince of the Blood. For fun! Pulitzer's flying squad
of photographers bob and weave through the smoke. Police lines burst with the yellow kids - all of them in wonderland. And the fireman, the fireman is in Hell.
Hot Hell.
His several fires spit and spasm.
For he can find nothing. Nothing at all.
Were there others then? Thieving Sergeants of police, and faster fireman? He is too late.
And he cries the fat tears of a furious child, the milk fat tears.
Only his are black and bloody. Ah, But here are the Little Ones in expensive French nightgowns.
They scream as rabbits are supposed to as their night gowns burn.
And the fireman damns their eyes and those in their portrait by John Singer Sargent
who boldly has pictured them against the long
blue silver dress of their mother, a beauty and a sportswoman.
"Bitch," says the fireman as the picture goes up like a tong house joss stick. "Bitch," he sobs, "where's mine I'd like to know?"
Then, the terror of an answered prayer. The miracle, if you must. For a fugitive flame reveals the hiding place of what? An apostle spoon. Two candlesticks and a silver
creamer. The forgotten horde of whom? Some backstairs dragonet, perhaps? An otherwise inept domestic, dismissed now for the drink and back in her cold water flat in Brooklyn? For this was way back when, when the rich were fat and the boxers were Irish, and there were servants, lots of them, and half those servants stole.
For fee, and fi, and foe and fum. And the fireman sings his triumph to the red ruin of the house around him.
He exults. He waltzes. And it is to be hoped that he picks up those pathetic Little Ones
before he lowers his head to crash through the leaded French window that gives onto Fifty First street.
SHILLS OATH
I am satan's shill. I believe nothing, I will say anything. I have no values, friends or family I will not sell into bondage forever for food and for feathers. Dollars will buy me. What can not spend I will burn in an ashtray or shove up my ass but I must have dollars. Give me specie. I am satan's shill. I demoralize myself. When I finish the blow I take five xanax footballs and pass out on rental furniture. Asleep, I dream I'm awake. I am satan's shill. My stridulations are filtered. My mockery, my despair, my anguish, like my coming and my going, pass ever unnoticed. I am satan's shill. One day I will vanish like the knot in a shoelace. I am satan's shill. A petty criminal, a peeping Tom, a canvas for others tattoos, a repeater, an NPC.