Adventure Magazine Cover — page 84: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

74 and ordain you high priest tomorrow or next day, but, sefior, to look at my picture, you should have preparation, you should fast—and pray.” Sweat dripped from Gogoma under his emotion. A condition of the priesthood suddenly came into the promoter’s mind. “Didn’t you tell me, Gogoma,” he asked suddenly, “that priests were not allowed to marry?” Si, sefior.”’ Then the fat man interpreted the look that crossed Lassiter’s face and went on persuasively: ‘*Sevor, what a man loves in a ‘Woman is her loveliness. Touch it, and it wilts like a flower, but, sefor, if—if you could hold the woman you love in perpetual youth, then— then—” the behemoth held up his finger and spread his pin-point eyes— “‘then, your love becomes immortal. She becomes part of your immortal idea, and the sense of sight is the sense of touch infinitely re- fined———”’ This last, uttered in a tone of revelation, meant nothing at all to the promoter. He took his foot down from the pilaster and moved southward toward Tilita. “After all, I can not become high priest, Gogoma. I shall marry. Not immediately, not so soon after Birdsong’s death, but I shall marry.” Signs of animation faded from Gogoma’s bulk. He fell in at Lassiter’s side and wad- dled in unison to his step. Dwarfed by their surroundings, the two men moved south- ward across the vast piazza. On his homeward walk Birdsong’s tragedy reenveloped Lassiter. The promoter at- tempted to free himself of it. He told him- self he had not loved the colporteur. They were hardly friends; they had never agreed on any point, and finally had quarreled and separated. But his sense of personal loss continued. Somehow Birdsong’s taking- away changed the whole atmosphere of Motobatlfor him. Thecolporteur had some- how spread an air of ordinariness, a feeling of the conventional moral values over the whole crater. Now Lassiter felt adrift. As he approached the baobab the odor of garlic and pepper drifted to his nostrils through the jungle. When he stepped into the clearing he saw old Prymoxl stirring at a huge pot on her oven, while near by lay heaps of plantains, guavas, palm cabbages and red bananas. On the other side stood Adventure calabashes of palm wine and cow-tree milk. The tang of wine, fruit and pepper smelled like a banquet. Lassiter stood in the edge of the open space looking at these preparations when the crone saw him. She proved in the height of good spirits. All her bedraggled gaiety had returned. She gave a little croak of pleasure at seeing Lassiter, dropped her work and bundled over to embrace and kiss her future son-in-law. The embrace was close and pervasive. Lassiter could feel the dry wrinkles of her lips, her flaccid dugs and her protuberant abdomen. Her breath stank of wine and garlic. For the first time, the promoter realized that his mother-in-law was merely an old Indian slattern living in a tree. Birdsong’s death, somehow, had given her this new c> objectivity. The colporteur was no longer - in existence to rate the old slattern as an immortal soul on equality with Lassiter and himself. Prymoxl patted the promoter gleefully on the back. ‘Well, yerno (son-in-law), he is dead!’’ The Stendill agent nodded mechanically. ‘‘Wasn’t it droll—died on the very spot where my nifds were lifted to the sun— after he had worried my heart out of me— well, it proves Pachacamac is stronger than his God and my nzfas are safe.” She cackled maliciously at this vindica- tion of her faith. The promoter released himself gently. “Your nifias are quite safe, sefora.” ‘And he will no longer oppose your mar- riage with my Tilita?”’ “No— He is gone.” | “And good riddance!” The grimalkin paddled back to her work well content. Her babies were safe; her daughter was about to be married; her religion had triumphed; old Prymoxl’s universe was again pat. She took a gourd of palm wine and sipped it with a smacking. ‘““Well—”’ she soliloquized, ‘‘he who mocks the gods mocks himself. Old Gogoma taught me that when I was a muchacha.” Here she smacked complacently and re- called another cliché— 3 “The gods give us life, and if we do not serve them they take our life away, eh, yerno & She drained off her gourd, and began a great stirring. There was something supremely ironic DOOLK (©