Thomas Wolfe, page 255
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38
THE YEARS THAT THE LOCUST HATH EATEN
Outside in the hall it was dark, and there was nothing but the sound of living silence in the house. Esther went down the old stairs that sagged and creaked, and she heard the sound of silence and of time. It spoke no words that she could hear, but it brooded from old, dark walls and mellow woods and the quiet depth and fullness of an ancient, structural, and liberal space. Its face was dark and imperturbable, and its heart, as the heart of the king, inscrutable, and in it was all the knowledge of countless obscure lives and forty thousand days, and all of the years that the locust hath eaten.
She stopped upon the stairs and waited and looked back at the closed door, and she hoped that it would open. But it did not open, and she went out into the street.
The street was full of young and tender sunlight. It fell like Spring and youth upon the old brick of the dingy buildings, and on all the hard violence of the city’s life, and it gave life and joy and tenderness to everything. The streets were filled with their hard, untidy life, so swift, electric, and so angular, and so endless, rich, and various.
Some men with naked tattooed arms were loading boxes on a truck: they dug steel hooks into the clean white wood, and their muscles stood out like whipcord. Some children with dark faces and black Latin hair were playing baseball in the street. They nimbly snatched their game amid the thick flood of the traffic, they dodged among the wheels on strong, hard legs, they called and shouted hoarsely to one another, and the trucks and motors roared past in a single direction. And the people passed along the street in an unbroken stream, each driven to some known end, some prized or wished-for consummation. Their flesh was dried and hardened by the city’s shocks, their faces were dark and meager, believing in unbelief, and most unwise.
And suddenly Esther wanted to cry out to them, to speak to them, to tell them not to hurry, not to worry, not to care, and not to be afraid, that all their ugly labor, their hard thrust and push and violence, their bitter calculations for mean gains and victories, their petty certitudes and false assurances, were of no profit in the end. The rivers would run forever, and April would come as sweetly and as fairly and with as sharp a cry when all their strident tongues were stopped with dust. Yes! For all their bicker and the fever of their fierce uneasiness, she wanted to tell them that their cries would go unheard, their love would be misprized, their pain unnoticed, that the glory of the Spring would still shine calmly and with joy when all their flesh was rotten, and that other men some day on other pavements would think of them, of all their efforts and endurances, even of all their crimes and boasts of power, with pity and with condescension.
In the living light of April an old woman, a demented hag, poked, muttering, with a skinny finger into the rotting vegetation of a garbage can. Suddenly, she turned her withered face up to the sun, and bared her yellowed fangs of teeth, and shook her scrawny fist at heaven, and returned to her garbage can, and left it once again, holding her wrists together while tears streamed from her rheumy eyes, and she cried, “Misery! O Misery!” Then, the old hag stopped again, she drew her foul skirts up around her buttocks, she bared her flabby yellow thighs, and she danced, mincing and turning in a horrible parody of joy, cackling from the rag-end of an obscene memory. And still nobody noticed her except a slovenly policeman, who idly twirled his club as he surveyed her with hard eyes, above the brutal rumination of his gum-filled jaw, and a few young toughs who mocked at her. They smiled loose, brutal smiles, and smote each other in their merriment, and they cried out, “Jesus!”
And the people passed around her, some with a moment’s look of shame and loathing, some with the bitter, puckered mouth of outraged decency, but for the most part with impatient brusqueness, their hard eyes fixed upon their moment’s destiny. Then the old woman dropped her skirts, turned back again, returned, and shook her fist at passers-by, and no one noticed her, and she went back to her garbage can. The crone wept weakly, and the soft, living light of April fell upon her.
Esther passed before a hospital where an ambulance was waiting at the curb. The driver, his lean face tallowy, tough, and juiceless, stunned and dried, was bent above his wheel as his hard, drugged stare ate ravenously the contents of a tabloid newspaper:
“Love Pirates Make Whoopee in Love Nest”
“‘Heart-broken, Loved Him!’ Helen Cries”
“‘Bigamy,’ Sobs Dancer—Asks for Balm”
The brutal and sterile words leaped from the page to smite her as she passed with their foul, leering cheapness, evoking pictures of a life that was black, barren, idiot, and criminal in its empty violence, in which the name of love was mocked by lurid posturings, and in which even the act of murder had no horror.
Over all was the smell of blood and cheap perfumery. Here were the visages of all the human emotions:
Of passion—a vacant doll face and two fat, erotic calves.
Of crime—the flashlit stare of brutal faces and grey hats in the camera, the roadside motor car, the shattered glass.
Of love—“Honest, girlie, if I don’t see you soon I’m goin’ nuts. I’m mad about you, kid. I just can’t get my lovin’ baby off my mind. I see that sweet face of yours in my dreams, kid. Those lovin’ kisses burn me up. Honest, kid, if I thought some other guy was goin’ with you, I’d croak the both of you.”
Of grief—a mother weeping for the photographer three hours after her child had burned to death.
She’s dead.
“All right, Mrs. Moiphy, we want a shot of you now lookin’ at the baby’s shoes.”
But she’s dead.
“That’s the stuff, momma. A little more expression, Mrs. Moiphy. Let’s have the mother-love look, momma. Hold it!”
But she’s dead.
“They’ll be readin’ about you tonight, momma. They’ll be eatin’ it up. We’ll spread your map all over the front page, momma.”
She’s dead. She’s dead.
Could it be true, then, that under the living and glorious light of these great skies, upon this proud, glittering, sea-flung isle, loaded to its lips with swarming life, the mistress of mighty ships and founded imperially among the flashing tides, among these furious streets and on this crowded rock which she had loved so well, and where she had found as much beauty, joy, and rich magnificence as any spot on earth could offer, that a monstrous race of living dead had grown up, so hateful, sterile, brutal in their senseless inhumanity that a man yet living could view them only with disgust and horror, and hope for their merciful and sudden extinction, with all the hideous life they had created, beneath the clean salt tides that swept around them? Had the city suckled at its iron breast a race of brute automatons, a stony, asphalt compost of inhuman manswarm ciphers, snarling their way to ungrieved deaths with the harsh expletives of sterile words, repeated endlessly, and as rootless of the earth, and all the blood and passion of a living man, as the great beetles of machinery they hurled at insane speed through the furious chaos of the streets?
No. She could not think that it was true. Upon this rock of life, and in these stupendous streets, there was as good earth as any that the foot could find to walk upon, as much passion, beauty, warmth, and living richness as any place on earth could show.
A young interne, jacketed in white, came out of the hospital, threw his bag loosely into the ambulance, spoke briefly to the driver, clambered up and sat down carelessly with his legs stretched out upon the other seat, and the car slid off smoothly through the traffic with a clangor of electric bells. The interne looked back lazily at the crowded street, and she knew that they would return with a dead or wounded man, one mangled atom or one pulsebeat less in the unnumbered desolations of the swarm, and the interne would go in to his interrupted lunch, and the driver would return with hunger to his paper.
Meanwhile and forever the bright tides of the rivers flowed about the isle of life. In the windows of wide-sheeted glass upon the first floor of the hospital, the babies sat up in their sunlit cots, the crisp, starched nurses bent above them, and the children stared into the furious streets with innocence and wonder, with delight and with no memory.
And upon the balconies above the street the men who had been sick and afraid of death now sat in sunlight, knowing they would live. They had recovered life and hope, and on their faces was the proud and foolish look of sick men who have felt the hand of death upon the bridles of their hearts, and who now, with a passive and uncertain faith, renew themselves. Their bodies looked shrunken in their dressing gowns, upon their starved, pale cheeks a furze of beard was growing, the young wind fanned their lank, un-vital hair, their jaws hung open, and with foolish, happy smiles they turned their faces towards the light. One smoked a cheap cigar, his thin hand took it slowly and unsteadily to his lips, he looked about and grinned. Another walked a few steps back and forth uncertainly. They were like children who have been born again, and there was something foolish, puzzled, and full of happiness in their look. They drew the air and light into them with a thin, fond greed, their enfeebled flesh, reft of the coarseness of its work and struggle, soaked in the solar energy. And sometimes the brisk nurses came and went, sometimes their kinsmen stood beside them awkwardly, dressed clumsily in the hard and decent clothes they saved for Sundays, holidays, and hospitals.
And, between the old red brick of two blank walls a slender tree, leaved with the poignant, piercing green of late April, looked over the boarding of a fence, and its loveliness among all the violence of the street, the mortared harshness of its steel and stone, was like a song, a triumph, and a prophecy—proud, lovely, slender, sudden, trembling—and like a cry with its strange music of man’s bitter brevity upon the everlasting and immortal earth.
Esther saw these things and people in the street, and everything and all mistaken persons cried exultantly and fiercely for life; and in this she knew from her profoundest heart that they were not mistaken, and the tears were flowing down her face, because she loved life dearly, and because all the triumphant music, the power, the glory, and the singing of proud love grew old and came to dust.
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39
REMORSE
When Esther had gone, when Monk had thrust her through the door and slammed it after her, his spirit was torn by a rending pity and a wild regret. And for a moment he stood in the bare center of the room, stunned with shame and hatred for his act and life.
He heard her pause upon the stairs, and he knew that she was waiting for him to come and grasp her by the hand and speak one word of love or friendship to her, and lead her back into the room again. And suddenly he felt an intolerable desire to go and get her crush her in his embrace, lock her into his heart and life again, to take the glory and the grief together and to tell her, come what might, and be she fifteen, twenty, thirty years beyond his age, and grown grey and wrinkled as the witch of Endor, that she was sealed into his brain and heart so that he could love no one but her forever, and in this faith to live and die with a single and unfaltering affirmation. Then his pride fought stubbornly and wretchedly with regret and shame, he made no move to go to her, and presently he heard the street door close, and he knew that he had driven her into the street again.
And at the moment she had left the house, the aching, silent solitude of loneliness, for so many years before he met her the habit of his life, but now, so had she stolen his fierce secrecy away from him, a hateful and abhorrent enemy, settled upon his soul the palpable and chilling vacancy of isolation. It inhabited the walls, the timbers, and the profound and lonely silence of the ancient house. He knew that she had gone from him and left him in the house alone, and her absence filled his heart and filled the room like a living spirit.
He craned convulsively at his neck like a struggling animal, his mouth contracted in a grimace of twisted pain, and his foot was lifted sharply from the floor as if he had been struck hard upon the kidneys: the images of wild and wordless pity and regret passed like a thin blade through his heart, a bestial cry was torn from his lips, he flung his arms out in a gesture of bewilderment and agony. Suddenly he began to snarl like a maddened animal, and savagely to smash his fist into the wall.
He could not find a tongue for his bewilderment, but he now felt with unutterable certitude the presence of a demon of perverse denial which was, and was everywhere, abroad throughout the universe, and at work forever in the hearts of men. It was the cunning, subtle cheat, the mocker of life, the scourger of time; and man, with the full glory and the tragic briefness of his days before him in his sight, bowed like a dull slave before the thief that looted him of all his joy, and held him sullen but submissive to its evil wizardry. He had seen and known its dark face everywhere. About him in the streets the legions of the living dead were swarming constantly: they stuffed themselves on straw and looked on glorious food with famished eyes of hunger and desire, and saw it ready to their touch, bursting from the great plantation of the earth the abundance of its golden harvest, and none would stretch forth his hand to take what had been given him, and all were stuffed with straw, and none would eat.
Oh, there would have been a solace for their foul defeat if they had striven fatally with an invincible and fatal destiny which tore life bleeding from their grip, and before whom now they desperately lay dead. But they were dying like a race of dull, stunned slaves, cringing upon a crust of bread before great trestles groaning with the food they wanted, and had not the courage to take. It was incredible, incredible, and it seemed to him as if there really was above these swarming hordes of men a malignant and ironic governor who moved them like the puppets in a ghastly comedy, mocking their impotence with vast illusions of a sterile power.
Did he belong, then, to this damned race of famished half-men who wanted food and had not courage to go beyond the husks, who sought for pleasure constantly and stained the night with the obscene glitter of a thousand weary amusements, who longed for joy and comradeship and yet, with dull, deliberate intent, fouled their parties with horror, shame, and loathing every time they met? Did he belong to an accursed race which spoke of its defeat, and yet had never fought, which used its wealth to cultivate a jaded boredom, and yet had never had the strength or energy to earn satiety, and had not the courage to die?
Did he belong, then, to this set of meager slaves who feebly snarled their sterile way to death without the consummation of a single moment of hunger, grief, or love? Must he belong, then, to a fearful, fumbling race that twiddled its desire between its pallid fingers and furtively took its love round corners or in uneasy spasms on the distressful edges of a couch or, trembling, upon the rattling casters of a bed in a cheap hotel?
Must he be like them, forever furtive and forever cautious, in all things dull and trembling, and for what, for what? That youth might sicken and go sour, and turn with bitter discontent to grey and flabby middle age, and hate joy and love because it wanted them and was not brave enough to have them, and still be cautious, halfway, and withholding.
And for what? To save themselves for what? To save their wretched lives that they might lose them, to starve their wretched flesh that they might lie dead and rotten in their graves, to cheat, deny, and dupe themselves until the end.
He remembered the bitter and despairing accusation of Esther’s cry: “You fool! You poor, mad fool! This is the finest thing that you will ever have, and you are throwing it away!”
And instantly the conviction came to him that she had told the truth. He had walked the streets by night, by day, in hundreds of hours long past and furiously accomplished, searching the faces of a million people to see if there was one who was as jolly, fresh, and fair as she, to see if there was one who had an atom of her loveliness, a glimmer of the glorious richness, joy, and noble beauty that showed in every act and visage of her life, and there was no one he had ever seen who could compare with her: they were all stale and lifeless by comparison.
Now the savage hatred he had felt when he had cursed her in their bitter quarrel was turned tenfold against himself, and against these people in the streets. For he felt that he had betrayed her love, turned on her, sold her out to the dull, timorous slaves, and in so doing, that he had betrayed life and sold it out to barren death.
She had said to him with passionate indignation and entreaty: “What do you think it’s been about if I don’t love you? Why do you think I’ve come here day by day, cooked for you, cleaned up after you, listened to your insults and vile abuse, left my work, given up my friends, kept after you and wouldn’t let you go when you tried to throw me over, if it wasn’t because I love you?”
Oh, she had told the truth, the naked, literal truth. For what purpose, what crafty, deep, and scheming purpose, had this woman poured upon him for three years the lavish bounty of her love and tenderness? Why had she lived ten thousand hours alone with him, leaving the luxury and the beauty of her home for the cyclonic chaos of his poor dwelling?
He looked about him. Why had she come daily into the mad confusion of this big room in which it always seemed, no matter what patient efforts she made to keep it tidy, that the tumult and fury of his spirit had struck all things like lightning, so that everything—books, shirts, collars, neckties, socks, stained coffee cups half filled with sodden butts, post cards, letters five years old and laundry bills, student themes and tottering piles of his own manuscript, note books, a ragged hat, the leg of a pair of drawers, a pair of shoes with dried, cracked leather, no heels, and two gaping holes upon their bottoms, the Bible, Burton, Coleridge, Donne, Catullus, Heine, Spenser, Joyce, and Swift, a dozen fat anthologies of every kind, plays, poems, essays, stories, and the old, worn, battered face of Webster’s Dictionary, piled up precariously or strewn in a pell-mell circle round his cot, covered with ashes, hurled face downward on the floor before he slept—was a cyclonic compost of the dust and lumber of the last ten years. Here were scraps, fragments, and mementoes of his wandering in many countries, none of which he could destroy, most of which filled him with weariness when he looked at it, and all of which seemed to have been hurled in this incredible confusion with the force of an explosion.
