Thomas Wolfe, page 226
She greeted him as she had done that morning, in a friendly manner, and yet with a kind of nervous and uneasy haste, a businesslike matter-of-factness that showed traces of concern.
“Oh, hello,” she said quickly, “I’ve been looking for you. It’s nice to see you”—as they shook hands. “Look. Here’s your ticket,” she had it in a small envelope. “I got them to give it to me on the aisle. . . . It’s in the back of the house, but there are some vacant seats behind it, and I thought I would come out and join you later on. . . . I’ve been terribly busy ever since I got back. . . . I’m afraid I’ll have to be backstage until the curtain goes up, but after that I can come sit with you. . . . I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not. You go on back to work. I’ll see you later.”
She walked into the small lobby of the theatre with him. There were a number of people here. Some of them were fashionably dressed, others wore ordinary clothes but had the look, he thought, of theatre intellectuals. Most of them seemed to know one another. They were gathered together in chattering groups, and as he passed he heard one man say, with an air of complete dismissing knowingness that somehow annoyed him:
“Oh, no. The play is nothing, of course. But you really ought to see the sets.”
In another group he heard someone else speak with this same air of assured and casual knowingness of a play then running uptown:
“It’s a rather good O’Neill. I think you might be interested.”
All these remarks, with their assumption of assured authority, annoyed him past a reasonable degree. It seemed to him that such talk was false and dishonest, and against the true spirit of what the theatre should try to be; and because he had no words to answer to such cold, smart talk as this, he again felt baffled and infuriated. The remark about it’s being “a rather good O’Neill” angered him because of its implied patronage; and although he himself had been skeptical and critical of the playwright, he now found himself rushing hotly to the man’s defense, feeling that a genuine creative talent was being patronized and smoothly patted on the head and dismissed by some bloodless and talentless nonentity, whose only ability in life was to feed, to chew, to live upon the spirit and the life of better people than himself. This stiffened him with the feeling of cold insult and outrage, as if the attack had been made upon himself; and he found himself in a moment drawn fiercely in conflict with the people here.
This feeling of hostility was undoubtedly increased by the fact that he had approached this place and this meeting with the woman with a chip upon his shoulder. He had come here in a spirit truculently prepared, and the words and phrases he had heard flicked him rawly like a whip. They angered him because he had always thought of the theatre as a place of enchantment, a place where one might forget himself in magic. So, at any rate, it had been with him in his childhood, when “going to see the show” had been a miraculous experience. But now all of this seemed to have been lost. Everything these people did and said strove to defeat the magic and the illusion of the theatre. It seemed to him that instead of going to the theatre to watch people act, they went to act themselves, to see one another and be seen, to gather together in the lobbies before the show and between the acts, exhibiting themselves and making sophisticated and knowing remarks about the play, the acting, the scenery, and the lights. The whole place seemed to prickle and to reek with the self-consciousness of these sophisticated people. They seemed to enjoy the excitement of this unwholesome self-consciousness, to get some kind of ugly thrill and pleasure from it, but it made him writhe, gave him a feeling of naked discomfort, of being observed and criticized by unfriendly eyes and mocking tongues, of feeling sullen, sick at heart, and forlorn.
Although his imagination had fashioned or exaggerated some of this, yet at the bottom of his heart he knew he was not wholly wrong. Somehow, again and again, he was made to feel that he, and such as he, must, in a society such as this, walk forever along the cold and endless streets, and pass endless doors, none of which could ever be open to him. He saw that this group of hard and polished people, the very institution of this building, while pretending that they were for the support of such as he, were not so at all: harsh and terrible as the admission was, they were the true enemies of art and life, who would really undermine and wreck his work if he allowed them to.
The little lobby was breached, and had it been a thicket of dense cactus it could not have stuck or prickled harder in his outraged head. Mrs. Jack seemed to have many friends and acquaintances among this great gathering. She introduced him to a man with a swollen, Oriental-looking face: this was Sol Levenson, the well-known stage designer. He received the young man’s greeting without a word, turning his face upon him for a moment, and then turning his attention to Mrs. Jack again. As they were entering the door, she also introduced him to a meager, emaciated little woman with a big nose and a drawn and tormented-looking face. This was Sylvia Meyerson, the director of the theatre, a woman of great wealth, whose benefactions were largely responsible for its existence. He sat down then in his appointed seat, Mrs. Jack departed, and presently the lights were darkened, and the show began.
The show was an amusing one—an intimate revue which had been a great success and had won a critical and popular esteem. But here again the corrosive fault of æsthetic enterprises such as this was manifest. The revue, instead of drawing its life from life itself, or instead of being a pungent and weighty criticism of the events of life and of society, was really just a clever parody of Broadway, of plays which had won a fashionable success. There was, for example, a satire on the Hamlet of a famous actor. Here Mrs. Jack had done good service. She had designed a flight of high, ladderlike steps similar to those down which the actor had made his appearance, and the comedian was forever going up and down these steps, cleverly satirizing the vanity of the tragedian himself.
There was another parody on a Stravinsky concert, a parody of one of O’Neill’s plays, some topical songs, which were just fairly good, but had in them an appropriate note of smart satire on events and persons of the times—Coolidge, the Mayor of New York, the Queen of England—and a series of female impersonations. This last performer scored the triumph of the evening. He was apparently a great favorite of the audience, a pet-of-fashion, because they would begin to laugh even before he spoke a word, and his impersonations, which seemed to the youth to derive most of their effectiveness not from true mimicry but rather from a certain twist, an exaggeration, a kind of lewdness and vulgarity which the man contrived to give to all of his impersonations, provoked storms of applause.
Halfway through the first part of the show Mrs. Jack came in and slipped into a seat behind Monk, and remained there until the intermission. When the people arose to file up the aisles into the lobby and out into the street, she tapped him on the arm and asked him if he would not like to get up too, at the same time saying brightly: “Do you like it—hah? Are you having a good time?”
Meanwhile, people began to come up to her, to greet her, and to congratulate her on the work she had done for the revue. She seemed to have dozens of friends in the audience. It seemed to Monk that two-thirds of the people there knew her, and even those who did not know her knew about her. He could see people nudge each other and look towards her, and sometimes strangers would come up to her and introduce themselves and tell her how much they had enjoyed her work in the theatre. She was apparently a kind of celebrity, much more of one than he had dreamed, but it was very pleasant to see how she received the flattering attention that was being heaped upon her. She neither simpered with false modesty nor did she receive praise with an affectation of haughty indifference. Her response to everyone was warm and natural. She seemed to be delighted at her success, and when people came up to praise her she showed the eager pleasure and interest of a child. When several people would come to her at once, her manner was divided between happiness and eager curiosity. Her face would be rosy with pleasure at what someone had just said to her, at the same time she would have a slightly troubled and concerned look because she could not hear what someone else was saying, so that she was always turning from one person to another, bending forward in her flushed excitement and eagerness not to miss a single word of it.
To see her thus in the lobby, surrounded by a cluster of congratulating people, was one of the pleasantest things that he had ever seen, and by far the pleasantest moment he had had since he had come into the theatre. The picture of this flushed, rosy, and excited little person, surrounded by a cluster of fashionable and sophisticated-looking people, made him think of some kind of strange and lovely flower surrounded by a swarm of buzzing bees, save that this flower seemed to draw honey to itself as well as give it off. The contrast between Mrs. Jack and all these other people was so startling that for a moment he wondered by what strange trick of chance she had been thrust among them. For a moment, she seemed almost to belong to another world, a world of simple joy, of childlike faith, of sweetness and of naturalness, of innocence and morning. In this sophisticated gathering, each person stamped in his own way with the city’s mark, each touched with the sickness of the nerves which seems to be a tribute that the most favorite and most gifted of the city’s children pay—the hard smile and the bloodless tone, the jaded and most weary eye—she seemed to have intruded like some accidental Alice of the noon-day world, who had wandered in and out of green fields and flowery meadows, suddenly to find herself through the looking glass in a whole world of—mirrors. And the transition seemed to delight her. It all seemed so gay, so brilliant, so exciting, and so wonderfully good and friendly. She opened to it like a flower, she beamed and beaconed to it like an enchanted child, she couldn’t seem to get enough of it, and her flushed face, her eager interest, her constant air of bewildered and yet delighted surprise, as if her wonder grew with every breathing step, as if she could no longer quite take all of it in, but was sure that each new moment would be even more enchanting than the last—it was all the happiest and most appealing contrast to this hard and polished world imaginable—and yet?
And yet. “And yet” would come back many times to rend, to battle, and to haunt him in the years to come. It was great Coleridge who a hundred years before had asked this haunting question—and could not find the answer: “But if a man should sleep and dream that he had been in heaven and on waking find within his hand a flower as a token that he really had been there—ay, and what then, what then?” New times had wrought a newer and a darker image, for if a man should sleep and dream that he had been in hell and waking find within his hand a flower as a token that he really had been there—what then?
The contrast, seen here for the first time in these hard mirrors of the night, was at first enchanting, but in the end incredible. Had she been born but yesterday? Had she just come from the crib with the taste of her mother’s milk fresh on her lips? Was she indeed so overwhelmed with rapture at this brave new world that presently she must simply clap her little hands with joy—and ask the pretty lady there what was that stuff she had upon her lips, and why each separate, several lash upon her lids stuck out so independently—“What makes your pretty eyes so big, Grandmaw?” Or now, the funny man in the play tonight, why had they laughed so hard when he came out in woman’s dress, and worked his hips, and rolled his painted eyes?—and said—in such a funny tone—“You must come over.” There were so many things she simply had to find out about—and all of them so wonderful—and she did hope the lovely people wouldn’t mind if she asked questions.
No, no—it was unthinkable. Such dewy innocence as that did not exist—and if it had it would have been intolerable. No, she indeed—meshed in this world, and fibered to its roots, herself adeptive to the arts of it, a brilliant thread in the web of all its dense complexity—might be superior, but could never be a stranger, to it. This was no child of morn. This rosy innocence had not been fashioned yesterday, this impelled loveliness had kept its dewy freshness not wholly by the arts of simple nature—but here surrounded, here enthroned in these strange and troubling catacombs of night, it flourished here and aped the hues of morning. How could it be believed that the legend written on these faces—the fine etching of the soul’s decease, the sickness of the nerves, the bloodless subtlety of the polished words, the painful complication of these lives, themselves so much the product of the waste, the loss, the baffled, blind confusion of the times—which was so plain to him, could yet be a total mystery to her who was a part of it. With a sick heart he turned away—baffled and tormented, as he was to be so many times, by the enigma of that flower face.
She came to him presently through the crowd, still flushed with pleasure, beaming with excitement and delight, and took him with her into the strange and fascinating world backstage. This transition was accomplished simply by opening a small door. Now they were in a corridor which flanked the theatre on one side and which led back into the wings and to the stage. The corridor was filled with the performers: many of them had come out here to smoke and gossip, and the place was filled with their noisy chatter.
He noticed that most of the performers were quite young. He passed a pretty girl whom he recognized as one of the young dancers in the show. She had been charming on the stage, a quick and graceful dancer and a comedienne, also, but now the illusion of the stage was shattered. She was bedaubed with make-up and paint, he noticed that her costume was somewhat soiled, and the lashes of her eyes had been so brilliantly lighted and the lids and under surfaces so heavily darkened with some purplish substance that the whole face had a drugged and hectic look, the eyes especially having the feverish brilliance of a cocaine addict. She was surrounded by two or three young men whom he also recognized as performers. Their faces, too, were heavily rouged, which gave them the appearance of a feverish flush. They all turned to greet Mrs. Jack as she went past, and although she referred to them later as “those kids,” there was in their appearance something that belied these words. Certainly, all of them were still quite young, but already they had lost a good deal of the freshness and the eager and naïve belief that is a part of youth. Monk felt powerfully that they “knew” too much—and that in knowing too much they did not know enough: had lost a good part of the knowledge that should be a part of life before they had ever had a chance to gain it through experience, and now must live blind on one side and confirmed in error.
He noticed that the girl off stage had a strong quality of sexual attraction. And this, too, potent and unmistakable now, was too wise, too shameless, and too old. The young men who had clustered around her also showed the tarnish of this corrupt experience: there was something soft and loose about their eyes, their mouths, their faces, and somehow in their rouged cheeks and lidded eyes something unnatural and unmanly. The comedian in the show had just come up and joined them. He was wearing the costume he was going to wear in the next act. It was a woman’s dress, he wore a woman’s wig of fluffy, carroty-looking hair, and his face, seen in this light, was hideously painted and bedaubed. His manner off stage was just the same as it was on: as he approached his companions, he flounced his skirts and wiggled his shoulders, glared at them with his lidded eyes in a gesture of lewd refinement, and said something to them in a throaty, suggestive tone that made them all laugh. As Mrs. Jack and the young man approached, he glanced up quickly at them, then murmured something out of the corners of his mouth that made them all laugh again. Aloud, however, he raised his voice and said, “Oh, hello,” to Mrs. Jack in his suggestive parody and yet also in a friendly way.
“Oh, hello, Roy,” she cried eagerly, then turning to the other young people with her eager smiling look of slight surprise and inquiry, she said, “What are you kids up to now—hah?”
They greeted her affectionately. It was evident they were all very fond of her. They all called her “Esther,” and one of the young actors put his arm around her affectionately and called her “darling.”
This familiar use of hands and bestowing of caresses filled Monk with a hot surge of anger and dislike, but Mrs. Jack did not seem to notice it at all, or, if she did, she accepted it naturally and almost unconsciously as part of the easy fellowship that existed backstage.
In fact, now when she had entered through that door into this familiar world, there had been a subtle yet a pronounced change in her whole manner. She seemed to be just as happy and as eagerly excited as before, but now her manner was more familiar and assured. If anything, she had dropped off just that veil of “party manner” which people inevitably assume in more formal social relations. Her manner now was more accustomed: this whole world back here fitted her like an old shoe. She stepped right into it, and for the first time now Monk noticed a quality in her that he was to discover came from the truest and finest source of her whole character. It was evident that she had now left the world of play and entered the world of work, and that it was the world of work that meant most to her. Her conversation now with these young people was different from what it had been with the people outside. It was a matter of quiet familiarity and complete informality, and in its simplest accent one could somehow read a deep feeling of affection and understanding. This was evident every time she spoke to any of the people who kept passing along the corridor—“Oh, hello, Ed”—“Hello, Mary”—“Sorry, was the coat all right?—Yes, it looked perfect in front.” And in the way these people spoke to her, calling her “darling,” “Esther,” and touching her familiarly with their hands when they passed, as the others had done, there was this same feeling of quiet affection and understanding.
