The King of Babylon
Search for the Eternal Truth
by
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions; indeed, that is the adage most appropriate to my story. Surely I meant to do the most good when I took the first step that ultimately led me on my path to perdition. Those I wished most to help were my most blatant victims. Judge me, citizens of the world, not on the monstrous disaster I wrought, but rather on what was in my heart.
It all began innocently enough on a steaming summer day in July of 1983. I was between marriages, down on my luck, and badly in need of a soft shoulder to cry on. I was a survivor of many torrid love affairs and three failed marriages. Neither type of relationship had worked for me. A love affair is for pleasure, so when the pleasure ran out, so did I. A marriage is supposed to be a life commitment with one's mate as one's prime concern. My marriages were doomed before the ink dried on the marriage certificates because, selfishly, I could never make my wives fit into my life.
My predilection for women carried with it the appellation "wolf," but this is a misnomer. The wolf is one of God's most maligned creatures. When a man is referred to as a wolf, he is characterized as rapacious, womanizing, vicious, and untrustworthy. A wolf, unlike his Homo sapiens counterpart, mates for life and is an equal partner in raising the young. Would that man were more like his lupine friends!
I have digressed. These reflections on my relationships have little to do with my story except to point out my pleasureless frame of mind. My depressed sense of self-esteem clung to me like the sweat-laden shirt I was wearing on that scorching summer day that changed my life forever.
I was living in the second floor of a
My mind drifted back to a beautiful June day in 1955 when I graduated from
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About the Book
John Karras is sitting in his New York apartment on a steamy summer day in 1983 when he receives a special delivery letter summoning him to a law office. There he is advised that he is the sole heir to the estate of a recently deceased woman named Helen Dukas, someone totally unknown to him. Upon the reading of the will, he is handed a personal letter from the woman that explains that she was for many years the close personal assistant of Albert Einstein. The letter reveals that he, John Karras, is the son of the great scientist.
Among Helen’s personal effects he discovers a diary written by Einstein. In the pages of the diary he learns the secret of Einstein’s spiritual theory of relativity, called the Unified Grace Theory, which is the means for accessing the ultimate source of power. Misapplied, this power can lead to monumental tragedy, as we learn when John Karras attempts to use it.
About the Author
Martin Boltax was born in 1926 in New York City. He grew up in Washington Heights. In 1944, upon reaching his seventeenth birthday, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. “I was afraid the war would get away from me,” he said of his decision. He was on an LST with the 7th Fleet in the Philippines, massing for the invasion of Japan, when “Harry dropped the bomb and I came home.”
Returning stateside with his wanderlust still not sated, he spent the next six months backpacking, before it was fashionable, through France, Italy, and Spain. “When I saw Hemingway sitting in a bar in Pamplona, I felt the itch to become a writer.” Half a century later, after surviving a less than memorable business career that included a disco in South Hampton and a cabaret in Soho, Martin finally scratched the itch with the writing of his first novel, The King of Babylon. Warned that he had little chance for success in such artistic endeavors at his advanced age, Martin replied with an answer that is as startling and entertaining as the words in this book. “If Grandma Moses can do it, so can I. Besides, with three ex-wives and five children, I know I can sell at least eight copies of my book!”