Thomas Wolfe, page 159
Dark Helen in my heart forever burning.
“L’écrevisse,” Eugene said, staring at the menu. “What does that mean, Elinor?”
“Well, darling, I’ll tell you,” she said with a grave light gaiety of tone, “an écrevisse is a kind of crawfish they have over here—a delicious little crab—but much much better than anything we have.”
“Then the name of the place really means The Crab?” he asked.
“Stop him!” she shrieked faintly. “You barbarian, you!” she went on with mild reproach. “It’s not at all the same.”
“It’s really not, you know,” said Starwick, turning to him seriously. “The whole quality of the thing is different. It really is. . . . Isn’t it astonishing,” he went on with an air of quiet frankness, “the genius they have for names? I mean, even in the simplest words they manage to get the whole spirit of the race. I mean, this Square here, even,” he gestured briefly, “La Place des Martyrs. The whole thing’s there. It’s really quite incredible, when you think of it,” he said somewhat mysteriously. “It really is.”
“Quite!” said Elinor. “And, oh, my children, if it were only spring and I could take you down the Seine to an adorable place called La Pèche Miraculeuse.”
“What does that mean, Elinor?” Eugene asked again.
“Well, darling,” she said with an air of patient resignation, “if you must have a translation I suppose you’d call it The Miraculous Catch—a fishing catch, you know. Only it doesn’t mean that. It would be sacrilege to call it that. It means La Pèche Miraculeuse and nothing else—it’s quite untranslatable—it really is.”
“Yes,” cried Starwick enthusiastically, “and even their simplest names—their names of streets and towns and places: L’Etoile, for example—how grand and simple that is!” he said quietly, “and how perfect—the whole design and spatial grandeur of the thing is in it,” he concluded earnestly. “It really is, you know.”
“Oh, absolutely!” Elinor agreed. “You couldn’t call it The Star, you know. That means nothing. But L’Etoile is perfect—it simply couldn’t be anything else.”
“Quite!” Starwick said concisely, and then, turning to Eugene with his air of sad instructive earnestness, he continued: “—And that woman at Le Jockey Club last night—the one who sang the songs—you know?” he said with grave malicious inquiry, his voice trembling a little and his face flushing as he spoke—“the one you kept wanting to find out about—what she was saying?—” Quiet ruddy laughter shook him.
“Perfectly vile, of course!” cried Elinor with gay horror. “And all the time, poor dear, he kept wanting to know what it meant. . . . I was going to throw something at you if you kept on—if I’d had to translate that I think I should simply have passed out on the spot——”
“I know,” said Starwick burbling with laughter—“I caught the look in your eye—it was really quite murderous! And terribly amusing!” he added. Turning to his friend, he went on seriously: “But really, Gene, it is rather stupid to keep asking for the meaning of everything. It is, you know. And it’s so extraordinary,” he said protestingly, “that a person of your quality—your kind of understanding—should be so dull about it! It really is.”
“Why?” the other said bluntly, and rather sullenly. “What’s wrong with wanting to find out what’s being said when you don’t understand the language? If I don’t ask, how am I going to find out?”
“But not at all!” Starwick protested impatiently. “That’s not the point at all: you can find out nothing that way. Really you can’t,” he said reproachfully. “The whole point about that song last night was not the words—the meaning of the thing. If you tried to translate it into English, you’d lose the spirit of the whole thing. Don’t you see,” he went on earnestly, “—it’s not the meaning of the thing—you can’t translate a thing like that, you really can’t—if you tried to translate it, you’d have nothing but a filthy and disgusting jingle——”
“But so long as it’s French it’s beautiful?” the other said sarcastically.
“But quite!” said Starwick impatiently. “And it’s very stupid of you not to understand that, Gene. It really is. The whole spirit and quality of the thing is so French—so utterly French!” he said in a high and rather womanish tone—“that the moment you translate it you lose everything. . . . There’s nothing disgusting about the song in French—the words mean nothing, you pay no attention to the words; the extraordinary thing is that you forget the words. . . . It’s the whole design of the thing, the tone, the quality. . . . In a way,” he added deeply, “the thing has an enormous innocence—it really has, you know. . . . And it’s so disappointing that you fail to see this. . . . Really, Gene, these questions you keep asking about names and meanings are becoming tiresome. They really are. . . . And all these books you keep buying and trying to translate with the help of a dictionary . . . as if you’re ever going to understand anything—I mean, really understand,” he said profoundly, “in that way.”
“You may get to understand the language that way,” the other said.
“But not at all!” cried Starwick. “That’s just the point—you really find out nothing: you miss the whole spirit of the thing—just as you missed the spirit of that song, and just as you missed the point when you asked Elinor to translate La Pèche Miraculeuse for you. . . . It’s extraordinary that you fail to see this. . . . The next thing you know,” he concluded sarcastically, a burble of malicious laughter appearing as he spoke, “you will have enrolled for a course of lessons—” he choked suddenly, his ruddy face flushing deeply with his merriment—“for a course of lectures at the Berlitz language school.”
“Oh, but he’s entirely capable of it!” cried Elinor, with gay conviction. “I wouldn’t put it past him for a moment. . . . My dear,” she said drolly, turning toward him, “I have never known such a glutton for knowledge. It’s simply amazing. . . . Why, the child wants to know the meaning of everything!” she said with an astonished look about her—“the confidence he has in my knowledge is rather touching—it really is—and I’m so unworthy of it, darling,” she said a trifle maliciously. “I don’t deserve it at all!”
“I’m sorry if I’ve bored you with a lot of questions, Elinor,” he said.
“But you haven’t!” she protested. “Darling, you haven’t for a moment! I love to answer them! It’s only that I feel so—so incompetent. . .. But listen, Gene,” she went on coaxingly, “couldn’t you try to forget it for a while—just sort of forget all about these words and meanings and enter into the spirit of the thing? . . . Couldn’t you, dear?” she said gently, and even as he looked at her with a flushed face, unable to find a ready answer to her deft irony, she put her hand out swiftly, patted him on the arm, and nodding her head with an air of swift satisfied finality, said:
“Good! I knew you would! . . . He’s really a darling when he wants to be, isn’t he?”
Starwick burbled with malicious laughter at sight of Eugene’s glowering and resentful face; then went on seriously:
“—But their genius for names is quite astonishing!—I mean, even in the names of their towns you get the whole thing. . . . What could be more like Paris,” he said quietly, “than the name of Paris? . . . The whole quality of the place is in the name. Or Dijon, for example. Or Rheims. Or Carcassonne. The whole spirit of Provence is in the word: what name could more perfectly express Arles than the name it has—it gives you the whole place, its life, its people, its peculiar fragrance. . . . And how different we are from them in that respect. . . . I mean,” his voice rose on a note of passionate conviction, “you could almost say that the whole difference between us—the thing we lack, the thing they have—the whole thing that is wrong with us, is evident in our names. . . . It really is, you know,” he said earnestly, turning toward his friend again. “The whole thing’s most important. . . . How harsh and meaningless most names in America are, Eugene,” he went on quietly. “Like addresses printed on a thousand envelopes at once by a stamping machine—labels by which a place may be identified but without meaning. . . . Tell me,” he said quietly, after a brief pause, “what was the name of that little village your father came from? You told me one time—I remember because the whole thing I’m talking about—the thing that’s wrong with us—was in that name. What was it?”
“Brant’s Mill,” the other young man answered.
“Quite!” said Starwick with weary concision. “A man named Brant had a mill, and so they called the place Brant’s Mill.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Oh, nothing, I suppose,” said Starwick quietly. “The whole thing’s quite perfect. . . . Brant’s Mill,” there was a note of bitterness in his voice and he made the name almost deliberately rasping as he pronounced it. “It’s a name—something to call a place by—if you write it on a letter it will get there. . . . I suppose that’s what a name is for. . . . Gettysburg—I suppose a man named Gettys had a house or a farm, and so they named the town after him. . . . And your mother? What was the name of the place she came from?”
“It was a place called Yancey County.”
“Quite,” said Starwick as before—“and the name of the town?”
“There wasn’t any town, Frank. It was a kind of cross-roads settlement called The Forks of Ivy.”
“No!” Elinor’s light Bostonian accent of astounded merriment rang gaily forth. “Not really! You know it wasn’t!”
“But not at all!” said Starwick in a tone of mild and serious disagreement. “The Forks of Ivy is not bad. It’s really surprisingly good, when you consider most of the other names. It even has,” he paused, and considered carefully, “a kind of quality. . . . But Yancey,” he paused again, the burble of sudden laughter came welling up, and for a moment his pleasant ruddy face was flushed with laughter—“Ya-a-ancey County”—with deliberate malice he brought the word out in a rasping countrified tone—“God!” he said frankly, turning to the other boy, “isn’t it awful! . . . How harsh! How stupid! How banal! . . . And what are some of the names, where you come from, Gene?” he went on quietly after a brief pause. “I’m sure you haven’t yet done your worst,” he said. “There must be others just as sweet as Ya-a-ancey.”
“Well, yes,” the boy said grinning, “we’ve got some good ones: there’s Sandy Mush, and Hooper’s Bald, and Little Hominy. And we have names like Beaverdam and Balsam, and Chimney Rock and Craggy and Pisgah and The Rat. We have names like Old Fort, Hickory, and Bryson City; we have Clingman’s Dome and Little Switzerland; we have Paint Rock and Saluda Mountain and the Frying Pan Gap——”
“Stop!” shrieked Elinor, covering her ears with her shocked fingers—“The Frying Pan Gap! Oh, but that’s horrible!”
“But how perfect!” Starwick quietly replied. “The whole thing’s there. And in the great and noble region where I come from—” the note of weary bitterness in his tone grew deeper—“out where the tall caw-r-n grows we have Keokuk and Cairo and Peoria.” He paused, his grave eyes fixed in a serious and reflective stare: for a moment his pleasant ruddy face was contorted by the old bestial grimace of anguish and confusion. When he spoke again, his voice was weary with a quiet bitterness of scorn. “I was born,” he said, “in the great and noble town of Bloomington but—” the note of savage irony deepened—“at a very tender age I was taken to Moline. And now, thank God, I am in Paris”; he was silent a moment longer, and then continued in a quiet and almost lifeless tone: “Paris, Dijon, Provence, Arles . . . Yancey, Brant’s Mill, Bloomington.” He turned his quiet eyes upon the other boy. “You see what I mean, don’t you? The whole thing’s there.”
“Yes,” the boy replied, “I guess you’re right.”
[¬]
LXXVIII
They were sitting at a table in one of the night places of Montmartre. The place was close and hot, full of gilt and glitter, heavy with that unwholesome and seductive fragrance of the night that comes from perfumery, wine, brandy and the erotic intoxication of a night-time pleasure place. Over everything there was a bright yet golden blaze of light that wrought on all it touched—gilt, tinsel, table linen, the natural hue and coloring of the people, the faces of men, and the flesh of the women—an evil but strangely thrilling transformation.
The orchestra had just finished playing a piece that every one in Paris was singing that year. It was a gay jigging little tune that Mistinguette had made famous; its name was Ça, c’est Paris, and one heard it everywhere. One heard lonely wayfarers whistling it as they walked home late at night through the silent narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, and one heard it hummed by taxi-drivers, waiters, and by women in cafés. It was played constantly to the tune of flutes and violins by dance orchestras in the night-clubs of Montmartre and Montparnasse. And, accompanied by the swelling rhythms of the accordion, one heard it at big dance-halls like the Bal Bullier, and in the little dives and stews and café-brothel-dancing places along noisome alleyways near the markets and the Boulevard de Sébastopol.
In spite of its gay jigging lilt, that tune had a kind of mournful fatality. It was one of those songs which seem to evoke perfectly—it is impossible to know why—the whole color, life, and fragrance of a place and time as nothing else on earth can do. For the boy, that song would haunt him ever after with the image of Paris and of his life that year, with the memory of Starwick, Elinor, and Ann.
The song had for him the fatality of something priceless, irrecoverably lost, full of that bitter joy and anguish we can feel at twenty-four, when the knowledge of man’s brevity first comes to us, when we first know ruin and defeat, when we first understand what we have never known before: that for us, as for every other man alive, all passes, all is lost, all melts before our grasp like smoke; when we know that the moment of beauty carries in it the seeds of its own instant death, that love is gone almost before we have it, that youth is gone before we know it, and that, like every other man, we must grow old and die.
The orchestra had finished playing this tune, and the dancers were going to their tables from the polished little square of floor; in a moment Starwick called the leader of the orchestra over to the table and asked him to play Starwick’s favorite song. This was a piece called My Chile Bon Bon; it was not new, Starwick had first heard it several years before in Boston, but like the other piece this tune was pregnant with the mournful fatality of a place and period; in its grotesque words and haunting melody there was the sense of something irrevocable, an utter surrender and a deliberate loss, a consciousness of doom. These two pieces together evoked the whole image and quality of that year, and of the life of these four people: for Starwick, in fact, this Chile Bon Bon song somehow perfectly expressed the complete fatality that had now seized his life, the sensual inertia of his will.
The orchestra leader nodded smilingly when Starwick asked him to play the song, went back and conferred with his musicians for a moment, and, himself taking up a violin, began to play. As the orchestra played, the leader walked toward their table, and, bending and swaying with the infinite ductile grace which a violin seems to give to all its performers, he stood facing the two women, seeming to offer up the wailing, hauntingly mournful and exciting music as a kind of devotion to their loveliness.
Elinor, tapping the tune out with her fingers on the table cloth, hummed the words lightly, absently, under her breath; Ann sat quietly, darkly, sullenly attentive; Starwick, at one end of the table, sat turned away, his legs indolently crossed, his ruddy face flushed with emotion, his eyes fixed in a blind stare, and a little wet.
Once, while the piece was being played, Starwick’s pleasant ruddy face was contorted again by the old bestial grimace of nameless anguish and bewilderment which Eugene had seen so many times before, and in which the sense of tragic defeat, frustration, the premonition of impending ruin, was legible.
When the orchestra leader had finished with the tune, Starwick turned wearily, thrust his arm indolently across the table towards Ann and wiggling his fingers languidly and a trifle impatiently, said quietly:
“Give me some money.”
She flushed a little, opened her purse, and said sullenly:
“How much do you want?”
The weary impatience of his manner became more evident, he wiggled his languid fingers in a more peremptory command, and, burbling a little with laughter at sight of her sullen face, he said in a low tone of avaricious humor:
“Give, give, give. . . . Money, money, money,” he said in a low gloating tone, and burbled again, with a rich welling of humor, as he looked at her.
Red in the face, she flung a wad of bank notes down upon the table with almost vicious force, he accepted them languidly, stripped off 300 franc notes and handed them indolently to the orchestra leader, who responded with a bow eloquent with adoration; and then, without pausing to count them, Starwick thrust the remainder carelessly in his pocket.
“Ann!” he said reproachfully. “I am very hurt!” He paused a moment; the flow and burble of soft laughter came quickly, flushing his ruddy face, and he continued as before, with a mock gravity of reproachful humor.
“I had hoped—” his shoulders trembled slightly—“that by this time your finer nature—” he trembled again with secret merriment—“your finer nature would be ready to reveal itself.”
“My finer nature be damned!” Ann said angrily. “Whether you like it or not, I think it’s disgraceful the way you fling money around! Three hundred francs to a man for playing that damned song! And you’ve done the same thing at least a dozen times! God, I’m sick of hearing about your Chile Bon Bon!” she concluded bitterly. “I wish the damned thing had never been written.”
“Ann!” again the soft mockery of sounded reproach. “And this is the way you repay us, after all we’ve done for you! It’s not that I’m angry but I’m very very hurt,” he said gently. “I really am, you know.”
