The Remarkable Case Of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Eyes

The Remarkable Case Of

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Eyes

by

Dr. Anton Polarion

Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest…in order that the creations of our mind should be a blessing and not a curse for mankind.

--Albert Einstein

 

In 1953 a sci-fi novel was published by Arthur C. Clarke which he entitled ‘Childhood’s End.’  I read it only a couple years ago and while I don’t believe I got his point the story has haunted my imagination since then.  In the novel he depicts a situation in which the first phase of evolution has flowered, and a second phase is about to begin out of the blown flower or the seed of the first.

Just after the end of WWII Clarke may well have believed than an old order of evolution had matured and a new one was beginning.  His symbolism notwithstanding it is clear the evolution was not beginning a new phase, unless he knew something he wasn’t telling, but it is possible to view the post-war period as a culminating point in the historical continuum.

Writers are frequently more sensitive to such shifts than other people.  Assuming that the historical continuum had at least transited its first phase, as I do, and was in fact beginning a new phase, which I only postulate, then it is possible to review the historical evolution of mankind and its various sub-special components as completed units.  I intend to place Edgar Rice Burroughs in his place in that historical continuum.

Now let us by a feat of Wells/Einsteinian legerdemain roll the paper into a cylinder and step across the seam into that earlier phase of the historical continuum.

For tens of thousands of years the flow of the historical continuum appeared to be nearly as even and uninterrupted as the flow of the mighty Congo from the immense distance of Stanley Falls to the Stanley Pool.

Change there was but so slow as to cause barely a ripple until the accumulated changes resulted in the disruption of human consciousness that occurred in the Victorian Period.

Since then the historical continuum has been as turbulent as the series of rapids on the Congo below Stanley Pool.

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

Then along that riverbank

A thousand miles

Tattooed cannibals danced in file.

--Vachel Lindsay,  The Congo

The French Revolution was important but that was mainly a political transition from the late feudal to the early modern.  What we’re really concerned with is the challenge it gave to the psychology of man, that time when the Congo and the Jungle became a symbol of Man’s conscious and unconscious mind and his conscious mind cut through the darkness like a golden track.  To put a convenient date on the psychological transition let’s put it at 1859  when Darwin’s

Origin of Species’ was published; nothing challenged the ancient mentality of Mankind more.  It was then that the Congo crept North of the Equator to flow through the Euroamerican mind.

Darwin’s theories rent the mind of most men in two.  Some like Edgar Rice Burroughs understood instantly but most resisted for decades while a hundred fifty years later the howl of disbelief can still be heard.  The Semitic vision of the origin of man and the world as portrayed in Genesis became impossible for any reflective Westerner to believe.  The hold of the ancient Semitic system of belief was so strong that exoteric scholars could not express their evolutionary views openly for fear of losing their jobs while having their lives ruined in what might risibly be termed ‘premature McCarthyism.’

Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song

And a thigh bone beating on a tin-pan gong.

--Vachel Lindsay -The Congo

Nevertheless the brief period from 1859 to 1914 was one of the most exciting and productive periods of history.   The past had been or was being made intelligible to Western Man’s inquiring mind.  As unpleasant as the fact may be to some people, modern understanding is solely the product of the mind of Western Man or Homo Sapiens III.  Neither the African of HIS nor the sterile Semites nor the various sterile Mongolid races contributed one iota of understanding in this period, very little since and that only under the influence of the West.

While the Semitic Freud was delving into personal psychology his great rival, CG Jung, was exploring the development of human consciousness  to open a psychological understanding of the mind of mankind in which the individual might be included and explained.  In other words, he was placing the individual in the historical continuum.  An esotericist of some note, it is to Jung and the school he founded that we are indebted for our understanding of all the phases of consciousness, their development and evolution.

At the same time that our increasing awareness allowed us to see clearly into the past for the first time, the pace of change was becoming so rapid that it was possible to project current trends into the near future.  In conjunction with the rapid increase in scientific discoveries a futuristic or science fiction became possible.

In the popular mind the foundations for futuristic fiction were laid by the vastly underrated H.G. Wells.

Understanding the past, projections into the future and tremendous technological achievement, lent this period such great self-confidence that it was thought that anything was possible to the mind of man.  The attitude was abruptly brought to an end in 1912; not by the First World War but rather by the unthinkable fact that Man’s mind had erred in thinking that it could build an unsinkable ship.  When that great ship, the Titanic went down it took the pride of Western, which is to say human mind down with it.

The period of 1859 to 1914 was also one in which the absolute superiority of the ‘White race’ seemed not only apparent but real in fluorescent colors.  In fact, White, or HSIII, superiority was acknowledged by all the people of the Earth, who were overawed by Western achievements. It was only after 1914 when the confidence of HSIII was shaken that the counter-attack became possible and success plausible.  Even then this was an internal schism between the right people of the West and the wrong people of the Reds.

I have studied the notion of evolution of Dugald Warbaby in his essays ‘Tarzan Over Africa’ and ‘Tarzan Meets Mohammed.’  Based on his notion I would like to explain how the various sub-species are to be characterized during this first historical continuum.

The character of a sub-species is fixed from the moment of its mutation.  Everything that it will ever be able to do it can envision at its inception; there is no evolution of ability within a sub-species its abilities unfold to its limits as its development progresses.

In you believe in Darwin’s concept of natural selection then you must believe that the various sub-species segregated themselves from the other sub-species on the basis of likeness.  Further, following Darwin’s theory of natural selection so did various races form within a sub-species.  Each race within a sub-species will by natural selection exclude all others who are not true to type until the race is uniform in appearance and psychology.

To use the African model:  If one race is flat nosed and thick lipped then those characteristics will be valued.  Any who do not conform to the ideal will be ejected from the race or killed.

If nearby thin lipped people with a bridged nose exist those two peoples will come into conflict with each other.  The ensuing war between the physical and psychological types will be to the knife.  In a word:  genocide.  Undisturbed by outside forces the battle will continue until either one race is exterminated or one or the other moves from the vicinity.  This is what natural selection means. This is the history of Man.  The notion of natural selection was also put into the words:  survival of the fittest.

Thus HSI claimed sub-Saharan Africa for itself expelling the mutated HSII and possibly the Semites if they mutated at the same time .  HSII migrated from the Mediterranean Basin and on into Western Europe.  The Semites separated from HSI and HSII or were driven away migrating into the Arabian Peninsula, a backwater.  HSIII when it mutated was either expelled from HSII or separated themselves to occupy the area near the Caspian Sea.

The English geneticist Bryan Sykes believes that the various Mongolid races mutated from HSIII a mere ten thousand years ago although this seems unlikely.  The Mongolids like the Semites are also a sterile offshoot.  They migrated across the steppes to the Eastern seaboard of Asia.  Thus, following Darwin’s theory of natural selection when the traceable historical continuum becomes apparent one has HSI in Africa, HSII in Western Europe and HSIII in the Caspian area of Central Asia, the Semites occupying  Arabia and the Mongolids in Eastern Asia.

The first confrontation between the sub-species in historical times came when a people of HS III derivation migrated to Mesopotamia.  There they created a civilization which may have been influenced by an HSII population already in possession.  Either HSIII alone or together with HSII, this people created the Sumerian Civilization.

 

From Sumer To The World Trade Center

 

In the present struggle in Eastern Europe the element of religious antagonism is the most important factor in the problem.  The question originally one of race and government has become to a great extent one of religion.  …Muslims…use the Sheriat, or law embracing or based upon the Cor-an and its commentaries, and this is declared by many persons in Western Europe to be utterly inapplicable to Christian subjects.  Here, then, is the real difficulty; is Mohammedanism so plastic as to be adapted to the reforms which it is universally admitted…are required, or must it be eliminated altogether from Europe?  If an affirmative answer be given to the latter proposition…there is no solution of the difficulty but a religious war, and such a war as the world has never yet seen.

--Mohammed and Mohammedanism. 

Anonymous reviewer in the

Quarterly Review, January 1877

The answer has proven to be that Moslemism is not so plastic as to be adjusted to rational or Western psychology.  Moslemism is an expression of the Semitic psychology.  That psychology is particular to the Semitic sub-species.  In the Darwinian sense it is part and parcel of natural selection.  HSIII and the Semites are psychologically incompatible.  That cannot be changed.

Now, the Semites could never have created a civilization on their own but the glitter of the HSIII Sumerian civilization drew them from their desert haunts much as the glitter of Western civilization has drawn the Semites from their desert oil fields today.  Bear in mind that the Semitic character was set a hundred thousand years before Sumer and that no matter how circumstances may change their character cannot.  Its stern limits are set by genetic evolution.

It is to be assumed that just as the Semites first infiltrated Western civilization then attacked and destroyed the symbol of Western supremacy, the World Trade Center in the Western capital of New York City, that they committed a similar outrage against Sumer five thousand years ago.  Character, methods and tactics in a sub-species do not change; as it is it was and ever shall be.

If one analyzes Semitic methods and ethos which will have remained unchanged for the five thousand years of recorded history it will be readily seen what transpired in Sumer and why the Sumerian civilization was obliterated.

The main body of Semites undoubtedly blamed a militant minority for whatever crime was perpetrated against the Sumerians.  The Semitic story of Cain and Abel may point the way to the nature of the dispute, just as the Sumerian story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu may present the Sumerian version of the quarrel.  Believing they were dealing with an honorable people, rather than driving the Semites away, the Sumerians believed that the Semites were sincere and that they could get along with them.  Thus, while palavering endlessly the Semites continued to infiltrate Sumer until they had sufficient numbers within and sufficient military power without to displace the Sumerians in their own land.  ‘Ye shall live in houses that ye never built.’  As the Bible says.

Not having inherent scientific ability the Semites gradually replaced the scientific basis of Sumerian society with their own brand of fanatical ignorant religion. 

Thus, the Semites appropriated Mesopotamia and Syria occupying the coasts of the Mediterranean while retaining Arabia.  The deadly pall of Semitic ignorance settled over the Near East, or Western Asia, however you look at it.  Contemporary Egyptians styled them ‘vile Asiatics.’

Over the centuries the Semites came into direct conflict with the Egyptians who, if I am right in the origins of the Libyans of Lower Egypt, were an HS II people.  As empires grew larger and came into direct contact the Semitic empire of Assyria was able to conquer the HSIIs of Egypt in the seventh century BC.  Thus, in the Darwinian struggle for supremacy the Egyptians were eliminated as a people. They have never recovered being now a remnant after a genocidal persecution of centuries.  Their place has been taken by Semites.

As in Sumer the Semitic character immediately began to attack the scientific religious culture of Egypt in an attempt to destroy it while superimposing their own fanatical religious culture, the culture of ignorance.

The HSIII Persians ousted the Semitic Assyrians being in turn ousted by the HSIII Greeks who were replaced by the HSIII or possibly HSII Romans.

Now, following their sub-special manner a group or race of Semites, known in history as Jews, who had been displaced in an intra-sub-special conflict with the Assyrians in 586 BC, had been infiltrating the various kingdoms of the Mediterranean from Gaul to Egypt and Libya much as their ancestors had infiltrated Sumer.  They followed the intolerant Semitic impulse by combating the religion of their host countries.  They aggressively over turned altars and insulted the religion of these nations.

Unwilling and unable to assimilate themselves, as in the prototype of Sumer, they sought first to infiltrate and then to conquer.  In the Roman case, much as in the Semitic attack on the World Trade Center, they made their move prematurely and had insufficiently infiltrated the enemy territory while having no military force without to complete conquest.  In the resulting wars known to history as the Jewish Wars the Romans all but exterminated the Palestinian Jews while the Jews within the empire stood by helplessly.

In the ensuing syncretistic Semito-Christian religion the Semites acquired a disproportionate influence over the Greek scientific thought completely suppressing it.  In keeping with the Semitic Sumerian tradition the Semito-Christians attacked all science and learning in an attempt to stultify the Greek or scientific  influence in their attempt to impose the ignorance which was in keeping with their native intellect.  The result in the West was what is know as the Dark Ages.

Then, in the seventh century AD an Arabian Semite by the name of Mohammed re-evaluated the situation to come up with a new and more determined attempt to impose Semitism on the world.

After Sumer, in the Jewish attempt of the conquest of HSII and HSIII, the Jews were so cranked out that in their pride they excluded all from their religion but their own small race of Semites.  This created a situation which in a direct confrontation with the majority must always lose.  Mohammed realized the error of exclusiveness rewriting the rules so that even forcible proselytization to his new Semitic religion was preferred.

Thus, by enrolling potentially unlimited auxiliaries under a religious banner he was able to augment the numbers of Semites so that there was a chance of conquering the world under the banner of ignorance.

Mohammed also undoubtedly realized that even though the Semites had gained a preponderant influence in the Semito-Christian religion that eventually the majority would reject the foreign Semitic influence.  It was necessary then to impose Semitism on the majority by physical force.  He thus organized the Semites into a military force capable of attacking the world.

The Arabs quickly overran North Africa while their converts the Moors entered Spain quickly conquering that nation.  Without a pause they swept through the Pyrenees to penetrate deep into Europe where they stopped nearly at the gates of Paris from which they were driven back into Spain.  The Spaniards then began the Reconquista which took them nearly a millennium to accomplish. Thus Europe barely escaped being impaled on the lance of ignorance.

Although it is generally believed that at the beginning of the Arab conquest a brilliant scientific civilization was created this notion is completely false.  The Moslems rode over an existing HSIII Greek scientific culture which they immediately assaulted in much the same manner as that of the Semito-Christians.  It took them about three hundred years to suppress the Greek scientific culture until today there is not one shred of scientific learning in Moslem lands.  Instead they dynamite anything that challenges the ignorant bigoted Moslem view of religion.

From that first impulse to the present day the Semites have never ceased their worldwide attack on both the West and the East.  What the Assyrians failed to do in Egypt, Mohammed’s fanatical Moslems have accomplished.  With ceaseless tireless energy and will Moslems have sought to impose their ignorance on the world.

The situation in 1877 when the Russians, Poles and Austrians were driving the Moslems out of Central and Eastern Europe was essentially that of today.  Whether you like it or not Milosevic was continuing and winning the war referred to by the prefacing quote in 1877.  The reviewer in the Quarterly Review realized that one must drive the Moslems out or accept the stultification of the HSIII species.  That is what Milosevic was doing.

There was some surcease for the West when the Slavs and Austrians succeeded in driving the Moslem power back into Asia at the end of the nineteenth century.  However Moslems remained successfully active in Africa, India and the Far East.

It was only Western Science that provided the means to temporarily crush the Moslems and put them in their place.  That is where matters stood when the first historical continuum ended in 1945.

Regaining courage and strength from their oil reserves the Semites once again following in their five thousand years practice began to infiltrate every country in the world while consolidating themselves in their core areas.

Whether the attack on the West in New York was premature or not remains to be seen in the response the West makes.  If it follows the Sumerian model of toleration then it must lose this five thousand year battle with the forces of ignorance.  If it follows the Roman model and destroys Mecca and Medina as the Romans were compelled to destroy Jerusalem, while either exterminating or confining the Moslems then civilization will survive at whatever cost.  The Hitlerian solution is so extreme as to cause revulsion.  However if we are truly a scientific people both in physics and psychology we do have the means although we probably lack the will to conquer.  Perhaps that was the Sumerian problem, too much prosperity and comfort to imperil.  Like them we will probably be too supine to assert our superiority.  We should be able to manage pretty well if we assume the will the defeat the enemy.  This battle will be fought as a test of wills.  This is a colder war than the war with Communism.

This same sort of analysis can be applied to every sub-species on the planet; the potentialities and possibilities of each has become an established fact, their future actions can be forecast from their past history.  I do not intend to go into each, but it should be clear that the former Chinese leader, Mao Ze Dong, was true to the Chinese sub-special type.  No matter what the Chinese may say, Mao bared the Chinese soul.

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs Strides Into The Scene

 

The life of Edgar Rice Burroughs straddled the great 1914 division of this both terminal and seminal period from 1859 to 1945.  His youth was lived in the shadow of the Little Big Horn where Custer died for our sins in 1876 the year after Burroughs was born.  The Plains Indians were still being overrun in his youth while he himself participated  in the last Indian battles against the Apaches in the Southwest.  Even as the Indians were being defeated he saw the success of man’s attempt to fly, the introduction of the telephone and movies.  Henry Ford introduced the Model T making a mass market auto industry a reality almost at the same time Burroughs sat down to begin his Tarzan stories.  And then the Titanic sank.

Burroughs was a pulp fiction writer.  I think it can be argued that the pulp fiction magazine originated with the Strand Magazine in England.  Pulp fiction called for a different approach than literary fiction.  Literary fiction is designed to appeal to refined, informed or cultured tastes while pulp fiction was designed as popular entertainment for the widest possible audience.

Thus, Literary authors have tended to look down on popular writers.  However one result of universal literacy was that ‘common’ tastes prevailed over fine literature.  Today almost no one can tell you who the American literary author William Dean Howells was or have even heard of him, yet you may be certain that he and his contemporaries thought his literary immortality was secured.

Ernest Poole won the first Pulitzer Prize for literature yet I doubt that even one person in a million could identify him.  Booth Tarkington won two Pulitzer prizes which no one else has ever done yet the mention of his name draws blank stares.  He wrote good stuff too which one hopes won’t be forgotten.  ‘Seventeen’ was a real charmer.

Strangely, the great popular fiction writers are known not so much for themselves as for their creations.  Thus, everyone knows Sherlock Holmes, but many would be stumped by the name Arthur Conan Doyle.  You almost have to be a specialist to know who Bram Stoker was yet Dracula is a piece of furniture in everyone’s mind.  Not one in an infinite number can identify Gaston LeRoux but all know the Phantom Of The Opera, his creation.  Edgar Rice Burroughs’ name is fairly well known but not everyone can connect him to his universally known creation, Tarzan.  Not even in his home town, Tarzana.

Burroughs came at the tail end of that crop of popular writers who have been the staple of twentieth century literature.  He was too young to be a part of the Kipling, Wells, Haggard and Doyle scene although circumstances did make him a friend of the OZ creator, L. Frank Baum.

Even thought H.G. Wells was only six years his senior Well’s writing career began in the 1890s.  He had been famous nearly twenty years before Burroughs put pen to paper.  And yet Burroughs writing connects him to this pre-1914 literary scene as a sort of younger sibling; he belongs to this tradition.  Nor is his creation, Tarzan, inferior in reputation to any other literary creation of the time with the exception of the archetype of the twentieth century, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Even then, many, if not most people don’t realize that there is not only one Tarzan novel but a series of them.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ eyes had seen most of the seminal events of this productive pre-1914 period when he sat down to write.  He was able to reflect on them all.  Unlike his near contemporaries he did not create the era so much as recapitulate it.  From 1914 to 1945 was pretty much a playing out of these earlier developments.

Darwin’s theory of evolution had created a defined racial hierarchy at the bottom of which was the Negro and at the top of which was the EuroAmerican White.  In between were the Semites and Mongolids.  This notion is reflected in Burroughs’ writing.

While it was believed that this was the order of evolution there was no scientific basis for proving what was apparent to the eyes.

The great disrupting discoveries in physics and psychology had already been made and were becoming popularized.  Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing and others were leading a sexual revolution; the Feminist Movement was in full tilt while in a few years the unthinkable would occur when Communism seized power in Russia in 1917 which made the post 1914 world so different while people were slow to understand the magnitude of the change.  And then there was the introduction of the income tax which disturbed ERB so much in ‘Tarzan And The Ant Men.’

Amazingly Burroughs eyes were so acute he was able to understand and incorporate all these developments in the Tarzan novels without ever mentioning any by name.  In his dedication to ‘entertainment’ he was able to write around, below, above and through these developments without letting any of them obtrude didactically into his stories.  Therein lies, I think, the secret of his success.  While H.G. Wells became a didactic preacher for his causes at the end of his career thereby dating himself; Burroughs sublimated his opinions while yet always coming down on the right side of the question.  He cannot be considered a reactionary or even a conservative; he always understood the nature of the question and saw the correct viewpoint.  Thus, he remains ‘modern’ or current.

Burroughs has been accused of ‘racism’ for his views on evolution but the accusation misses the point.  Bear in mind the consequences of evolution and natural selection.  To speculate on the nature of evolution and apply the results is not ‘racism.’  After all, not only did Burroughs have no trouble with evolution but he seems to have a well thought out notion of it which differs little from Darwin’s natural selection and seems to be closer to the more accurate scientific genetic explanation.  One might call ERB a speculative evolutionist.

This is a remarkable achievement as in 1912 when he began to write, no academic could openly reject religion in favor of evolution without being expelled from the academic community.  Even though they knew better they still proclaimed that evolutionary beliefs did not challenge religious opinions.

Burroughs, courageously one might say, disregards all religious considerations, writing about evolution as though it were an accepted and undeniable fact.  Tarzan experiences every phase of evolution in his development. He was reared as a beast, consorted with the Africans, then considered the lowest form of humanity, and went directly to being a civilized EuroAmerican and then backtracked to become the chief of the Black Waziri then becoming the Great White Potentate of all Africa.

The significant point here is that Burroughs apparently considers the Negro as a distinct species.  Rokoff, the Russian villain in ‘Son of Tarzan’, tells Jane that as her husband was born a beast so Jack, his son,  will be placed amongst an African tribe to be reared in the evolutionary stage of the Negro,  that is, between the apes and homo sapiens.

Blacks are also differentiated culturally by Burroughs; he does not deal in rude stereotypes.  He is aware of cultural differences between African tribes.  His proud Waziri are the crème de la crème of the African tribes in every respect, especially in never having submitted to Arab slavers.  American Blacks such as Robert Jones of ‘At The Earth’s Core; who have been subjected to different cultural influences in the United States are portrayed entirely differently from the various African Blacks.  ERB has a keen eye for distinctions, in dialect and speech most especially.

He himself was an avid reader.  This is no more apparent than in his treatment of his Arab characters.  He never traveled outside the United States so his knowledge of Moslemism and Arabs had to be acquired completely from books.  As Warbaby pointed out in ‘Tarzan Meets Mohammed’ Burroughs was a keen student of Moslem culture.  He perceived the complete lack of Science in Moslem thought nearly predicting 9/11.

It is very true that he has no great liking for his Arab characters.  They are uniformly disreputable and bad.

Yet they are not stock characters.  There is a great deal of individuality about them.  Personally I found Amor Ben Khatour, the abductor of Miriem in ‘Son of Tarzan’ a terrifying and realistic character.  I thought the sub-plot between Meriem’s father and Khatour well handled.

That the Arabs are all villains may be attributed less to ‘racism’ than the fact of their occupation.  They are all slave traders.  The Arabs living in Africa were associated with the slave trade.  Being a slave trader in Arab society was something like being a dope dealer in ours.  Just because someone want to buy the product doesn’t mean they want to be associated with the dealers.  The dealer is usually a disreputable person whether in drugs or slaves.  Anyone who has read his Burton and Stanley can form a pretty accurate idea of a slaver’s character.

How then could Burroughs depict his Arabs as any less than brutal, mean, disreputable men.  This is what a slaver is; this is what Burroughs understood; there is no racism involved.  He doesn’t descend into name calling.  Rather Burroughs grapples honestly and accurately with some fairly difficult problems.

Burroughs was cleverly synthesizing the ideas and learning of the 1859-1914 period in a way in which those of us of the post-1945 generation who were at ‘Childhood’s End; could use his opinions and attitudes to build a base of opinion on which to extend our own attitudes into the future as a basis of our own lives.

As evidence that Burroughs succeeded is the fact that his character named Tarzan who no longer has a home in a geographical location called Africa still exists as the Lord of the Jungle in a psychological projection of our subconscious called Africa.

 

NOW I SEE THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK.

 

Yes, that terrifying Congo, that symbol of the Heart of Darkness, the savage untutored wildness creeping through the jungle of our nocturnal fears, the psychological malaise that affects us all.  How to find that golden track of consciousness that will relieve us of our uncertainties and make the world safe for us, that is the question.

Perhaps Burroughs’ greatest success was that he created a character to represent our conscious minds while reducing the world of subconscious terrors of this  jungle of Africa called Life to a manageable form.  In this mental Africa by the force of character we can all feel less threatened and more at home as we cruise down our personal Congo in our very own ‘Lady Alice.’

Long live Tarzan and God Bless Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Part I, Clip 2: The Vampyres Of New York

The Vampyres Of New York

Part I, Clip 2

The story continues…

As I say some sort of subconscious stirring had drawn me to New York.  When I first walked into James Carter I felt stirring in my brain but now there was a deeper agitation foreboding a brain change.  At my age, of course, there was always something happening, your body diminishes a bit while mental adjustments are constant but this felt more like a sea change, a premonition of a brain crunch, going in one door and coming out another.

Over the past decade or so I had had three major crises.  The first was the strongest, a tremendous electrical discharge at the top of the frontal lobe.  My whole power train from brain to genitals lit up, transparent as it were, I had no means to evaluate it nor was I aware of any changes in my behavior.

The second occurred a few year later, the electrical discharge was not so strong only flashing from my heart.  Something had changed but I couldn’t tell what.  The third that happened was only a couple years ago just before my wife died but only disalienating however I did then notice some personality changes as bits and pieces of personality fell into place.  I had greater self-confidence and a bit more forceful personality, I lost my usual diffidence that had been diminishing I now noticed from the first two events.

They say that coming events cast a shadow before them.  In my case that has to be true because I began to ruminate on the notion of dual personalities. I do not mean split personality but dual personality, twins of a sort, both aware of each other, nothing hidden from each.  Biologically speaking the physical structure is made up of two halves, from two separate identities.  That is the sperm and ovum come together to form one organism, two different and unrelated strands of DNA and the two strands retain separate identities as the brain retains two separate halves joined by another organ, the corpus collosum, that allows communication between the two halves. 

At some time in the distant past a predecessor organism contained all four sex chromosomes, XXXy, but when sex evolved dividing chromosome in two the male received one X and the y while the female received the other two Xs, but the three Xs are not identical.  So, the male has an X passive right side and the active sperm left side of the brain, hence the celebrated feminine side to the male personality.

The female has an active X from the sperm and passive X from the ovum.

The psychoanalysts Freud and Jung at the beginning of the twentieth century then named the ovum side of the brain the Anima and the left the Animus.  So really the individual whether male or female has the elements of a dual personality.

This fact has always been recognized being frequently portrayed in literature although usually unconsciously. The first representation, although the exponents weren’t aware of the source was the opposition of God and Satan, Good vs. Evil impulses.  There was a conflict between the wish to be good and the reality of being evil.  This was a psychological problem that had to be explained; thus the serpent in the Garden of Eden story and also that of Lucifer being kicked out of heaven.  Thus early civilized man explored the nature of psychology.

Certainly in my early life the whole notion of God and Satan was relegated to the realm of fable.  By the beginning of the nineteenth century in the Western world and the Western world only biology became a source of explanation thus the story of ETA Hoffmann, The Princess Brambilla that is a discussion of the Anima and Animus.

Perhaps the most famous dual personality story of the nineteenth century was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.  A story that concerns two aspects of the Animus.  In Stevenson’s story Dr. Jekyll has suppressed a wild aspect of his Animus by emphasizing a respectable persona that he needed to succeed in the world as a physician.  However Jekyll longed for the rough and rowdy days of his youth represented by the other person of Mr. Hyde.  Hyde, to say the least, was uncivilized.

The repression of Hyde was so strong that Jekyll couldn’t indulge him.  This being the golden age of science, while Jekyll was the experimental sort, he discovered a potion or drug that temporarily released the Hyde persona of his Animus or Ego.  This was fine except for with each repeated dosage Hyde become more obstreperous finally indulging his passions in murder.  He was on his way to becoming a serial killer.

Now with police hot on his trail Hyde took the antidote to turn himself back into Jekyll but alas he found the little abyss back too wide to jump over.  He had become his opposite.

Stevenson’s little novelette became one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.  Without fully understanding it the cat was out of the bag although it came in many different colors.

Perhaps one of the most interesting investigations was that proposed by the American writer, the great Edgar Rice Burroughs.  He created one of the fundamental characters of the twentieth century, the great man beast, Tarzan Of The Apes.

Burroughs himself was entranced by Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde.  The idea of a dual personality had a great appeal to him.  Of course the novelette was new at the time presenting a startling idea.  Psychology, specifically psycho-analysis, presented startling findings to the public that had to be absorbed but couldn’t or wouldn’t be absorbed for fifty years or more and then by the chosen few.  Burroughs also had a great interest in psychology.

Concurrent with these developments was the newly risen conflict between civilization and the primitive with their conflicting demands on the perplexed mind of humanity.  The notion was, especially propounded by the anthropologist James G. Frazer in his multi-volume The Golden Bough was his vision that the primitive mind was overlain only by ‘a thin veneer of civilization.’  Scratch a civilized man and the primitive beast beneath would emerge, not too unlike Jekyll and Hyde.

Influencing Burroughs alongside these was Darwin’s theory of evolution.  Mixed and shaken well what came out of Burrough’s mind was Tarzan of the Apes.

As a ‘true’ story of course the novel is preposterous.  Generally speaking the literati rejected the novel for its obvious impossibility refusing to see the allegory of the times which it was.  The story is beautiful in a mythological way.

Tarzan was a thoroughly divided man just as was his model Stephenson’s Jekyll and Hyde.  No less preposterous I might add.  If you set a matrix over the two stories they are the same.  Burroughs himself had two personalities and he believed that all people did to a greater or lesser degree, correctly as it would seem.

Thus Tarzan or John Clayton, Lord Greystoke to give him his real name and title was born an English aristocrat on a voyage to Africa.  Pirates seized their ship depositing them on the coast of Gabon just below the falls of the Congo.  A tribe of great apes, more resembling the Missing Link than any known species assaulted the homestead of the man, wife and child castaways killing the mother and father.  The son would have been killed by the great bull ape except that a female named Kala who had just lost an infant snatched the babe from the cradle running away with it and defying anyone to harm it.

Thus the human Tarzan became a feral child raised as a beast among the Great Apes without acquiring the thin veneer of civilization.  However an Englishman to the bone, a member of the greatest race of the human species, was always an Englishman no matter what the circumstances.  His parents humble but well constructed cabin weathers the elements for a decade or so until Tarzan discovers it and enters to find it well supplied with children’s books thoughtfully brought by his expectant real mother.  He thus discovers that he is not a funny looking ape but something else altogether.  As the picture showed a boy and conveniently put the letters B-O-Y beneath it cleverly putting picture to type or two and two make four as we say he learned that the was a boy.

Teaching himself to read using the convenient dictionary his pop brought along he acquires the thinnest veneer of civilization.  Probably learned chemical formulae from dad’s convenient chemistry text book although that is mere speculation on my part.  At that point he acquired a dual personality.  He was both a beast and a semi-civilized man.  However he prefers the skimpiest loin cloth with tails hanging down front and back to the most luxurious tuxedo.

That’s the way Edgar Rice Burroughs rewrote Stephenson’s Jekyll and Hyde while integrating the latest and most advanced ideas of his times.  Altogether an excellent intellectual achievement.

Stephenson’s idea wasn’t exhausted by Burroughs’ treatment.  Indeed, the idea became a staple of at least pulp literature.  I’m not going to trouble you with an exhaustive study but here’s a few highlights that are very interesting.  The idea of the hero with a day job and an after dark avocation had taken root.

We have The Shadow of Maxwell Grant. Not just a couple dozen novels as with Burroughs’ Tarzan but well over three hundred of them.  Grant was a magician.  No, really.  He was a practicing magician, as such he undoubtedly had an interest in hypnotism.  Grant said that The Shadow had the power to cloud men’s minds so that he was invisible.  That’s hypnotism and there are many more evidences in the novels.

As with Burroughs’ Tarzan some fans come from print others through other media.  By 1930 when The Shadow appears the other media includes, movies, radio and comics that had come into existence.  However the characters created by the movies and other media were much different than what issued from the minds of Burroughs or Grant. (Real name Walter Gibson.)

Thus Grant’s Shadow is composed of interesting dualities.  On the macro level The Shadow represents the Godly mind while the evil criminals he destroys are in the Satanic mold.  The Shadow might even be construed as Godliness’ last stand.  The Satanic model would increase in dominance until in 1966 Time Magazine blazoned its cover in black and white with the question Is God Dead?  That was quite shocking tearing the fabric of society.

In that same year the Jew Ira Levin published his novel Rosemary’s Baby telling of the birth of Satan’s child, Little Andy.  The novel was followed by the Jew Roman Polanski’s horrific film of the same name in 1968 as the Satanic side of the human mind replaced the Godly.  From Rosemary’s Baby flowed the Charles Manson murders.  It’s been hell since.

On the micro level The Shadow himself was the alter ego of a man named Kent Allard who in vampire fashion assumed the identity of Lamont Cranston. We at the time knew only of the radio Shadow and Cranston.  In the novel Allard faked his death in South America removing all traces of his existence.  Returning to New York he terrorized his lookalike Lamont Cranston into allowing Allard to operate in his identity while sending Cranston overseas.  Thus by day Cranston was a playboy around town and at night he was The Shadow, a vigilante fighting evil.  It seems that it would be difficult to be a playboy without a nightlife but Allard/Cranston managed it.  The Shadow is an integral part of my own mentality, perhaps in opposition to the evil William C. Gaines.

By the late thirties Burroughs and Grant were spawning all kinds of imitators.  While comic strips in newspapers had existed since the turn of the century comic books came into existence in the mid-thirties giving whole new dimensions to the dual personality.  Comic books as we know them were created by the character Superman in 1938 first in Action Comics and then in his own name.

The comic book was wholly a creation of Jewish talents pushing a Jewish agenda.  As such, whether we knew it or not the comics reflected the Jewish view of life or Weltanschauung.  The Jews have been described as a peculiar people and indeed their history confirms the evaluation.  The Kent Allard/Lamont Cranston/Shadow triumvirate more or less sums up the Jewish experience.

Twentieth Century US experience in which I lived most of my life was one of discovery for me.  In my childhood that followed the death camps of WWII I never actually knew a Jew as a Jew.  Like Kent Allard they had merged into a new disguise that for a novice or even experienced person was extremely difficult to penetrate.  I knew they existed because I read about them and there was a synagogue in one of the most conspicuous places in town while the only Jew that identified as a Jew was called Sheeny Sheyer and he was a haberdasher.  Beyond that I scarcely knew Jews existed until the really big 1958 Holocaust fest show.  That was my introduction.  Since then, of course, Judaism has been one of the central thread of my studies.

Jews have developed the dual identity into an art form.  As the saying goes:  Sometimes they don’t know who they are.

As they are living in other people’s countries, since 1800 they have tried to adapt by adopting local haberdashery while adopting personal names in the local manner.  Of course in mid-nineteenth century European population pressures compelled the State to order their peoples to assume last names, just as in our day population pressures have forced the adoption of a unique number to identify the specific individual.  Thus there might be umpteen John Smiths in the US but you have to have the right number to identify your John Smith.

In the Jewish case a man might have gone by the name of Isaac Ben Abraham, that is Isaac, the son of Abraham.  Under the new system he had to choose a last name.  The Jews usually named themselves after articles of value or distinction. Hence all the variants of Gold, Silver and precious stones.  Isaac Ben Abraham might become Isaac Goldbladder or Isaac Silvermaster or, Perhaps Heinrich Heine.  Going into the twentieth century then all Westerners had a first and last name and any number of intervening names their parents might choose.

As most of these names were either German or Russian upon coming to the US many chose to translate the name into English; thus Sumner Rothstein became Sumner Redstone.  Sumner itself being considered an assimilative name.  David and Michael are the most popular Jewish first names.  Some, like Edward G. Robinson the actor, anglicized their name more completely, his European name being Emmanuel Goldenberg (Gold Mountain.)  Behind that not unlike Lamont Cranston who might have been Kent Allard was a Hebrew name and that was his real identity.  So a Jew automatically had a dual identity, his public name by which he was known at large and the name with which he was registered as a Jew.

On might say then that he was always in disguise in the broad world, a secret foreign agent reporting, as it were, to the synagogue. His people came first before his ‘adopted’ country.  This is a source of much confusion to non-Jews while Jews lie when they say their ‘adopted’ country is their first loyalty.  Interesting that they adopt a country but the country doesn’t adopt them.

When comic books were developed in the mid-thirties they were almost exclusively Jewish hence expressing the Jewish Weltanschauung.  All the characters had dual identities.

Thus Superman migrated from the planet Krypton and ‘adopted’ Earth as his chosen planet.  His Krypton identity was Superman while his earthly identity was the wimpish Clark Kent.  Capt. America was the Jewish identity while Steve Rogers was his goyish identity.  And this continued with the comic book characters Batman and Robin identities.

Now, the Jew has always felt inferior to the other; Cain was the big strong other while Abel was the lesser younger brother.  Clark Kent was a weak human while the Jewish Superman was a powerful extra-terrestrial.  Steve Rogers was a 98 lb. weakling while Capt. America while lacking true super powers certainly outperformed human beings.

The creators of these characters mostly anglicized their names, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, but not all.  So these people had multiple real identities.  When you think about it, it is fairly incredible.

When the super characters began playing out in the post-war years the publishers had to search for new themes and they tried everything settling finally into crime but then as Crime Does Not Pay William C. Gaines finally hit the main vein with sado-masochistic horror comics, thus Weird Tales and Tales From The Crypt et al..

That’s where I came in and leave off.  I was surprised to find myself ruminating on this subject like this especially as I am beginning to find movement in my brain that signifies some sort of development.  When I hit seventy-five I began to notice subtle brain changes followed by electrical discharges the significance of which I am just now understanding.  So, I felt some changing was coming but I couldn’t tell when.  I found out; it was imminent.

-II-

What prompted me to ruminate on dual personalities, the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome, was unknown to me but from the rumblings in my brain I knew something was brewing.  Whatever abominable motives I had for coming to New York City were about to out themselves; I sensed that.

I still needed a wardrobe. I had come to the realization that I needed different garb for different situations, that is, essentially, multiple identities.  Ragnar was much more familiar with the city and as his time was at my disposal I asked him to show me around some thrift shops; I needed second hand clothing.

I met him at the building’s entrance where we stopped and chatted with Ottmar the doorman for a few minutes.  Ragnar gave Ottmar an opportunity to look me over and evaluate me.  I put on my maximum gravitas for Ottmar, which I also assumed for the outing with Ragnar.  I was sure I passed Ottmar’s test and while I couldn’t be sure I saw that he was tentatively satisfied.

Ragnar was gifted with an almost perfect knowledge of the city’s streets so I let him lead our two man parade.  While walking along we passed a wig shop, I guided Ragnar in.  The shine was showing through the sparsening  hairs on my own head while I had always been fascinated by Andy Warhol’s use of wigs.  They were good disguises.

There was a wonderful array of wigs.  I picked out a grey one for dignity, a blond one to look vainglorious and a dark one, I suppose for variety but maybe in imitation of Elvis.  I was interested in disguising my own paucity of follicles (God, that’s labored, isn’t it?)  I can’t bring myself to say bald, but like with Warhol, for effect.  An obvious wig draws people’s attention away from your actual appearance making an identification less possible.  So, I was three wigs closer to my objective.

Ragnar brought us up to a block or so of thrift shops.  I began selecting street clothes.  There were any number of styles to choose from, very nearly any time period.  Especially since the Great Migration under Obama’s third term, permanent dictatorship actually, one could buy almost any style in the world, naqibs, dashikis, everything.

The ’16 election ended the ‘democracy’ as you well know.  God, that was a mess.  I was irate when they refused to inaugurate Trump after he had taken a full sixty-five percent of the popular vote and all the electoral votes save New Mexico.  We, of what was dubbed the Outsider Party, were irate but the Insider Party small as it was had the fire power and already controlled the apparatus so there was little that could be done in that surprise move.

At least the battle lines were drawn although little in the way of revolt has appeared yet.  Some very minor skirmishing in places like Chicago and some Southern cities but nothing unmanageable yet.  Remarkably quiet but with a feeling of real tension.  Trump had no choice but to go back to New York City.  Winning by that margin and being denied his office, of course, exposed the Insiders to the world and the mask did come down, both here and in Europe.  Embarrassed the Insiders stripped Trump of his fortune leaving him with a relative pittance, he definitely had to sell his 757.

Even as Trump was returning to New York the Insiders threw down the walls and immigration exploded.  They give us five million as the official number but it is probably ten to twenty million judging from the streets of New York which is where millions landed.  Speaking as the ghost of John Rocker one doesn’t hear so much dozens of foreign languages but that English seems to be missing.

In an odd turn of events on our journey I noticed ‘scribes’ with tables set up for customers who wanted to send a letter back home but were illiterate.  Talk of medieval times; there was no longer an appropriate name for it. I found myself buying strange things.  I got a very nice Lubavitcher outfit, also a perfect disguise, weird hat and all for not too much.  I picked up a naqib or burka that I thought would be a terrific disguise.  You could carry weapons and nearly anything under the voluminous folds without fear of detection.  Plus as an apparent woman you were generally ignored, invisible.

I also asked Ragnar to get me a couple handguns.  He agreed before he realized what he had admitted but we both let that slide.  I have no idea why I thought he could do it nor did I realize why I wanted them.  We were fully loaded on the walk back to the condo.  Perhaps spurred on by Ragnar’s ability to get guns I asked if he knew martial arts.

‘Oh sure.  That was one of the Carmichael’s requirements.  I also serve as a bodyguard.  I’m Black Belt.  Why?’

I wasn’t sure why.  ‘You look like you can really handle yourself Ragnar.  Good shape, athletic build, just wondered?  Work out?

‘Absolutely.  I don’t bulk up like a body builder but I’ve put on enough muscle to deal with things, get the right weight you know.  May I ask you a few questions?’

‘Sure, go ahead.  If they’re discreet.’

‘A friend of mine recognized you from your picture on your web site.  He says you’re the writer Partly Wright.  True?’

‘Partly Wright Delivers The Truth?  Yes, that’s my stuff.  Your friend reads me?’

‘He’s on the conservative side and says you lay it out as it is.’

‘That’s my goal Ragnar, that’s my goal.  Good to learn somebody else thinks so too.  Is your friend political?’

I was trying to find out if Ragnar was part of some secret political organization but I couldn’t come out and ask without seeming nosy.

‘Is your friend in a political set?’  I asked hoping that sounded like a generality.

‘No, we just talk at the gym about things.’

Talk at the gym?  OK.  There was a possibility.  I let the subject drop for the time being as we were approaching the condo.  We threw the bundles into the grocery cart as I reminded him to be ready for my first fitting at James Carter.

-III-

I woke up next morning and realized that I was due at James Carter for my initial fitting.  I looked forward eagerly to the thought of realizing my desire for a bespoke suit, still, other thoughts crowded my mind.  I wondered what my real reason was for being in New York.  Yes, I was aware of the good reasons but I sensed subliminal  reasons I wasn’t able to articulate.  And then there were the brain stirrings that usually preceded some sort of mental adjustment.  So far each had been more liberating after the trauma while I believed I had cleared out all of the fixations that had influenced my behavior.  At the same time I sensed, or I knew of from study, that there was a level of conditioning that lurked below the subconscious in a sort of basement or foundation of the mind.  Perhaps that was stirring.  I would soon find out.

Alighting from the limo I was greeted on the sidewalk by the manager, a little too effusively I thought; there was no reason to leave the store.  As he escorted me up the stairs to the second floor it hit.  The seventh step up I felt, even heard, the brain crunch as I slightly staggered against the rail.  Fortunately the manager was ahead of me and didn’t see me lurch or whatever grimace was on my face.  I was slightly dazed and mentally unsteady as he brought the lead tailor out to introduce me to him. 

I could feel the cold professional appraisal, I knew I was being evaluated for what status I would be assigned.

‘Abe, this is Mr. Partly Wright for whom we will be making several suits’.  He said, adding a few suits I hadn’t mentioned as he saw that Abe was giving me a fishy eye bordering on disapproval or even hostility in an effort to forestall any affront by Abe to drive me off.

‘And Partly this is Abraham Goldbladder our tailor and one of the finest in New York’, Abe growled, ‘And anywhere else.’ ‘I’m sure you to will get along swimmingly, won’t you Abe?’

‘I’m sure.’  Abe said glowering at me, sawing the measuring tape across the back of neck a couple times.  ‘Partly is it?  Come this way and we’ll get started.’

I followed into the work area where Abe turned swiftly and stood glaring at me, uncertain of how to begin.

‘I know who you are Mr. Wright.’  He said sternly.  ‘Follow me.’

‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘This explains who some of the people are who Ragnar noticed following me.  It isn’t that I didn’t think The Tribe mightn’t be tagging my movements but this confirmed it, moved my suspicions from paranoia to fact, so to speak.

Abe led through a corridor or two, down backstairs to a door he flung open with an imperative gesture to pass through.  I found myself in an alley, a dank smelly alley, narrow and confining.  At first I thought that Abe had thrown me out, refusing to serve me but, no, he followed me out and stood confronting me.

‘We know who you are.’  He repeated sternly as though demanding a reply.

I paused a moment gathering my fractured wits about me while trying to assume a commanding but condescending humorously mocking posture.  This confrontation would determine the quality of my stay in New York.  Abe believed that confronting me in amongst the smelly dumpsters in the alley would be an insult to put me at a disadvantage.  Abe had no way of knowing that I had dealt with his tribesmen in a more than somewhat intimate basis in my working years and was quite familiar with Jewish tactics.

I smiled and chuckled at him trying to exude the air that Abe was in his proper habitat and that I was fully aware of it.  I did succeed to his obvious discomforture.

‘I’m sure you do, Abe.  I’m just surprised that you have finally come out into the open.  Am I in your habitat now?’

It was important for me to get the upper.  I knew that Abe would try to get me angry while not being able to imagine any other arguments than the Semitic canards that had come down through the ages forming the basis of his peoples’ minds.  I therefore imagined myself smoking the avuncular or grandfatherly pipe chuckling quietly at the young one’s impertinence.  If I could get Abe steamed so much the better.

Abe flushed a little, losing his edge, when he realized that I had said that he was in his element in the alley amongst those godawful dumpsters.

‘We want to know what you’re here for.  What’s up your sleeve?’

‘Oh Abe’, I chuckled, ‘you’re not going to lay that paranoid trip on me are you?  Do you fear the other that much?’

‘Fear what other?’  He said, jutting out his jaw a trifle.  ‘We aren’t afraid of anyone.’

‘Oh Abe, you know, the ever present fearsome anti-Semite.  Those you have to shut down and silence by any means necessary.’  I took an imaginary draw on my imaginary pipe to keep a steady low.

‘We know from your writings that you’re an anti-Semite Wright, the lowest form of scum on the planet.’

‘By ‘we’ I presume you’re including the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League, possibly the SPLC, Abe?’

He snorted non-committally refusing to answer.

‘Only in the Jewish mind, Abe.’ I replied to his question with a smile and a knowing laugh.  ‘Anti-Semitism is only Jewish fear of the other in action.  You just can’t face who you are; any criticism smarts so bad because it tells you the truth about yourselves.  The truth is that Jews always live in societies that are superior to you and that clashes so furiously with your fantasies of superiority that it drives you mad.

There is evidence.  Consider the Jews transported from a relatively primitive backwater town like Jerusalem to the stupendous magnificence of Babylon.  The Jewish imagination was dwarfed.  Thus you have madmen like Isaiah and Ezekiel proclaiming Jewish superiority and opening the gates to the Persians.

The same scenario has been repeated ad infinitum throughout history including your opening the doors of the United States to unlimited diverse immigration.  That’s the same thing as opening Babylon’s doors to the Persians or Spanish doors to the Moors not to mention then opening Moorish doors to the Spaniards.  It is incontestable Abe.

Jewish frustration erupts into mass murder.  The Jews attempted to compete with and subject the Roman Empire.  That ended in the complete destruction of Israel and the leveling of Jerusalem and the Temple.  Undismayed your people continued the war finally erupting at the beginning of the second century murdering half a million people in Alexandria and Cyprus under the most barbaric conditions.  A true crime against humanity.

The result of that episode was a manhunt to destroy any and all Jews.  Sixteen hundred years later after the resulting collapse of civilization your Jews again thought to kill all Europeans.  Sabbatai Zevi posing as a messiah thought to usher in the millennium in 1666.  Your Jews in Europe were selling their possessions for peanuts to have a last fling as money wouldn’t matter after the redemption.  The redemption failed and the Jewish revolt never happened.

I’m skipping over a great deal Abe, just the highlights now.  Then in 1914 you instigated the Great European Holocaust that after the terrible wars from ’14 to ’45 has continued to today when you have refused to seat the elected presidential candidate Donald Trump.’

Here Abe lost control a little, I was succeeding. ‘That was only social justice.  I’m sure you know that in 1920 five elected Jewish representatives to the New York legislature were refused their seats and sent back to New York City.’

‘Not because they were Jewish Abe, because they were Socialists.’

‘What’s the difference?’  Abe let slip.

‘In answer to your question, none.’  I laughed as merrily as I could without seeming forced.  I had admired a lesson Marshall McLuhan had given to Tim Leary in the Sixties of the old century that when confronted by hecklers the best reproof was to just open your mouth and laugh them off.  Drives them crazy and it seemed to effect Abe that way who should have known better with his age and experience.

‘But the situations are not comparable Abe.  Of course with the elected candidate refused we still needed a president.  Hillary, the defeated candidate was not possible and there were no alternates legally available so you people set aside all law, all precedent and said Obama would continue as president for life.  And then you had the gall to get your three Jewish representatives on the Supreme Court to declare it constitutional.  Fourteenth Amendment my ass.’

‘That was a problem that had nothing to do with we Jews.’

‘One thousand Rabbis said otherwise Abe.  Deny as you will.  Then out of sheer malice you destroyed Trump.  Stripped him of everything for having defied you.  Took everything, even renamed Trump Towers the Goldman Towers.  Don’t know why you left the other half of the name off.  Everyone knows who Obama’s boss is.

So, really Abe,  I’ve got your number, you don’t have mine.  I know you, you know me.  I’m just here to get some clothes because your company reminds me of Eric Ross.  It gives me some continuity.  You’re going to have to make my suits for me.’

So saying l slipped inside the door quickly throwing the dead bolt.  Abe hammered and shouted to no effect.  Accepting the inevitable he walked the length of the dark smelly alley emerging into the light to the amusement of those watching.  Abe’s planned humiliation of me turned back on him.

Abe had a short discussion with his manager but as there would be a fair amount of money involved he accepted his fate and began my first fitting.

I had won this one but the strain told on me.  My head was rattling as Ragnar drove me back to the condo.  I felt uneasy if not outright sick while the laughter in my head I had experienced in the alley came back.

Ottmar smiled me in and the elevator wait seemed interminable before I got the he thirty-first floor and all the door locks unlocked, rushing into the bedroom to leap into bed.  I had just pulled the covers to my chin when I heard that low chuckle and a voice say ‘Hello.’  There was no one there but the voice went on:  ‘Hello.  Yes it’s me.  It’s Gaines.’

‘Gaines?  Who the hell is Gaines?’  I found my mind answering.

‘You remember me.  Gaines?  The comic books?  Tales From The Crypt, Weird Tales?  Remember?  I’m why you came to New York.’

‘Gaines?’  Oh, I know what has happened.  My own personal Mr. Hyde has shown up.  I had acquired a dual identity.  ‘I just want to sleep Gaines.  Come back later.’  He did cease and I dropped into a fitful sleep.

Continued in Clip Three.