Thomas Wolfe, page 257
Yes, he had winced and faltered in the stare of men like these, and yet his fathers were great men, and had known the wilderness, and had winced and faltered in the stare of no one. And had their spirit died upon the earth? Suddenly he knew that it had not. He saw that it lived in the very air around him, and he knew it still belonged to the fabric of man’s life, as real and living as it ever was.
Had not ten million men before him brought their strength and talents and all the golden legendry of their youth into the city? Had they not heard the accursed clatter of their feet upon the metal stairs, the entrance tilings, and seen the hard, dead eyes and heard the cold and loveless greetings of the men from whom they bought the refuge of their little cells? Had they not with hearts of fire, with the burning hunger of their savage loneliness, hurled themselves out of these little cells into the streets again? Wild-eyed and desperate, mad of brain, had they not coursed the terrible streets in which there was neither curve nor pause nor any place that they might enter, and searched the myriad faces with a desperate hope, and then returned into their little cells, mocked by the city’s terrible illusions of abundance and variety, and by the cruel enigma of man’s loneliness among eight million, his poverty and desolation at the seat of a stupendous power and wealth?
Had they not cursed in the darkness of their little rooms at night, and ripped the sheets between convulsive fingers, beat their fists against the wall? Had they not seen a thousand insults to the living in the streets of night, and smelled the foul stench of a brutal privilege, seen the leer of a criminal authority, the smirk of a corrupt and indifferent power, and had they not grown mad with shame and horror?
And yet all did not grow grey of heart or dead of eye, or wearily ape the gabble of the dead. All did not madden desperately to defeat. For some had seen the city’s stupefying and unnumbered cruelty, and lived upon their hate of it, and not grown cruel. Some had drawn mercy from the cobblestones, found love within a little room, and all the living richness of the earth and April in the furious clamors of a street. And some had struck the city’s stony heart and brought forth lucent water, and wrung out of her iron breast the grandest music that the earth has known. They had bloodily learned the secret of her stern soul, and with the power and passion of their lives won from her what they sought in youth.
Were there not still men who strode with confidence the streets of life, knew fortitude and danger and endurance in their daily work, and yet leaned with calm eyes at evening on their window sills? Were there not men who in the rush and glare of furious noon thickened the air with strong, hoarse curses from the seats of trucks, sat with gloved hands of cunning on the throttle, looked with a glint of demon hawk-eyes on the rails, lifted their voices in command to swarthy, sweating laborers, men who drank, fought, whored, and fed stupendously, and yet were brave and gentle in their hearts, filled with the warm blood and the liberal passion of living men?
And as he thought of them, the earth was living with the brave presences of men and women who had torn joy and passion strongly from the earth, just as now the whole of his big room was living with the life of Esther. The memory of her small and bitterly wounded face, stricken with the surprise and grief of a child whose gaiety and affection has been killed suddenly by a blow, returned to twist into his heart its merciless and avenging blade.
But now his life was so caught up and whirled about in this wild dance of madness and despair, of love, hatred, faith, and disbelief, of a savage jealousy and a despairing penitence, that he no longer knew what justice or what falseness rested in his curse or prayer or self-reproach, or whether he was mad or sane, or if his life and sinew had been seduced and rotted by an evil thing, or fed and nourished by a good one. At the end he only knew that, true, false, fair, foul, young, old, good, evil, or anything he thought whatever, she was rooted in the fabric of his life and he must have her.
He struck his fist into his face, a wild and wordless cry was torn from his throat, and he rushed from his room and from the house, out in the street to find her.
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40
PURSUIT AND CAPTURE
All at once she saw his apelike shadow moving on the pavement. In firm young sunlight it came bounding after her, the body and the long arms prowling, the legs leaping high in their strange stride, and her heart was twisted suddenly and beat hard with pain and joy. But she did not turn to look at him, she lowered her face stubbornly and went on faster as if she did not see him, and the shadow bounded after her, came up beside her, walked abreast of her, and still she did not look at him, and he did not speak.
At length he seized her by the arm and, in a voice surly with shame and obstinacy, said:
“What’s wrong with you now? Where are you going? What the hell’s the trouble now?”
“You told me to go,” she said with offended dignity, and she tried to pull her arm away. “You told me to leave you and never to come back again. You drove me out. You’re the one.”
“Come back,” he said with sullen shame, and stood still as though to turn her around and head her back down the street.
She jerked her arm away from him and walked on. Her lip was trembling and she did not speak.
He stood a moment looking at her retreating figure, and in his mounting shame and baffled rage the old black fury rose up in him suddenly and he bounded after her, yelling frantically:
“Come back! Come back, God-damn it! Don’t disgrace me in the streets!” He seized her arm again and roared: “Don’t bawl! I beg and beseech you not to bawl!” he shouted.
“I’m not bawling!” she said. “I’m not disgracing you! You’re the one!”
Some people had stopped to stare at them, and when he noticed them, he turned on them savagely and snarled:
“It’s no business of yours, you leering swine! What are you looking at?”
Then, turning towards her small form menacingly, he said in a hoarse voice and with a contorted face:
“You see, don’t you? You see what you’ve done! They’re looking at us! Great God, they’re lapping it up—you can see them lick their filthy chops about it! And you enjoy it!” he shouted. “You love it! Anything, by God, so long as you attract attention! Anything to degrade, ruin, and humiliate me!”
He had her by the arm, and he now began to pull her back along the street so fast she had to run to keep up with him.
“Come on!” he said in a frantic and entreating tone. “Come on, for God’s sake! You’re ruining me! Please come on!”
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she said, and the tears were running down her face. “You said you didn’t want me any more.”
“That’s right”—he said—“cry! Boo-hoo! Weep your glycerine tears!”
“No. They are real tears,” she said with dignity.
“Oh, glub-glub! Oh, gul-lup, gul-lup! Woe is me! Oi yoi yoi! Play to the crowd! Get their sympathy!”
Suddenly he burst into a wild, mad laugh, and, turning, shouted into the street loudly, waving his arms meanwhile in beckoning gestures:
“All right, boys! Step right up! We will now witness a very high-class performance by one of our best art-theatre actresses, only a nickel, five cents, the twentieth part of a dollar!”
He paused, glancing at her for a moment, and then he cried out bitterly:
“All right! You win! I’m no match for you!”
“I’m not playing to any crowd,” she said. “You’re the one!”
“With her nice, damned, delicate little rosy face! Is this another of your tricks? Out here on the street, and letting the tears trickle down your pure, sweet, womanly face!”
“You’re the one!” she said. She stopped suddenly and looked at him, her face flushed, her rosy lip curling, and then said in a quiet and scornful voice, as if pronouncing the most insulting judgment she knew: “Do you know what you’re acting like? Well, I’ll tell you. You’re acting like a Christian, that’s what you’re acting like!”
“And you’re acting like a Jew! A damned, crafty Jezebel of a Jew! That’s what you’re acting like!”
“That’s all right about the Jews,” she said. “We’re too good for you, that’s all. You know nothing about us, and you will never be able in your vile, low soul to understand what we are like as long as you live.”
“Understand!” he cried. “Oh, I understand enough! You’re not so damned wonderful and mysterious as you think! So we’re too vile and low to understand how noble and great you are, are we? Tell me, then,” he cried in an excited and combative tone, “if we’re so low as you say we are, why don’t you stick to your own race? Why is it that every damned one of you is out to get a Christian if you can? Will you tell me that? Hey?”
In the excitement of a fresh dispute they had paused again, and now faced each other in the middle of the sidewalk with red, angry faces, oblivious of all the people who passed around them.
“No. No,” she said strongly, in a protesting tone. “You can’t say that. That’s not true, and you know it’s not!”
“Not true,” he cried, with a wild, exasperated laugh as he struck his forehead with his palm and made a gesture of imploring supplication heavenward. “Not true! My God, woman, how can you stand there and look me in the face when you say it? You know it’s true! Why, every God-damned one of you, man or woman, will crawl upon your hands and knees—yes!—creep and crawl and contrive until you have a Gentile in your clutches! . . . Jesus God! That it should come to this!” and he laughed bitterly and madly.
“That it should come to what?” she said, with an angry laugh. “God, but you’re crazy! You don’t know what you’re saying half the time. You open your mouth and it just comes out!”
“Answer me!” he said hoarsely. “Isn’t it the truth? You know God-damn well it’s the truth!”
“I’m going now!” she cried, in a high, excited voice. “You’re beginning again! I told you I wouldn’t listen to your vileness any longer!” And she wrenched her arm out of his grasp and began to walk away, with a flaming, angry face.
He followed her instantly, and stopped her, clasping her hand warmly and firmly between his own, and speaking to her in a low, entreating voice.
“Oh, come on!” he said, ashamed of himself and trying to laugh it off. “Come on back with me! I didn’t mean it. Don’t you see I didn’t mean it? Don’t you know I was only joking? Don’t you see that was all it was?” he said urgently, and again he tried to pass it off with a hearty laugh that rang hollowly in the street.
“Yes! A fine joker you are!” she said scornfully. “Your idea of a joke would be to see somebody break his neck! That’s the kind of joke you’d like! . . . I know! I know!” she continued, almost hysterical in her excitement. “You don’t need to tell me. You’re always reviling us. You couldn’t see the truth about us anyway, you hate us so!”
He stared thickly and blindly at her for a moment with bloodshot eyes, in which the fires of love and hate, of conviction and mistrust, of sanity and madness, flared instantly together in one joined flame, and behind which his spirit looked out silently, like something trapped and baffled, desperate, haggard, and bewildered. Suddenly her face shone clearly in his vision, and he saw it, small and flushed and wounded bitterly, at the same instant that he heard her words of resentful indignation.
And then, with a returning sense of his unforgivable injustice, he realized that she had spoken the truth, and that in the furious excess of his exasperation and vituperative bitterness he had said things he had not meant to say, used words the way one uses a murderous weapon, with the sole intent to wound her, words which he could not now unsay or ever atone for. And again a wave of intolerable shame overwhelmed him, and the desperation of defeat now filled his heart. It seemed he was so entirely in the grip of this madness that he could not for five minutes control a sure and certain impulse. The very impulse which had driven him into the streets to find her, the impulse of passionate regret and faith and strong conviction, had been forgotten with the first words that he spoke to her, and again he had fouled himself and her with a vile, choking glut of filthy insult and abuse.
And now, ashamed to look into her face, he looked instead into the street, and saw it plainly as it was—harsh and angular with its chaotic architectures, the raw, prognathous fronts of its new buildings, the grimed dinginess of its old ones, the lumpy copings, the rusty fire escapes, the grimy warehouses, and the occasional glow and richness of old red brick and calmer time. It was simply an American street, he had seen its like a thousand times, and it had no curve nor stay nor pause in it, nor any planned coherence.
They had paused beneath a slender tree, one of the few along the street; it grew up from a lonely scrap of earth wedged in between an old brick house and the grey pavement; and through young boughs, now leaved with the first smoky green of the year, the sun cast a net of dancing spangles on the wide brim of Esther’s hat and the rich green of the dress she wore, swarming in moths of golden light upon her straight, small shoulders. Her face, now flaming with her hurt, looked out like a strange and lovely flower below her hat, and it had the mingled looks he had seen in it ten thousand times—the straight, proud, faithful look of children, and their grieved, bewildered innocence; and all the dark opulence of the women of her race.
And as he looked at her, his entrails stirred with tenderness, with the desire to hold her gently and caress her. Slowly he moved his hand until he touched hers with his fingertips, and softly said:
“No, Esther, I don’t hate you. I love you better than my life.”
Then, arm in arm, they turned and went back to his room again. And everything was with them as it always was.
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41
THE WEAVER AT WORK AGAIN
Monk leaned stiffly, legs apart, and with his back to Esther. His weight was supported on his extended arms and the palms of his hands, which rested on the ledge of sun-warm stone outside the window. With his head out-thrust, half-sunken in his shoulder blades, he glowered right and left along the street. The delicate lights of April passed over his head and shoulders, a breeze fanned past him from the street, and behind him, on the wall, the sheets of tracing paper rattled crisply. It was another day.
Frowning, and slipping her finger rapidly in and out of the old ring she wore—a gesture habitual to her in moments of nervousness, impatience, and serious meditation or decision—Esther looked at him with a faint, bitter smile, a feeling of tenderness and anger and a scornful humor.
“Now,” she thought, “I know exactly what he’s thinking. There are still a few things in the universe which have not been arranged to suit his pleasure, so he wants to see them changed. And his desires are modest, aren’t they? Very!” she thought bitterly. “All he wants is to eat his cake and keep on having it forever. He’s tired of me and he wishes I would go away and leave him here alone to contemplate his navel. He also wishes I would stay here with him. I am the one he loves, his jolly little Jew that he adores and could devour, and I am also the evil wench who lies in wait for unsuspecting country boys. I am the joy and glory of his life, and I am also the sinister and corrupt harpy who has been employed by the forces of darkness to kill and destroy his life. And why? Why, because he is so innocent and pure—God! Could anyone believe it if they heard it!—and all the rotten people who hate life are staying up at night plotting how to wreck and ruin him. The Jews hate the Christians, and they also love them. The Jewish women seduce the pure young Christian boys because they love them and want to destroy them, and the Jewish men, cynical and resigned, look on and rub their hands in glee because they hate the Christians and also love them, too, and want to destroy them because they love to see them suffer, but really adore them because they feel such sympathy and pity for them, and yet say nothing because they get an obscene sexual satisfaction from the spectacle, and because their souls are old and patient, and they have known that their women were unfaithful for seven thousand years, and they must suffer and endure it! Weave! Weave! Weave! He weaves it day and night out of his crazy and tormented brain until not even Einstein could make head or tail of it—and yet he thinks it all as plain and clear as day! The Jews are the most generous and liberal people on earth, and have the most wonderful food upon their tables, but when they invite you to eat it, they wait until it gets halfway down your throat and you have a look of pleasure on your face, and then they say something cruel and cunning to you in order to make you lose your appetite.”
And touched again by the old and worldly humor of her race, she smiled with an ironic expression as she thought: “Lose your appetite! It’s just too bad the way you lose your appetite! I’ve been cooking for you three years now, young fellow, and the only time I’ve ever seen you lose your appetite was when you couldn’t lift another forkful to your mouth! Lose his appetite! God! The nerve of that fellow! When I’ve seen him eat until his eyes were glazed and stuck out of his head, and all he could do for three hours after when I spoke to him was grunt like a pig! Yes! And even when you came to see us all—these horrible people that you say we are—you lost your appetite, didn’t you? God, will I ever forget the night he came in when we were at dinner and he said: ‘No, not a thing! Not a thing! I just finished a big dinner at the Blue Ribbon and I couldn’t touch a bite. . . . Well,’ he says, ‘I think I will take just a cup of coffee, if you don’t mind. I’ll drink it while the rest of you are eating.’ A cup of coffee! It is to laugh! Three heaping plates full of my meat balls, a whole dish of asparagus, a bowl of salad—you cleaned out all that was left in the big salad bowl—you can’t deny it—two helpings of Cookie’s apple dumplings—and coffee! My God, he never thought of coffee till he’d finished! A bottle of Fritz’s best St. Julien, that’s what you had, my boy, as well you know—‘I don’t mind if I do take a glass, Fritz’—and one of his best cigars, and two glasses of his oldest brandy! A cup of coffee! That was your cup of coffee! God! We all laughed our heads off at what Alma said when he had gone. ‘Mother, if that’s his notion of a cup of coffee, I’m glad he didn’t feel like having a ham sandwich, too.’ And even Fritz said, ‘Yes, it’s lucky for us that he wasn’t hungry. I understand the crops are not so good this year as they were last.’ We simply roared about that cup of coffee! Not that any of us begrudged it to you! As cruel and unjust as you have been, you can’t say that about us. That kind of smallness and meanness is the thing you Christians do.”
