Thomas Wolfe, page 318
We who never saw brave Drake can have no difficulty conjuring up an image of the kind of man he was. With equal ease we can imagine the bearded Spaniard, and almost hear his swarthy oaths. But neither Drake nor Spaniard could ever have imagined Green. Who could have foreseen him, this cipher of America, exploded now upon a street in Brooklyn?
Behold him, Admiral Drake! Observe the scene now! Listen to the people! Here is something strange as the Armadas, the gold-laden cargoes of the bearded Spaniards, the vision of unfound Americas!
What do you see here, Admiral Drake?
Well, first, a building—your own hotel—such a building as the folk of Plymouth never saw. A great block of masonry, pale-hued, grimy-white, fourteen stories tall, stamped in an unvarying pattern with many windows. Sheeted glass below, the store front piled with medicines and toilet articles, perfumes, cosmetics, health contrivances. Within, a soda fountain, Admiral Drake. The men in white with monkey caps, soda jerkers sullen with perpetual overdriven irritation. Beneath the counter, pools of sloppy water, filth, and unwashed dishes. Across the counter, Jewesses with fat, rouged lips consuming ice cream sodas and pimento sandwiches.
Outside upon the concrete sidewalk lies the form of our exploded friend, C. Green. A crowd has gathered round—taxi drivers, passers-by, hangers-on about the subway station, people working in the neighborhood, and the police. No one has dared to touch exploded Green as yet—they stand there in a rapt and fascinated circle, looking at him.
Not much to look at either, Admiral Drake; not even those who trod your gory decks would call the sight a pretty one. Our friend has landed on his head—“taken a nose dive,” as we say—and smashed his brains out at the iron base of the second lamp post from the corner. (It is the same lamp post as heretofore described, to be found throughout America—a “standard,” standardized, supporting five hard grapes of frosted glass.)
So here Green lies, on the concrete sidewalk all disjected. No head is left, the head is gone now, head’s exploded; only brains are left. The brains are pink, and almost bloodless, Admiral Drake. (There’s not much blood here—we shall tell you why.) But brains exploded are somewhat like pale sausage meat, fresh-ground. Brains are stuck hard to the lamp post, too; there is a certain driven emphasis about them, as if they had been shot hydraulically out of a force-hose against the post.
The head, as we have said, is gone completely; a few fragments of the skull are scattered round—but of the face, the features, forehead—nothing! They have all been blown out, as by some inner explosion. Nothing is left but the back of the skull, which curiously remains, completely hollowed out and vacant, and curved over, like the rounded handle of a walking stick.
The body, five feet eight or nine of it, of middling weight, is lying—we were going to say “face downward”; had we not better say “stomach downward”?—on the sidewalk. It is well-dressed, too, in cheap, neatly pressed, machine-made clothes: tan shoes and socks with a clocked pattern, suit of a light texture, brownish red in hue, a neat canary-colored shirt with attached collar—obviously C. Green had a nice feeling for proprieties! As for the body itself, save for a certain indefinable and curiously “disjected” quality, one could scarcely tell that every bone in it is broken. The hands are still spread out, half-folded and half-clenched, with a still-warm and startling eloquence of recent life. (It happened just four minutes ago!)
Well, where’s the blood, then, Drake? You’re used to blood; you’d like to know. Well, you’ve heard of casting bread upon the waters, Drake, and having it return—but never yet, I’ll vow, of casting blood upon the streets—and having it run away—and then come back to you! But here it comes now, down the street—down Apple Street, round the corner into Hay, across the street now toward C. Green, the lamp post, and the crowd!—a young Italian youth, blunt-featured, low-browed, and bewildered, his black eyes blank with horror, tongue mumbling thickly, arm held firmly by a policeman, suit and shirt all drenched with blood, and face be-spattered with it! A stir of sudden interest in the crowd, sharp nudges, low-toned voices whispering:
“Here he is! Th’ guy that ‘got it’! . . . Sure, that’s him—you know him, that Italian kid that works inside in the newsstand—he was standin’ deh beside the post! Sure, that’s the guy!—talkin’ to anotheh guy—he got it all! That’s the reason you didn’t see more blood—this guy got it!—Sure! The guy just missed him by six inches!—Sure! I’m tellin’ you I saw it, ain’t I? I looked up an’ saw him in the air! He’d a hit this guy, but when he saw that he was goin’ to hit the lamp post, he put out his hands an’ tried to keep away! That’s the reason that he didn’t hit this guy! . . . But this guy heard him when he hit, an’ turned around—and zowie!—he got all of it right in his face!”
And another, whispering and nudging, nodding toward the horror-blank, thick-mumbling Italian boy: “Jesus! Look at th’ guy, will yuh! . . . He don’t know what he’s doing! . . . He don’t know yet what happened to him! . . . Sure! He got it all. I tell yuh! He was standin’ deh beside the post, wit a package undehneath one ahm—an’ when it happened—when he got it—he just stahted runnin’ . . . He don’t know yet what’s happened! . . . That’s what I’m tellin’ yuh—th’ guy just stahted runnin’ when he got it.”
And one policeman (to another): “. . . Sure, I yelled to Pat to stop him. He caught up with him at Borough Hall. . . . He just kept on runnin’—he don’t know yet what happened to him.”
And the Italian youth, thick-mumbling: “. . . Jeez! W’at happened? . . . Jeez! . . . I was standin’ talkin’ to a guy—I heard it hit. . . . Jeez! . . . W’at happened, anyway? . . . I got it all oveh me! . . . Jeez! . . . I just stahted runnin’. . . . Jeez! I’m sick!”
Voices: “Here, take ’im into the drug store! . . . Wash ’im off! . . . That guy needs a shot of liquor! . . . Sure! Take him into the drug stoeh deh! . . . They’ll fix him up!”
The plump, young, rather effeminate, but very intelligent young Jew who runs the newsstand in the corridor, talking to everyone around him, excitedly and indignantly: “. . . Did I see it? Listen! I saw everything! I was coming across the street, looked up, and saw him in the air! . . . See it? . . . Listen! If someone had taken a big ripe watermelon and dropped it on the street from the twelfth floor you’d have some idea what it was like! . . . See it! I’ll tell the world I saw it! I don’t want to see anything like that again!” Then excitedly, with a kind of hysterical indignation: “Shows no consideration for other people, that’s all I’ve got to say! If a man is going to do a thing like that, why does he pick a place like this—one of the busiest corners in Brooklyn? . . . How did he know he wouldn’t hit someone? Why, if that boy had been standing six inches nearer to the post, he’d have killed him, as sure as you live! . . . And here he does it right in front of all these people who have to look at it! It shows he had no consideration for other people! A man who’d do a thing like that. . . .”
(Alas, poor Jew! As if C. Green, now past considering, had considered nice “considerations.”)
A taxi driver, impatiently: “That’s what I’m tellin’ yuh! . . . I watched him for five minutes before he jumped. He crawled out on the window sill an’ stood there for five minutes, makin’ up his mind! . . . Sure, I saw him! Lots of people saw him!” Impatiently, irritably: “Why didn’t we do somethin’ to stop him? F’r Chri’ sake, what was there to do? A guy who’d do a thing like that is nuts to start with! You don’t think he’d listen to anything we had to say, do you? . . . Sure, we did yell at him! . . . Jesus! . . . We was almost afraid to yell at him—we made motions to him to get back—tried to hold his attention while the cops sneaked round the corner into the hotel. . . . Sure, the cops got there just a second after he jumped—I don’t know if he jumped when he heard ’em comin’, or what happened, but Christ!—he stood there gettin’ ready for five minutes while we watched!”
And a stocky little Czech-Bohemian, who works in the delicatessen-fruit store on the corner, one block down: “Did I hear it! Say, you could have heard it for six blocks! Sure! Everybody heard it! The minute that I heard it, I knew what had happened, too! I come runnin’!”
People press and shuffle in the crowd. A man comes round the corner, presses forward to get a better look, runs into a little fat, bald-headed man in front of him who is staring at the Thing with a pale, sweating, suffering, fascinated face, by accident knocks off the little fat man’s straw hat. The new straw hat hits the pavement dryly, the little fat, bald-headed man scrambles for it, clutches it, and turns around on the man who has knocked it off, both of them stammering frantic apologies:
“Oh, excuse me! . . . ’Scuse me! . . . ’Scuse me! . . . Sorry!”
“Quite all right. . . . All right! . . . All right.”
Observe now, Admiral, with what hypnotic concentration the people are examining the grimy-white façade of your hotel. Watch their faces and expressions. Their eyes go traveling upward slowly—up—up—up. The building seems to widen curiously, to be distorted, to flare out wedgelike till it threatens to annihilate the sky, overwhelm the will, and crush the spirit. (These optics, too, American, Admiral Drake.) The eyes continue on past story after story up the wall until they finally arrive and come to rest with focal concentration on that single open window twelve floors up. It is no jot different from all the other windows, but now the vision of the crowd is fastened on it with a fatal and united interest. And after staring at it fixedly, the eyes come traveling slowly down again—down—down—down—the faces strained a little, mouths all slightly puckered as if something set the teeth on edge—and slowly, with fascinated measurement—down—down—down—until the eyes reach sidewalk, lamp post, and—the Thing again.
The pavement finally halts all, stops all, answers all. It is the American pavement, Admiral Drake, our universal city sidewalk, a wide, hard stripe of grey-white cement, blocked accurately with dividing lines. It is the hardest, coldest, cruellest, most impersonal pavement in the world: all of the indifference, the atomic desolation, the exploded nothingness of one hundred million nameless “Greens” is in it.
In Europe, Drake, we find worn stone, all hollowed out and rubbed to rounded edges. For centuries the unknown lives of men now buried touched and wore this stone, and when we see it something stirs within our hearts, and something strange and dark and passionate moves our souls, and—“They were here!” we say.
Not so, the streets, the sidewalks, the paved places of America. Has man been here? No. Only unnumbered nameless Greens have swarmed and passed here, and none has left a mark.
Did ever the eye go seaward here with searching for the crowded sail, with longing for the strange and unknown coasts of Spain? Did ever beauty here come home to the heart and eyes? Did ever, in the thrusting crowd, eye look to eye, and face to face, and heart to heart, and know the moment of their meeting—stop and pause, and be oblivious in this place, and make one spot of worn pavement sacred stone? You won’t believe it, Admiral Drake, but it is so—these things have happened on the pavements of America. But, as you see yourself, they have not left their mark.
You, old Drake, when last your fellow townsmen saw you at the sailing of the ships, walked with the crowd along the quay, past the spire and cluster of the town, down to the cool lap of the water; and from your deck, as you put out, you watched the long, white, fading arm of your own coast. And in the town that you had left were streets still haunted by your voice. There was your worn tread upon the pavement, there the tavern table dented where you banged your tankard down. And in the evening, when the ships were gone, men waited for your return.
But no return is here among us in America. Here are no streets still haunted by departed men. Here is no street at all, as you knew streets. Here are just our cement Mobways, unannealed by time! No place in Mobway bids you pause, old Drake. No spot in Mobway bids you hold your mind a moment in reflection, saying: “He was here!” No square of concrete slab says: “Stay, for I was built by men.” Mobway never knew the hand of man, as your streets did. Mobway was laid down by great machines, for one sole purpose—to unimpede and hurry up the passing of the feet.
Where did Mobway come from? What produced it?
It came from the same place where all our mob ways come from—from Standard Concentrated Production Units of America, No. 1. This is where all our streets, sidewalks, and lamp posts (like the one on which Green’s brains are spattered) come from, where all our white-grimy bricks (like those of which your hotel is constructed) come from, where the red façades of our standard-unit tobacco stores (like the one across the street) come from, where our motor cars come from, where our drug stores and our drug store windows and displays come from, where our soda fountains (complete, with soda jerkers attached) come from, where our cosmetics, toilet articles, and the fat, rouged lips of our Jewesses come from, where our soda water, slops and syrups, steamed spaghetti, ice cream, and pimento sandwiches come from, where our clothes, our hats (neat, standard stamps of grey), our faces (also stamps of grey, not always neat), our language, conversation, sentiments, feelings, and opinions come from. All these things are made for us by Standard Concentrated Production Units of America, No. 1.
So here we are, then, Admiral Drake. You see the street, the sidewalk, the front of your hotel, the constant stream of motor cars, the drug store and the soda fountain, the tobacco store, the traffic lights, the cops in uniform, the people streaming in and out of the subway, the rusty, pale-hued jungle of the buildings, old and new, high and low. There is no better place to see it, Drake. For this is Brooklyn—which means ten thousand streets and blocks like this one. Brooklyn, Admiral Drake, is the Standard Concentrated Chaos No. 1 of the Whole Universe. That is to say, it has no size, no shape, no heart, no joy, no hope, no aspiration, no center, no eyes, no soul, no purpose, no direction, and no anything—just Standard Concentrated Units everywhere—exploding in all directions for an unknown number of square miles like a completely triumphant Standard Concentrated Blot upon the Face of the Earth. And here, right in the middle—no, that is wrong, for Standard Concentrated Blots don’t have a middle—but, if not in the middle, at least right slap-bang out in the open, upon a minute portion of this magnificent Standard Concentrated Blot, where all the Standard Concentrated Blotters can stare at him, and with the brains completely out of him——
—Lies Green!
And this is bad—most bad—oh, very bad—and should not be allowed! For, as our young Jewish friend has just indignantly proclaimed, it “shows no consideration for other people”—which means, for other Standard Concentrated Blotters. Green has no right to go falling in this fashion in a public place. He has no right to take unto himself any portion of this Standard Concentrated Blot, however small. He has no business being where he is at all. A Standard Concentrated Blotter is not supposed to be places, but to go places.
You see, dear Admiral, this is not a street to amble in, to ride along, to drift through. It is a channel—in the words of the Standard Concentrated Blotter-Press, an “artery.” This means that it is not a place where one drives, but a place where one is driven—not really a street at all, but a kind of tube for a projectile, a kind of groove for millions and millions of projectiles, all driven past incessantly, all beetling onward, bearing briefly white slugged blurs of driven flesh.
As for the sidewalk, this Standard Concentrated Mobway is not a place to walk on, really. (Standard Concentrated Blotters have forgotten how to walk.) It is a place to swarm on, to weave on, to thrust and dodge on, to scurry past on, to crowd by on. It is not a place to stand on, either. One of the earliest precepts in a Concentrated Blotter’s life is: “Move on there! Where th’ hell d’you think you are, anyway—in a cow pasture?” And, most certainly, it is not a place to lie on, to sprawl out on.
But look at Green! Just look at him! No wonder the Jewish youth is angry with him!
Green has willfully and deliberately violated every Standard Concentrated Principle of Blotterdom. He has not only gone and dashed his brains out, but he has done it in a public place—upon a piece of Standard Concentrated Mobway. He has messed up the sidewalk, messed up another Standard Concentrated Blotter, stopped traffic, taken people from their business, upset the nerves of his fellow Blotters—and now lies there, all sprawled out, in a place where he has no right to be. And, to make his crime unpardonable, C. Green has——
—Come to Life!
Consider that, old Drake! We can understand some measure of your strangeness, because we heard you swearing in the tavern and saw your sails stand to the west. Can you now do the same for us? Consider strangeness, Drake—and look at Green! For you have heard it said by your own countryman, and in your living generation: “The times have been that, when the brains were out, the man would die.” But now, old Drake, what hath Time wrought? There is surely here some strangeness in us that you could never have foretold. For the brains are “out” now—and the man has——
—Come to Life!
What’s that, Admiral? You do not understand it? Small wonder, though it’s really very simple:
For just ten minutes since, C. Green was a Concentrated Blotter like the rest of us. Ten minutes since, he, too, might hurry in and out of the subway, thrust and scurry on the pavement, go hurtling past with whited blur in one of our beetles of machinery, a nameless atom, cipher, cinder, swarming with the rest of us, just another “guy” like a hundred million other “guys.” But now, observe him! No longer is he just “another guy”—already he has become a “special guy”—he has become “The Guy.” C. Green at last has turned into a—Man!
