’Twas said that this cocked-gun sleep in which Mr. de Persia dwelt had been devised by some witch that had enchained him in bonds of sleep forever. He was encasketed in a tub of glass, his heavy hand holding his light hand cupped tenderly in it as though it were something it had just scooped up out of water. The watery casket of Mr. de Persia was a deep, wide bathtub made of thick icelike glass, a creation of Mr. de Persia for his own pleasure? for sale? on capricious commission from somebody who never came back for it? Whatever the reason, Mr. de Persia made it and one morning was found deeply asleep in it in the rear of his workshop. Possibly a swindler named Craig Corinth, lumber king, cotton king, oil king, etc., had asked Mr. de Persia to make a tub deep as a pool like this one for his lascivious bathroom in the mansion which he had suddenly so mysteriously abandoned, disappearing in the East. It was rumored that Craig Corinth had a special liking for bathtubs, and not a few girls of the town had been his guests in his marble one and reports held it to be a sensational experience. Whatever the reason or why ever he had made it, Mr. de Persia one morning was found deeply asleep in it, and in full erection.
Mr. de Persia lay in his full length and splendor asleep in some swoon. At first, people stood back from him as if he were holding a gun on them. But soon they came closer. Being a man of godlike accomplishment, he would sometimes go a little off his rocker (drank a little, too) and would chase a woman like a fox after a hen; sleight-of-hand, too—he was so sleight that he could get fingers playing on you like a harmonica, up your leg before you knew it. Whether it was true or superstition in a back town in the 1920s in East Texas on the edge of The Big Thicket wilderness, it was said that Mr. de Persia, being a magician and adept at magic spells, had taught someone how to cast a certain spell of life-invigorating sleep—it might have been just a joke or trick, who knew?— but hadn’t time to divulge the magic way to break the spell before that person, the student, had tried it out on him, the teacher, and Lord God, it worked; and there lay Mr. de Persia enchanter enchanted by his own enchantment.
So here lay the sovereign Mr. de Persia dressed in his purple silken suit made of Italian goods in his glass casket, asleep under his own spell. Who could raise him up, this attractive body sprawled out with penile erection tenting up his purple silk? Who could restore the restorer? Mrs. Hand, the legal secretary, was brought in at once to notarize the discovery. Why? Don’t ask me. She stood back from him as if he were holding a gun on her. She suggested that flowers or a flag be placed upon Mr. de Persia’s “privacy.” It was from Mrs. Hand’s mouth that word issued over the town that bright morning and the whole town rushed to regard the striking figure of the wizard and elite Mr. de Persia in a trance and with a massive hard-on.
Had Mr. de Persia, craftsman that he was, devised this cask of glass for his own pleasure? It was shaped like a chest and the glass was of pure unscarred clarity, except for a few bubbles in it that gave it a starry quality and made it seem buoyant, as if afloat on little balloons. The glass had a musclelike substance here and there—it was a coarse, sinewy but rich deep glass of a leaden texture and in the sunlight it blazed up in a yellow molten glow or was absolutely white and blinding. At night it became a dark blue frozen color. What a beautiful and odd creation for Mr. de Persia! of pure lightness, gaiety, and sensuality. What devilish mischief led the enchanter to so bedaze Mr. de Persia—and dressed like that—was the riddle of the community. He lay like something of Creation, transcendent, this maker—awful and almighty and seeming to be of the foundations, of the fundament, basic, like the solid glass, though light as air and very fleshly. His purple silk suit was skin-tight and showed him to be a cut of well-formed proportion. His persistently erect member baffled local medical authorities (if you could call Dr. Percy Searles an authority—or even medical—he was just local was about all you could say about him, considering the outrageous mistaken diagnosis he’d made on the community). Dr. Searles had “palpated” (means feel of) the organs of half the town and was simply waiting around for the other half to fill out enough to present him something to get hold of—male and female; so guess you could call him something of an authority on that.
Various questions continued to arise and several incidents worth reporting. But some of the immediate questions were concerned with who was to guard or stand by the body of Mr. de Persia lying there like an unslung slingshot until the spell upon him could be broken or would break itself. A vicious hound? A trusty from the pen? Someone suggested three nuns from Sacred Heart Convent, and so forth.
But nothing was done. And then two young Texas Rangers were assigned to the guarding of Mr. de Persia. Soon they’d need the Militia, though, because people were jammed in the one-story building that was Mr. de Persia’s shop, standing out in the yard, and some were even up on the roof.
And then, right off, a man who said he was a distant cousin of Mr. de Persia’s announced by telegraph at the railroad station the fact of his existence in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and that he knew a secret that would no doubt solve the riddle of the sleeper. He signed his name Clarence Custanza; and Clarence Custanza arrived, proclaiming that he was of Spanish descent.
He was dressed, to be blunt, like a pimp. If you think I’m exaggerating, have you ever seen a man wear silver shoes? But mystics dress odd and he was the leader of a group called Outré with its home office (the “mother” he called it) in Chattanooga, but far flung in its reach and influence. He worked over his distant cousin half the night, changing headdresses several times (one looked exactly like a woman’s Easter hat—we should have known then) and cooing foreign-sounding words in fogs of incense; there were torches, too, and a rooster head—and always Clarence Custanza’s silver shoes. By dawn he had failed miserably and would have been driven out of town then, simply on the basis of his outrageousness if not for his several offenses of petty thievery and feeling up girls, but he was tolerated in good spirit—’twas not a bad town really—for Clarence Custanza (of Spanish descent) from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and National President of Outré, was of no durable harm and, in reality, quite a dear buffoon, once you got to know him. And anyway he was abruptly summoned back to Chattanooga by his organization, due to an emergency.
It was the third day and Mr. de Persia, straining his Italian suit, slept on. Others wrote or came. Some sent elixirs, potions, keys, codes, voodoo stuff. Some mailed in crackpot instructions and incantations. A dancing Indian appeared, in full feather and bell, and danced, no one was sure quite why, but it was colorful. Mr. de Persia slept on. And a ratty little man materialized saying he was the second coming of Jesus—but we’d had so many of those before that he was ignored and so preached to empty street corners and did not resurrect the sleeper.
Then who would come and rehabilitate the sleeping maker, lying dozing in his force, his making powers ready and primed but lying, drawn like an arrow taut in the bow, un-shot; like a volley stuffing a cannon, straining to be shot; a stone heavy in the loaded sling, pulled back and trembling to be cast out, chamber loaded, cocked, reared back to spurt out issue, to shoot out sons, Mr. de Persia had no mind to do it, only the dumb instrument, like a brute upraised hammer; his making spirit was unaware and stupid in sleep; he was just pure dreamless instinct.
The town quite swelled, like Mr. de Persia, and prospered, and, in truth, had never been so excited. Yet, with all this, Mr. de Persia lay serene and hard as a rock. Naturally, thousands stood in line to view Mr. de Persia. Had a King died? A Mahatma? A God?
Yet it was known that Mr. de Persia was impotent. The great maker could no longer get it up. He had made a point of his condition. He had advertised—first asking for any kind of suggestion of a remedy—and, my Lord, he got all kinds. Then he reversed his state of mind, his attitude towards his condition and proclaimed, like an evangelist, the beauty and glory of chastity—enforced chastity, that is. For such a brawny and well-built man (as half that part of the country could now attest to), so obviously sensual and craving sexual delight, you’d have thought he suffered immensely. But he seemed full of renunciation. Yet here was the avowedly impotent Mr. de Persia with all his glory restored—in full flag unfurled, in gorgeous bloom, or as the farmers would say, in full ear and pod.
Priapism. Here was a word you’d have thought would never in the history of this town be uttered or found use for, need even to be written, much less spoken. Yet a doctor of note from New York, upon reading of the incident of Mr. de Persia, hurled into town this odd word to describe the condition of Mr. de Persia. He sent a brief article explaining that Priapus was a God of ancient times. The article explained to the town that Mr. de Persia was suffering from “Priapism”, which meant unrelenting erection of the penis. Certain figures had been used in olden days and ancient times as fertility figures—people worshiped these phalluses, another word this New York doctor thrust into the town’s midst. “He means Mr. de Persia’s peter,” old Shot, the bakery owner, said. “A what this doctor called phallus is just a highfalutin word for your dick.”
Well, this article troubled the town. Certain women who were barren naturally appeared and loitered around the sleeper in the chest of glass but—most interesting—certain men, studs from their mouth only, hung around, too. One was caught exposing his phallus to the sleeper, hoping for his lost power to be restored. And he maintained a reputation of supercocksman of the locale. Well, people appreciated his honesty and pitied his problem. So for others. If the purpose of the spell, if “Priapism” was the reason to get put into such a sleep, if it was the handiwork of the Enchanter, half a county would have organized a posse, old and young, to hunt down and capture the priceless magician. Yet the other half said, “Forget it. What good is Priapism if a spell of sleep goes with it? You might last as long as the Flood, but you wouldn’t know or feel a thing.” But it would be doing a fine service to others, some protested. And, besides, who knew whether the sleep was so unknowing and unfeeling? You might have a hell of a time, and never be exhausted, never spent. It is something to think of—that if the Charmer were found she could become a rich person, cause a revolution in lovemaking, be sought after over the world.
So you see the town changed because of the sleeping hero in the glass tub. Compassion, mercy, openness came over the town. There were reconciliations, forgiveness. There was also one hell of a renaissance of lovemaking. The town, like Mr. de Persia (excepting of course the unfortunates I’ve mentioned) was one big orgy. They went to it morning, noon and night. I mean it was a fucking town, alive, happy, vital—and peaceful: there was neither time for fights nor energy, not even any desire to quarrel or fume around over this or that. In fact, the population became so hot, so horny and insatiable that there was an electricity over the place you could light it with. Mr. de Persia had brought such lust over everybody that not much work was done. Used in another way the libidinous ferocity of the town could have caused a revolution. ’Twas real scary. And yet the best time everybody had ever had in the history of the town. The fact is that the town was bouncing and pounding and grinding so extensively that a sort of natural holiday occurred, without proclamation, because the stores were practically empty; so everything was just voluntarily shut down and everybody went to it, old and young. It was believed that there was not a virgin left excepting perhaps Mrs. Hand, the Notary Public who had an unusual physical problem like that of Queen Elizabeth, or so it was said. The violence, like an endless, shuddering earthquake, was frightening. Even dog, cat and bird were upon each other. A bevy of prostitutes came in by bus from a couple of big cities, rather good ones, not the oil-field type, but some pretty good ones from Houston and Dallas. The town was a boom town, like the old oil-strike days. But in this case oil was sex. The few hotels were packed and trailers came in. Tents were pitched, fast. A carnival diverted its rather unsuccessful tour of the Midwest and rushed down. Even the carnival people, though, didn’t work much, they were immediately caught up in the frenzy—an ungodly sight (some said the few animals in the shabby sideshow—an old lion and lioness and a couple of tired boa constrictors went to it). The Siamese twins, an inferior pair—the better specimens were in big-time New York and Miami circuses, a small show has to take what it can pay for: top deformity acts get top money; the Frog Boy—my God, I can’t go into it; but can I help it, what went on? That’s what happened. And on slept the cause of it all, with his unyielding, his unshrinking, his risen “phallus”. Priapism, Ha! It was now seven days that he had held the world at bay with a loaded pistol.
But once it had reached its peak, this sweetness came over the place. After this first phase of wildness, the second began. Spent of its sort of bridal passion, its first fucking fury exhausted, the town moved into a curious kind of dignity. An idolatrous pride in Mr. de Persia pervaded. Reports that there were plans to steal him kept coming in, however. He had become very valuable, a treasure worth a lot. It was feared that he might be stolen like the precious saints’ bodies were; and so the guard was doubled after it was decided not to remove the blessed body to the Church for safety. He now received the special care that is given to a statue of a hero, a monument in a park, a sainted figure. Once vulgarity and bestiality had expressed themselves, a new spirit set in: one of self-confidence, self-esteem, and vitality. And then joy. Why nobody had known the feeling of joy for years. There was, besides joy, gaiety, a feeling people hadn’t known before. All this came from the wonderful figure in the glass tub, the beloved Mr. de Persia. He was the world’s bridegroom, he was everybody’s dream. The unconsummated bridegroom! The unsatisfied husband! The whole configuration of fundamental splendid man in the happy glass produced in the world around him a teased serenity, a slightly naughty glee, a sweet mischief. New life sprang from this happy figure and touched a community: Mr. de Persia, toucher and re-toucher! Also, and more important than anything else, people who had for a long time felt anger or guilt or unforgiveness had fucked it off and away, so that there was a spirit of reconciliation among the people. Out of the flesh had come a spiritual thing. How was it that what lay as pure sprawled-out and up-hard flesh could, in time, become pure spirit? Perplexion! Great mystery! And what did it mean? a figure laid out like this, charged, un-issued, without outcome? There were, moreover, certainly and most obviously, magical powers in Mr. de Persia—people had always known and seen that in him. And now he probably was a medium for departed Spirits. You could stand in line and take your turn to try to use him as a psychic medium—allotted time two minutes, not much time for Spirits to get to such an out-of-the-way place as Rose, Texas, and then, if they did, not time for much contact and exchange; but not a few people (one a famous Seer from California) got messages from the other world. When interviewed, she said some of the messages were (amazingly terse) “Go North,” “Get lost,” “Esther sucks”—an obvious confusion of interfering demonic and blessed spirits warring within the medium himself—and so like him.
Yet where and who was the Charmer of all this? Obviously a woman and she was under search, you can be sure. Why would they want to punish the Charmer? For what? For this gift to everybody? Why did they want to find her? Well, of course, to unlock Mr. de Persia from his chains and bonds of sleep. And, my God, to relieve him. He must be in pain. All the physical aspects must be thought of, must be considered; and now people were beginning to get sensible and practical about what had overturned them and crazed them. Until they discovered the Charmer, couldn’t something else be done, like give him a shot? Sort of sacrificial women were thought of—and their number was legion—who would be willing as a means of relieving or “changing” Mr. de Persia’s condition—that is, everything but the sleep part. But who knew, maybe if they could get that down, like a sort of lever, it might raise him up. Use it as a kind of crank, a gear to set the benumbed man in motion! “Only one way to get rid of what’s bothering Mr. de Persia,” the postmaster said. “And that’s not a cold shower.” “We could haul him around and stud him off on the towns,” was another suggestion. Others said that they could pimp him to widows, virgin brides who could then be prepared for what was coming, unsatisfied wives. The list of possibilities was large.
The poor magician-in-spite-of-herself! What must she—for it was now assumed it could only be a woman—be feeling? Was she, disguised, among the thousands who came to view Mr. de Persia? Was she still in the town hiding out someplace? A hundred questions! She must be so embarrassed because of the stupid trick she pulled, or so afraid—a hundred feelings people imagined her to be feeling and suffering. Among all the other emotions flickering over the town was that of just a faint suspicion, a slight mistrust of odd-looking visitors or abnormally behaving local folks. Still, there was a lot of sentiment for the poor thing and great need of her. For God’s sake wouldn’t she come forward! Signs, ads, radio announcements, newspaper pleas, leaflets, church sermons—all asked only that the bewitcher of Mr. de Persia come forth and release him from the sleep he had been put into by a misused charm.
But then what was the charm? came the resounding question. How had it worked? Had Mr. de Persia been in a crucial phase of sexual excitement, in or out, when the spell was cast? Then this would not only be extraordinary but devilish, a real mean trick! A punishment? An act of vengeance?
These thoughts, then, cast a new color, another light, weird and uncanny and mysterious as the Charmer. She must be a bitch! A sorceress, a witch. A castrater! came the second piece of medical insight from the New York doctor, who had now enlisted the aid of a special and renowned Psychologist from Zurich, Switzerland, to act as a consultant. (I needn’t tell you that Mr. de Persia’s notoriety had now reached Europe, and photographs—sometimes close-ups—of him lying in the glass cask had appeared in Paris Match, Die Welt, and an Italian magazine which reproduced the photograph in color.) Enough sheep had been cut for local people to know the meaning of the Swiss Psychologist’s word—it had a local practical purpose and a practical meaning; but used in this way, it was not clear to many. Several people told him to go screw himself which, under the circumstances, seemed a helpful, even humane suggestion to Mr. de Persia, could he hear it.
Which led to the longing wish that if only Mr. de Persia could help himself. The irony was that Mr. de Persia himself was the only one around who could get this man out of his plight, knowing the solution to the charm which imprisoned him, yet here he was the very victim! For Mr. de Persia had solved many a local puzzle, broken a lot of cases of mystery, opened impossible locks (the bigger the lock the more sensitive the instrument you use against it, he said. It was with the big brute heavy things that he used his light hand. His heavy hand held it but his light hand did the delicate work.) He had never, of course, raised up anybody under a spell like himself, but it was generally believed that he could do so were it necessary. Now here the raiser lay himself unraised—except in the most personal way. But he had divined several things that had bestowed reputation and authority upon himself. He knew where to look for lost objects—he found eyeglasses, lost purses, rings, poll-taxes, driver’s licenses; even stolen things came to light under his discovering genius; he located cars, letters, jewels; and once in a while he had been able to lay hands on the whereabouts of a thief, a missing person, someone hiding out, and other mysteries. Mechanically gifted, a genius at creating complicated constructions, he had constructed a delicate, efficient world of contrivances composed of levers and purchases, slings, tension springs, gears, trestles, trapezes, pulleys and braces for the crippled to survive in, for the limbless (arms, hands, legs, feet) to travel with (drive, walk, even dance). Therefore the afflicted loved him. He was, then, a healer—a creator, really—for he had made new people; they sort of rose from the dead, because where they had been halt before, now they could walk, even though mechanically, like crabs, like robots or puppets; and where they’d be flat on their backs paralyzed, he raised them up on trapezes and slings with ropes and pulleys. Mr. de Persia set a whole still world of people into motion, as though he had brought them to life. Naturally, the afflicted and deformed loved him and considered him their savior.
He made a deaf lady hear, though later, God knows, she wished she hadn’t from some of the things she heard. But he made her a horn for people to speak in, yelling a little, and she could hear. The horn was made of shining brass and on it the creator had inscribed Ο World Ο Life Ο Time. A very ugly woman named Theresa was blind in one eye because of a dropped eyelid—it had fallen like a broken shutter and darkened that side of her. What Mr. de Persia did was to draw the eyelid up with an invisible thread and tie it around the lady’s ear and she rejoiced. “I got so tired of looking at the inside of my eyelid,” she said. “Now I can see something else, for a change. And when there’s something I don’t want to see, why I just pull the invisible string and down goes the curtain on something I can’t stand to see. Mr. de Persia gave me sight of things, though, where I had only half before.”
He was a master inventor, no doubt about it. With wires and strings he could raise up into a lifelike position a dead bird so quick on the wing that a hunter would have shot at it. Once he devised a grabbing contraption that worked like a hand turned by an elbow to reach down, clutch and pull up a boy who had fallen in a dry well. He had performed, with a gadget that burrowed and kicked out dirt like a possum, excavations under fallen masses; had snagged thrashing people drowning in the river, rescued people from flames in hotel fires with instant ladders that shot out, jointed, from an object no bigger than a stepladder; and, in general, he had done heroic, lifesaving acts at the mill and other places. He was a saint! A hero! A mastermind! Now he was of no help to anybody, including himself. He just lay radiant, as if he were in a glossy cake of gelatin, man-in-aspic, something exquisite and gourmet, his countenance rosy with strange health and his body warm and blooming. He was obviously thriving in very deep life.
Once their energy was recovered a little, the people of the town began to do more constructive planning. First, they moved Mr. de Persia in his tub from his overcrowded repair shop. He needed a large and open place. They had to take off part of the roof, and since the big man in glass could absolutely not be lifted, a crane was brought over from Conroe. People along the way who saw it traveling like some dinosaur with police cars howling around it, told each other that that was the crane from Conroe going to lift up Mr. de Persia in the glass tub. A tremendous procession gathered and followed.
The crowd that had assembled to witness the transfer of Mr. de Persia in the glass tub was in need of police control, for there were thousands. And there, in the sunlit air rose the gleaming burden of the crane, which seemed to do its work with slow and measured majesty. Caught for a moment in the direct rays of the sun, it shot out a blinding flash of light that struck the crowd like lightning and the thousands wove and shuddered under the dazzling glance and it was mysterious and pentacostal and many fell or were cast to the ground like Paul in his blind seizure. In a second it was over; and down, shining as lucently and silvery as if it were a cake of ice in tongs, the tub of glass lightly lowered onto a pipeline truck and was carried as carefully as an egg to Rose Field on the edge of town, the site of Chautauquas, Revivals, and Carnivals, since this was the largest open space with shelter—the covered bandstand—that could be found.
The tub rested on the bandstand stage under the great shell of the open-air platform, raised high—just above reach—so that people could not molest Mr. de Persia. To see him up there above, through the glass, he was something more than a man. He was of nature, something in a jar—fruit, preserve; something aquarian—a purplish fish. At times the glass became like flesh, pale and smooth-looking, soft as skin. Other times it was incandescent in the hot noon sun, livid with white heat, so that Mr. de Persia’s body seemed incendiary in white flame, transfigured. But at night the ice was all frozen azure and the figure lay now cold and hard and remote, and seemed smaller. And at darkest night, the glass was opaque and almost black. Then, in the light of dawn, people came quietly before sunrise to see, in awe, the glass become a piece of cold white water. And then, when the sunrise struck it like a flaming sword and marked an orange cross over it, people fell to their knees and wept and confessed.
But at all times, Mr. de Persia remained mysteriously fresh and unruffled, his suit fresh, his body sweet and untouched by time. His amazing freshness and purity, the miracle of his self-refreshment, of his being unravaged by the passage of time, untouched by material changes and physical needs, save his unappeasable and inexhaustible power, curved like a horn across his thigh, peaking like a large bonnet his purple trousers, made him seem immortal, beyond rust and moth. He dwelt in many mansions, in his tub. Yet how very mortal he was as he went on breathing gruffly, like a great male, and lifting from himself, buoyant and graceful as a bending reed and solid as a sausage, his throbbing flesh.
The wall behind this now apostolic figure was garlanded with strings of bright flowers and streamers of colored paper, branches of pine trees, and it was a real bower. Rose Field became a wide plaza where the crowds could mill or stand.
Now that Mr. de Persia had space around him, hundreds and hundreds more began to come to him in search of his widely publicized powers. Now, not only the curious, the lecherous and the adoring came, but also the afflicted. People came shouting because they were deaf and could not hear themselves talk, staggering on crutches because they were crippled, and led by others because they were blind. Others were brought on cots and there were even humpbacks, harelips, grossly fat people, and an assortment of your usual run of deformities including, it was said, a morphodite from Grape-land. It is not known whether there were any restorations or healings, but it was reported that an old woman, blind since birth, got something of a glimpse, just for a few moments, of her sister who had taken care of her all these years. “I saw Elva, I saw Elva!” she cried, and danced for joy until she fell down. When they picked her up, she was blind again. But she gave testimonials, although it had not been Elva at all that she had seen, because Elva had asked an old man to watch after her sister for a minute while she went to buy some chewing gum.
So now Mr. de Persia had a reputation like a god: he held power over growth and decay, over a kind of birth and a kind of death, over “failing energies” as a Boston newspaper had put it. Mr. de Persia, virtuoso inventor, elite fixer, visionary artificer, restorer, magnifico, fantastico as the Italian press named him, came to stand for art, life-in-death, sex, and human folly. He who had wanted to repair and mend the broken chain of life as if he were to solder broken metal links in his shop, lay now in chaste lust, raunchy abstinence, hot purity, somewhat divine.
It was on the twenty-eighth day of his “lubricious sleep” (a phrase applied to Mr. de Persia by a London newspaper report) that Mr. de Persia’s body was found missing at dawn.