Part 1 (2/2)
”They liked you too much.”
I laughed. ”You mean those silly females who tried to drag me off the stage?”
He narrowed his eyes and thrust his face close to mine. ”If I hadn't had the best-trained ushers in New York there'd have been a panic and a riot in there. How come?”
I shrugged. ”The women in your town seem remarkably excitable.”
”And in _your_ town?”
”Not so,” I declared truthfully. How truthfully Your Excellency well knows.
”There's something peculiar about you,” he said, ”something very peculiar.” He leaned back in his chair and his glance swept over me.
”Suppose you cut out the leopard skin,” he said, ”and wear a jersey and trousers.”
I laughed to myself. He thought my bare body, my bulging muscles had been the cause of the trouble. What a fool! Is Your Excellency laughing too? However, I dared not disagree with him. By that time he had had many drinks. He was looking mean. He reached over and grabbed the lapel of my coat in his fist.
”What the h.e.l.l kind of a guy are you?” he snarled at me.
My hands twitched. I wished I could have picked him up and tied him in a four-in-hand knot around his own neck.
”Who the h.e.l.l are you?” he repeated.
I yawned and stretched and got to my feet. ”Not even a strong man now,” I said casually, ”just a tired man.”
I left the bar.
After that incident I was careful with the male principle. When the audience left each night I turned it on very slightly--only enough to be sure that the women would do their best to get back to see me again.
But before I go any further in this account of my adventures, Your Excellency, let me tell you about the women here. The greatest difference between the Americans and ourselves is in the women. They are extraordinary. Some of them are beautiful beyond belief. My researches completely confirm your much-criticized hypotheses concerning our own women. If our enemies who object so strongly to Your Excellency's statements could be here for only one hour they would become your devoted supporters. American women are the proof that your theories are correct. Your famous attempt to explain some of the incongruous and apparently ridiculous pa.s.sages in our ancient ma.n.u.scripts by a.s.suming the existence of a now-vanished female principle is irrefutably demonstrated by these women, Your Excellency.
Here, the female principle exists, and as you predicted, most of the women are therefore entirely different from ours. The term used in this language is ”femininity.” It is a devastatingly attractive thing--but almost impossible to explain. I will make an attempt.
Senseless, reasonless, even foolish motions of the body and the hands, the expressions of the eyes and the mouth, the way the head is moved and tilted are a part of it. So are unusual tones of the voice and special ways in which things are said. Laughter, a whisper, the direction of the glance, the fingers' pressure--these, too, are parts of it.
There are infinitely various types of adornment which hang on the body, fabrics in delicate or brilliant colors which cling and flow, gleaming stones at throat and wrists. The faces are enchantingly painted, the hair s.h.i.+ning and arranged in numerous wonderful designs.
There is an aura of the scent of flowers and fruits.
I tell you, Excellency, everything about this femininity a.s.sails the senses. It is so potent that once having experienced it the mere recollection causes the pulses to pound and throb. My hand trembles as I write these words to you. I am confused and disturbed and wild with a longing I never knew at home. I wish to meet Your Excellency's high standards in preparing this report, and yet I am unable to be scientific. The logic of the laboratory cannot be employed.
As soon as I could I began to hunt desperately for the secret of the female principle. I a.n.a.lyzed the soil, the food, the water, and the air by our own most refined methods. I found nothing to help us. I went to the risky extreme of killing two of their women. One possessed an unusual amount of this femininity. The other, who seemed to have very little of it, was essentially like one of our own women. _There was not the slightest chemical difference in their bodies._ Dead, they were precisely the same. But alive, Your Excellency, they were overwhelmingly dissimilar.
I was able to kill the unfeminine one scientifically without emotion or regret. But, although it was clearly my duty, I could hardly bring myself to kill the other one. I had known her for several days. Her femininity almost prevented my continuing with the experiment. She told me that she loved me.
I don't know if I have the skill to explain to you what this ”love”
is. Briefly, it means that the woman was in a mental state--a receptive mental state, Excellency, infinitely more violent than the peak our women reach after intensive application of the male principle. Your Excellency, _she was that way all of the time_.
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