Thomas Wolfe, page 231
We shall scorn scorners, curse revilers, mock at mockers. Have they grown wise on dust and alum? Do they speak truly because their tongues are bitter? Have they seen clearly because their eyes are blind? Is there no gold because the sands are yellow? It is not true. They’ll build great bridges yet and taller towers. But a vow has lasted where a wall has fallen; a word has been remembered where a city perished; and faith has lived when flesh grew rotten.
Mrs. Jack was fair; she was fair, she had dove’s eyes; and in all the world there was no one like her.
For a moment the woman paused, looking out of the window, smiling gently, and with that musing and tranquil expression touched with sadness that people have when they remember lost faces and lost laughter, and the innocence of old joy. The strong, delicate light of the late sun shone on her face without violence or heat, with its remote, fading, and golden glow, and for a moment she passed into a deeper revery, and he saw the look on her face that he had seen once or twice before on the ship, and which already had power to wound his suspicion and to awake in him a jealous curiosity.
It was a somber, dark, and passionate look that transformed her merry and eager face with an expression of brooding intensity. Suddenly, he noticed that the line of her mouth was curved downward like a wing, giving a masklike grief, an almost Slavic and undecipherable passion to her face, and he was pierced with a bitter desire to know the secret of this look. It had in it a strange, animal bewilderment. He noted her low skull, now contracted by a frown of perplexity, as if her brain was struggling with some grievous thing in life it could not fathom.
In a moment she had passed from the simple and eager interest, the lively and childish curiosity which drew her senses outward and seemed to fill her with a constant and sensuous delight in all the life and movement of the earth, into an inner and remote absorption from which the world was excluded. The look had in it so much perplexity and pain, so much dark grief and brooding passion, that it awakened in him a feeling of bitter mistrust.
He felt tricked and cheated and baffled by a cleverness and subtlety of living that was too old, too wise and crafty, for him to fathom or contend with. He wondered if her simple eagerness and apparent absorption in lively human things, even her merry and rosy face of a delicate and noble beauty, were not merely some apparatus of concealment and escape from this secret thing that dwelt in her, if they were not merely an appearance calculated to deceive the world, and if, left to herself, unoccupied by any work or amusement, she would not plunge immediately into this somber mood.
What was it? Was it the memory of some definite and painful loss, the thought of some lover who had left her, the recollection of some grief from which she had never recovered? Was it the thought of some man, some unknown lover, from whom, perhaps, she had parted that Summer in Italy? Was it some young man like himself, some boy, she coveted? Were her thoughts, from which he was now completely excluded, focused upon this passion and this person? Was he merely the substitute to this desire, the second-hand assuagement?
He told himself that he did not care, and surely the cynicism which he professed to himself at that moment, and which simply connected this woman to the great number of wealthy and fashionable women who are constantly seeking new loves and lovers, should have enabled him to accept such a situation without regret. But now he felt instead the stab of jealousy: without being willing now to admit either desire or love for her, he wanted her to admit them for him. He wanted to be loved and preferred above all others.
A sinister vision of the city blazed in his mind. Instead of the golden and exultant vision of the city which he had known in childhood, this vision was drawn in lines of lust and cruelty, peopled with faithless loves and treacheries, inhabited by the conspirators of passion—by a world of rich, sensuous, and unsated women, of professional Don Juans, of lesbians, pederasts, and the cruelly impotent, of sterility that battened on pain, of the jaded appetites that could be spurred only by the sight of grief and madness—these figures appeared to mock the faith and passion of youth, as a countryman is mocked when he discovers that his love has been made the spectacle of a peep-show audience.
Or was this woman’s somber and passionate revery only a token of some less definite and less personal sorrow? Was it simply the sign of a state of brooding consciousness which, inarticulate and directed towards no thing or person, felt deeply and wordlessly the tragic underweft of life, the loss of youth, the approach of age and death, the inescapable horror of time?
He remembered now how quietly and with what fatal decision she had said the last night on the ship: “I want to die—I hope that I die in a year or two.” And when he had asked her why, she said with this same look of animal-like perplexity on her face: “I don’t know. . . . I just feel finished. . . . It seems that I’ve come to the end of everything. . . . There’s nothing more that I can do.”
The statement had exasperated and angered him inexplicably, because he hated death and wanted passionately to live, and because there had been no hysteria or sudden grief in the way she said it. The way in which she had spoken had a curious flatness, a desolate perplexity, as if she had really come to the end of all desire, and of all her resources, and as if she felt convinced that no new or beautiful thing could in the future be added to the sum of her life.
The contrast between this moment of desolate and hopeless resignation and Mrs. Jack’s usual state of merry and joyful absorption with the details of living was so great that he felt anger and mistrust: if this sense of vacancy and tragedy dwelt in her always, then how far could one trust this simple and eager appearance she made before the world, this presentment that was so lovely, sensuous, so full of delight, sweetness, and humor, and that made people love her?
He could not feel that she was practicing some specious and complex fraud upon the world. Such an idea seemed ridiculous because there had never been an actress with enough talent to play such a part, and he felt the mistrust and pain one feels when he discovers unsuspected and bewildering depths and complexities in the character of a person he thought was simply and easily understood, and that he had come to know.
Now, even the plain, frank, and simple way she had of talking—her frequent, yet very straight and natural-sounding, use of such words as “fine,” “grand,” “marvelous,” and occasionally “swell”—seemed, together with her jolly and rosy little face, and her whole manner of honesty, simplicity, and directness, to be part of the deceptive mechanism of an immensely complex, old, and sophisticated spirit.
Mrs. Jack not only made use of this kind of rough-simple argot that was at that time coming into fashion among sophisticated people, but it really seemed to be a part of her life and character, and she seemed to use it with complete honesty and sincerity, along with a speech that was plain, straight, and pungent, enriched by a meaty, homely, and colloquial metaphor, a concrete descriptive power that made use of the good, straight words of common speech, but that was absolutely her own, and that seemed to come out with an immense, spontaneous inventiveness as she talked, and to be drawn out of the experience and feeling of her own life.
For example, in describing the terrible heat on the pier the day the ship had docked, she said: “God, wasn’t it awful! I thought I was going to melt away before I got out of there! I just wanted to unscrew my head from my shoulders and drop it down into a well of nice cold water to soak a while!” And this image of coolness and refreshment so delighted her that she went on, with her ruddy little face glowing with humor, delight, and eagerness as she described how it might be done: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could do a thing like that?” she cried. “I used to think about it when I was a kid. I always hated it when it got hot in the Summer; they made us wear so many clothes in those days, it was simply horrible! I used to think how fine it would be if I could just unscrew my head and drop it down a well to soak—I could see the whole thing just as plain as day,” she went on with her face flushed with laughter. “I’d give my head a little turn—it would go ‘Twirk!’” she said comically, “and there it would be all ready to go down into the well. Then after I’d let it soak a while I’d pull it back again, and put it on—and it would go ‘Twirk’—and there I’d have it, cool and clean, back on my head again! Isn’t it wonderful the things a kid can think of—hah?” she demanded, with a merry, glowing, and delighted face.
Her mind was full of all kinds of fantastic images like this, and she invented new ones all the time with a childlike fascination. Of some pompous actor, she would say with a disgusted scorn that yet had in it no real ill-humor or malice:
“Say! That fellow makes me sick with all the airs he gives himself. He’s so damned fancy that you wouldn’t believe it’s possible till you see him. You know what his face looks like? Well, I’ll tell you, it looks just like a piece of cold sliced ham!” and, her face glowing with good humor, she would break into a delighted yell of full, rich, woman’s laughter.
Finally, she would say in a quiet and very earnest tone of some person of her acquaintance:
“Oh, he’s a very fine person! He’s one of the finest people that I’ve ever known!”—and she would say this with such a straight, open, and engaging look of frankness and conviction on her earnest little face that one felt convinced immediately, not only of her sincerity, but also of the “fineness” of the person she spoke about.
Yet, she made frequent use of these rough-simple words which fashionable and sophisticated people were beginning to use at that time, and in which there was something false, shameful, and sickening when they said them. But now he wondered with an incoherent perplexity and confusion of spirit if she did not use these words for the same reason the other fashionable people used them—to give an appearance of simplicity, plainness, and straightforward honesty to a complex and subtle character that had no simplicity in it, but which was so immensely talented and able that she could use all the words and phrases a thousand times and with a sophistication so assured and certain that it could mask itself at every point with an impregnable illusion of simplicity.
She was always using the word “fancy,” and it was evident that about the worst comment she could make on anyone was to call him “fancy.” Yet, remembering now things she had said to him on the ship, and always with this same straight, open, and utterly convincing look of sincerity—that she thought a play by James Joyce, Exiles, was “the greatest play that had ever been written,” and knowing that this play was nothing but a fancy and obscure little play, and not in any way to be compared with Ulysses; and having heard her talk of D. H. Lawrence almost in the manner of a cult-adept, as if Lawrence had not only given men fine books and moving characters but was himself a second Jesus Christ offering us the way to life and everlasting truth; and having heard her say that she had been “psychoanalyzed,” and speak of psychoanalysis as the greatest truth that men had ever discovered, and the sudden means of healing all the fury, unrest, and madness that had afflicted the souls of men for twenty thousand years—having heard all this, together with her comments on African sculptures, primitive paintings, Charlie Chaplin as a supremely great tragic artist, the modern dance, and all the other identifying paraphernalia with which the lives of sophisticated people were tricked out, and which, beneath its show of liberalness and alertness to new forms of art and life, was really itself nothing but a sterile, monotonous, and lifeless form of dutiful consent for people who had no power to make a new life for themselves, and whose greatest impulse was to keep in the swim—having already seen and observed in her all these disquieting signs of a familiar cult, he now wondered, in the distress and perplexity of his spirit, whether she was really an immensely competent “fancy” person pretending to be simple, or the simple, direct, and honest person that she seemed to be, who hated what was “fancy.”
And his feeling on this point was so belligerent and resentful because every time she used the word he would apply it to his own life, and remember the letter he had written her. Then he would writhe with shame and loathing as he remembered how pompous, florid, and unnatural it was, and yet how it had come out of the passion and the substance of his life—how he had sweated real blood, and paid real anguish, desolation, and despair for something that was false.
Then he remembered suddenly, too, that during that last night on shipboard she had confessed a compassionate nature, had been distressed because she “did not want to see him suffer”—and as he remembered her words, and the casual circumstance of their meeting, an intolerably painful suspicion awoke in him that if it had not been he it might have been another youth, that an opportune chance had simply put him in the way of a romantic woman at a moment when she wanted adventure. The whole scene of their meeting on the ship returned to his memory bitterly. He winced and tried to withdraw from it. He realized now that he wanted to forget or change it.
A man can survey the general spectacle of living with the detachment of a philosopher or a cynic, he can be amused by its delusions and follies, above all he can laugh at the madness of love and of the lover; but when he deserts the general spectacle to become an actor in the show, his detachment vanishes, and when his heart and interest are involved, the conflict between general truth and particular desire causes doubt, pain, and suffering. And Monk felt something of this conflict now. What was she—a woman approaching middle age who dreaded its coming and wanted a lover, any lover? No, a rare and beautiful woman who had preferred him above all others. What was his involvement with her—a part of the human comedy of folly and illusive desire, another repetition of the endless adventure of the infatuated youth, the gulled yokel, the country greenhorn for the first time in the city? No, the miracle of chance, the met halves of the broken talisman, the jointure of the two true hearts, the beautiful and faithful lovers who had made their way through all the maze and tumult of this earth’s vast wilderness to find each other—the very proof and purpose of a destiny.
In all his confusion and doubt as he gazed at the woman plunged in her somber and disturbing revery, suddenly he wanted to cry out at her angrily and violently: “What are you thinking about? What is the meaning of this tragic and mysterious air? Do you think you are so subtle I cannot understand you? You’re not so wonderful as all that! I have thoughts and feelings just as deep as yours!”
For some time, lost in this dark and brooding revery which he could not fathom, Mrs. Jack had been leaning on her drawing table where her designs and some sketches for costumes were scattered. And now, unconsciously, impatiently, Monk struck the smooth white board of the table a smart blow with the flat of his hand. Immediately she started out of her revery, looked in a startled manner at him, slipped the ring nervously on and off her finger, and then, with a kind and eager look, she came towards him smiling.
“What are you looking at, Mr. Webber? Do you like my design—hah?”
“Oh, yes! Very much,” he said stiffly. “It’s very good,” although he had not looked at it.
“I love to work here,” she said. “All the things you use to work with are so clean and beautiful. Look at these,” she said, pointing to the wall behind the table, where several of her instruments—a T-square and a triangle—hung suspended from nails.
“Aren’t they beautiful? It’s as if they had a sort of life of their own, isn’t it? They are so clean and strong. You can do such delicate and beautiful things with them. Aren’t they noble and dignified things, though?” she continued. “It must be wonderful to be a writer like you are, and have the power to express yourself in words.” He flushed, glancing at her sharply and suspiciously, but he said nothing. “I think it is the greatest power in the world,” she continued earnestly. “There’s nothing else that can touch it—it is so complete and satisfying. God, I wish I could write! If I only knew how to put it down I know I could write a wonderful book. I’d tell them a few things that would make their eyes stick out, all right.”
“What sort of things?” he now asked with curiosity and interest.
“Oh,” she said eagerly, “all sorts of things I know about. I see the most marvelous things every day. Here is all this glory and richness around you, and no one seems to do anything about it! Don’t you think it’s a shame—hah?” she said in the indignant and earnest tone that made people want to laugh. “I do. I’d like to tell people about my work. I’d like to tell them about these things I work with,” she said, rubbing her fingers gently along the soft, smooth board of the table. “I’d like to tell them all the things you can do with these wonderful materials, and of the sort of life things have in them—the way they hang from the wall, or the way they feel. God, I wish I could tell people about my work! I should like to tell them what it’s like when I design! The most wonderful and exciting thing goes on inside me, and no one has ever asked me about it, nobody has ever tried to find out what it is that happens,” she said indignantly, as if she held some person responsible for this stupid neglect. “Isn’t it a shame! . . . Gee, I’d love to put down the things I see every time I go out in the street. It gets richer and more beautiful all the time. I keep seeing new things now that I used not to notice at all. . . . Do you know what is one of the most wonderful things in the world?” she demanded abruptly.
“No,” he said in a fascinated tone, “what is it?”
“Well,” she said impressively, “I’ll tell you—it’s the window of a hardware store. . . . I passed by one going downtown the other day, and God!—it was so wonderful I stopped the car and got out. There were all these strong and beautiful instruments, they made a wonderful kind of pattern, it was just like some strange, new kind of poetry. . . . And oh, yes! I should like to tell the way the elevated structure looks when you come down some cross street to it. Sometimes at evening it makes the most wonderful design against the sky—I should like to paint it. . . . Then I should like to tell about all the different people I see, the clothes they wear. I should like to write down what I know about clothes. It is the most fascinating thing in the world, and nobody seems to know anything about it.”
