Page:Levenson - Butterfly Man.djvu/109

Rh with this woman who has tried to destroy you. Since you cannot make a friend of God, make Man your friend. Seek and find happiness in yourself. Do as you choose to do—never again allow another person to guide you. In your own heart, you will hear a voice, listen to it—and obey.

The woman, Ken knew, was black as sin. She was unclean. She was conceived in slime. In slime she lived, into slime she would finally descend.

Underground she moves, her belly like the snake's, moving coldly on the fecund earth, giving birth to horrors unspeakable.

The woman, Ken believed, must be ignored. She must be regarded as a thing. A damned thing.

He could not speak to her. They danced and he held her away from him as if she were leprous. The maudlin crowds in Frank and Jack's no longer applauded. Anita, drinking more heavily than ever, did not notice the change.

Anita drank. Ken, icily sober, lived on sandwiches from the grill, and beer. He no longer danced his dance. His legs, like propellers, no longer flayed the smoke-laden air. With contempt he watched the passing show, the drinkers with their congested, bloated faces, the thrill-seekers with their shifting, blood-shot eyes.

He began not to see Anita. She did not live except as a sweating lump of dull flesh, a breath fetid with rank exhalations. If he could only flee …

He did not visit Father Refugio again. Much that the priest had said he did not comprehend. The peace and calmness of the church remained like a placid pool in the