When God Laughs | Page 4

His eyes, under massively
arched brows, were wide apart and black with the blackness that is
barbaric, while before them was perpetually falling down a great black
mop of hair through which he gazed like a roguish satyr from a thicket.

He invariably wore a soft flannel shirt under his velvet-corduroy jacket,
and his necktie was red. This latter stood for the red flag (he had once
lived with the socialists of Paris), and it symbolized the blood and
brotherhood of man. Also, he had never been known to wear anything
on his head save a leather-banded sombrero. It was even rumoured that
he had been born with this particular piece of headgear. And in my
experience it was provocative of nothing short of sheer delight to see
that Mexican sombrero hailing a cab in Piccadilly or storm-tossed in
the crush for the New York Elevated.
As I have said, Carquinez was made quick by wine--"as the clay was
made quick when God breathed the breath of life into it," was his way
of saying it. I confess that he was blasphemously intimate with God;
and I must add that there was no blasphemy in him. He was at all times
honest, and, because he was compounded of paradoxes, greatly
misunderstood by those who did not know him. He could be as
elementally raw at times as a screaming savage; and at other times as
delicate as a maid, as subtle as a Spaniard. And--well, was he not Aztec?
Inca? Spaniard?
And now I must ask pardon for the space I have given him. (He is my
friend, and I love him.) The house was shaking to the storm, as he drew
closer to the fire and laughed at it through his wine. He looked at me,
and by the added lustre of his eye, and by the alertness of it, I knew that
at last he was pitched in his proper key.
"And so you think you've won out against the gods?" he demanded.
"Why the gods?"
"Whose will but theirs has put satiety upon man?" he cried.
"And whence the will in me to escape satiety?" I asked triumphantly.
"Again the gods," he laughed. "It is their game we play. They deal and
shuffle all the cards . . . and take the stakes. Think not that you have
escaped by fleeing from the mad cities. You with your vine-clad hills,
your sunsets and your sunrises, your homely fare and simple round of

living!
"I've watched you ever since I came. You have not won. You have
surrendered. You have made terms with the enemy. You have made
confession that you are tired. You have flown the white flag of fatigue.
You have nailed up a notice to the effect that life is ebbing down in you.
You have run away from life. You have played a trick, shabby trick.
You have balked at the game. You refuse to play. You have thrown
your cards under the table and run away to hide, here amongst your
hills."
He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes, and scarcely
interrupted to roll a long, brown, Mexican cigarette.
"But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man have
tried it . . . and lost. The gods know how to deal with such as you. To
pursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in your
wisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. You have elected surcease.
Very well. You will become sated with surcease. You say you have
escaped satiety! You have merely bartered it for senility. And senility is
another name for satiety. It is satiety's masquerade. Bah!"
"But look at me!" I cried.
Carquinez was ever a demon for haling ones soul out and making rags
and tatters of it.
He looked me witheringly up and down.
"You see no signs," I challenged.
"Decay is insidious," he retorted. "You are rotten ripe."
I laughed and forgave him for his very deviltry. But he refused to be
forgiven.
"Do I not know?" he asked. "The gods always win. I have watched men
play for years what seemed a winning game. In the end they lost."

"Don't you ever make mistakes?" I asked.
He blew many meditative rings of smoke before replying.
"Yes, I was nearly fooled, once. Let me tell you. There was Marvin
Fiske. You remember him? And his Dantesque face and poet's soul,
singing his chant of the flesh, the very priest of Love? And there was
Ethel Baird, whom also you must remember."
"A warm saint," I said.
"That is she! Holy as Love, and sweeter! Just a woman, made for love;
and yet--how shall I say?--drenched through with holiness as your own
air here is