Thomas Wolfe, page 366
Gee, I have to laugh sometimes when I see their names in the social columns, New York must be simply full of these people, where do you suppose they all come from? When you read about it it doesn’t seem possible, it is the God damndest thing you ever saw, it doesn’t seem real, you think somebody made all the names up: Mrs. H. Stuyvesant O’Toole entertained at dinner last night in honor of the Prince and Princess Stephano di Guttabelli: among those present were the Lady Jessica Houndsditch, Captain the Right Honorable Hugh McDingle, Mr. and Mrs. Van Rensalaer Weisberg, Count Sapski, R. Mortimer Shulemovitch, and the Grand Duchess Martha-Louise of Hesse-Schnitzelpuss.
But God! doesn’t it make you want to laugh! The nerve of that fellow Burke! This ham playwright that they’ve got! That’s another of those names. Nathaniel Burke my eye! Why didn’t you go pick a real fancy Christian name while you were about it?—Montmorency Van Landingham Monteith, or Reginald Hilary Saltonstall, or Jefferson Lincoln Coolidge, or something like that? Nathaniel Burke! Can you beat it? He’s the greasiest Kike you ever saw: his real name is Nathan Berkovich, I’ve known his people all my life. The Menorah Journal got hold of all our pictures somehow and the first thing you knew there was Joe Aaronson on the left, and me in the middle, and this Burke on the right with a big black headline: JEWS NOW PROMINENT IN THE ART THEATER, or something like that. I thought Burke was going to have a fit: he simply turned green. God! He was mad! I think he thought Joe and I had something to do with it, he stormed around and threatened to sue everybody: he wouldn’t speak to anyone for days. I thought Joe would die laughing: he threw his arms around me and kept saying: “After all these years, I believe! There is a God!” It was really awfully mean of him, he and Burke simply loathed each other: he kept tormenting him for days about it: “By the way, Burke, I was reading a very interesting piece about you the other day in the Menorah Journal.” Or, “I see where you have broken into print, Burke. There’s a very interesting article about your early life and struggles in this month’s Menorah Journal. Have you seen it yet? I’ll send you a half dozen copies,” and so on. I really got frightened: I was afraid once or twice that Burke was going to kill him from the way he looked. His face got all swollen and horrible looking. They both think they are God Almighty: Joe is awfully arrogant and insulting when he wants to be—I think it’s because he’s so small and Jewy looking: his face is so dark and discolored I think he wears all those horrible scarfs and neckties to accentuate it—he suffered tortures as a child: when he first went to school the teacher and all the other children thought he was a negro. I don’t think that he’s ever gotten over it: he’s really a very fine and sensitive person, a very high grade sort of man. I think that he has the finest intelligence of anyone they have there.
God! I’m glad he’s got Virginia at last, she’s a nice girl but nobody’s ever going to crown her Miss America. I thought he was going to die for a while; his face became simply purple, none of the doctors knew what was wrong with him, I think he got a little crazy. He hasn’t got much money, and he went to Europe and began to spend money right and left. I think he got delusions of grandeur, or something: he hired a Rolls Royce and two men up front and drove all through France and Germany buying costumes right and left—he spent over twenty thousand dollars, part of it he charged to the League. I thought Lawrence Weinberg was going to commit suicide: he tried to tell me about it and he began to strangle, they had to give him a drink to bring him around. Now, they have the cutest Jew baby you ever saw.
But God! the nerve of that fellow Burke! I got so tired of his goings on after a while that I said to him: “Look here, Burke. You’d just better be glad you are a Jew. Where would you be if it weren’t for the Jews, I’d like to know? That’s too bad about you. You’ve been treated pretty well, I think. Alle Yiddieshae kinder!” I think he hated me for it. I used to know his father and mother, they were such nice old people—the old fellow had a store on Grand Street, he wore a beard and a derby hat, and washed his hands in a certain way they have before eating: There’s something awfully nice about old Jews like that. They were orthodox of course, and I think it almost killed them the way he’s acted. He won’t go near them any more. Isn’t it a shame: to throw that wonderful thing away in order to become an imitation Christian?
And then there’s Mr. Rosen in his shop walking up and down and giving orders and bowing and shaking hands with people in his striped pants and rich black coat with the pearl in his necktie: he is like a powerful rich bull, he is so well kept and sleek, I always think of a great well fed bull when I see him; and everything about the place sort of purrs with luxury, everything seems so quiet, but everything seems to be going on just the same, and they’re calling for Edith all over the place, you hear them asking for her everywhere, and there she is looking like a very elegant piece of limp celery, with that pedometer strapped around her ankle, she told me she walked seventeen miles one day, sometimes she is simply dead when she gets home, the poor thing is as thin as a rail, sometimes she won’t say three words during the entire evening, even when there are people coming to dinner, but God she is smart, they couldn’t do without her, she is smarter than any of them.
We’re fine people. They sneer at us and mock us but we’re fine people just the same. “Many a time and oft in the Rialto you have rated me. . . . and spat upon my Jewish gaberdine.” Daddy was a Christian but he was so beautiful. He loved all the things we do, he loved food so much, I don’t think he could have stood this Christian cooking. I can’t imagine him eating the junk one of these little anemic Christian bitches serves up to her husband. . . . I wonder what they give them . . . O yes, I know! . . . I can just see them now with some awful mess on their plate: I can just see Daddy’s delicate and sensitive nose turning up in disgust at the sight of it. He could never have stood it. I know. I know now what they give them: Ox-tail soup out of a can with all of the Ox left out of it, picked-up cod-fish with a little dab of that awful white gooey Christian sauce, boiled Brussels Sprouts and a little stale Angel Food cake that the little bitch got at the Bakery on her way home from the Movies. “Come darling! be a nice boy now! You haven’t eaten any of your good boiled Spinach, dear. It’s good for you, pet, it’s full of nice healthy iron, love (healthy iron, your granny! in three month’s time he will turn green with the belly ache and dyspepsia. I bet he’ll writhe with acute indigestion). No, you bad boy! you can’t have anymore creamed chipped beef: you’ve already had meat three times this month, you’ve had 6¾ ounces of meat in the last three weeks, dear, and it’s very bad for you: you’ll be getting Uric Acid the first thing you know. If you’re a good boy, pet, I’ll let you have a nice burned up Lamb chop week after next. I’ve got the most delicious menu all fixed up for the next two weeks. I read all about it in Molly Messmore’s Food Hints in the Daily Curse—O yum! yum! yum! Your mouth will water all right when you see what I’ve prepared for you (Yes! and if I know anything about them his eyes will water too!). Next week is going to be Fish Week darling, we’re going to have nothing but fish, pet, won’t that be nice? (O yes! that will be just too Goddam nice for words.) Molly says fish is good for you, Lamb, the body needs lots of fish, it’s Brain Food, pet, and if my big boy is going to use that great big wonderful brain of his and think all those beautiful thoughts, he’s going to be a good boy and eat lots of fish like his Momma tells him to. Monday, darling, we are going to have imported Hungarian Cat Fish with hen house noodles—and Tuesday, pet, we are going to have roast Long Island suckers with Gastric juice, and Wednesday, love, we are going to have stewed milk-fed bloaters a la Gorgonzola with stink weed salad and Thursday, sweet, we are going to have creamed Cod with chitling gravy, and Friday—is really Fish Day, lamb—Friday we are going—You bad boy! you take that ugly old fwown wight off your face. I don’t like to see my big boy’s beautiful face all winkled up by that ugly old fwown. Open your moufy now, and swallow down this nice big spoonful of stewed prune juice. There! Now doesn’t he feel better? It’s good for my darling’s bow-wels—O! wake up in the morning feeling just wonderful . . . O what a naughty word! If my pet begins to talk like that Momma spank! She will wash his mouf right out with soap and water! Yes she will! He just mustn’t!”
No wonder Daddy got away from them! He could never have stood it! The very best was not quite good enough for him! And that is the way it is with us too. God, these Christians are a fine lot! I’ll take my chances with a Jew any day! Auntie Kate was another of your Christians and look at the way she acted after Daddy died. And now you would think she was some sort of Saint to listen to her talk—all about how much she did for us, how she sacrificed, and so on. It makes me sick! You just wouldn’t believe it possible till you see her . . . she is eighty-five and she gets all dressed up in red velvet, red satin slippers, and red heels. Edith and I send her a hundred dollars a month and she’s always asking for more: When she wants more money she writes and says she’s got to have a new set of false teeth. One year we counted up and we found we’d bought her seven sets of teeth. Fritz simply loathes her: he’s been awfully kind and generous to her, but she is so horrible. She was so mean to Edith and me after Daddy died: Daddy left us some money and she spent every cent of it on herself; she was awfully gay, she had a big house and kept a carriage and did all kinds of entertaining. I guess she needed the money and used it as the bills came in. She did dreadful things: she would go away to Philadelphia or someplace for days at a time and leave me in the house without a penny or anything to eat. There was no one I could go to. I couldn’t go to Bella: I think she was living out in the country in Jersey that year, or maybe she was in the sanatarium for taking dope—I don’t know: everything was so mixed up and unsettled, we were all moving around so much, it all gets confused now.
When Daddy’s lawyer, Mr. Siegel, found out what she’d done, I thought he was going to kill her: he told her hanging was too good for her, he said that he would see that she went to prison if it was the last thing that he ever did . . . I think he really meant it. I got awfully frightened, I was only a kid about twenty, and things frightened me more then . . . I had to go get Edith, she was living in that Convent way up in the Bronx, we had to go to Mr. Siegel’s office and answer a lot of questions and sign some papers making it all right. We were both of us frightened nearly to death, Edith was only fifteen, she looked just like a little nun: she had great black staring eyes and she never said anything, no one could ever get her to talk. We walked right into Mr. Siegel’s office hand-in-hand, and whenever they asked us a question we just wagged our heads. Neither of us was able to speak. Anyway, everything turned out all right and nothing was done about it. Auntie Kate wept and rung her hands and carried on, and said what wouldn’t she do for her dear brother’s children. O it made you sick! . . . God what those Christians will do for money! The Jews aren’t in it!
—
They come! Ships call!
Forever the rivers run.
The great hooves come below their manes of darkness.
And the horses of sleep are galloping, galloping over the land.
—
Come, mild and magnificent sleep, and let your tides flow through the nation. O daughter of memoried hours, empress of labor and weariness, merciful sister of dark death and all forgetfulness, enchantress and redeemer, hail! Seal up the porches of our memory, tenderly, gently, steal our lives away from us, blot out the vision of lost love, lost days, and all our ancient hungers: Transformer, heal us!
For we are strange and beautiful asleep, we are all strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying in the darkness, and we know no death, there is no death, in sleep.
O softly, softly the great dark horses of sleep are galloping over the land. The great black bats are flying over us, the tides of sleep are moving through the nation, below the tides of sleep and time great fish are moving. Call!
As from dark winds and waters of our sleep on which a few stars sparely look, we grope our feelers in the sea’s dark bed, among the polyped squirms, blind sucks and crawls and sea-valves of the brain, call through the slopes and glades of night’s dark water on great fish. . . .
[¬]
II
[MY COUSIN ROBERT]
My cousin Robert sat quietly on the thick carpet of the stair’s top step. He was twelve years old; he was a fat earnest little boy who stammered badly. Slowly, solemnly, remote and elfin as time’s memory, the small clock in the room below struck out nine strokes of golden sweetness. The sound thronged through the dark and living silence of the house: it was a music sunken in a far sea-depth, and its chime inhabited the house with its phantasmal magic. After the clock stopped striking there was for a time no sound within the house save its faint slow punctual tock.
As my cousin Robert listened he could hear the footsteps of people coming by on the street outside, and the sounds of their voices. They would come nearer on a crest of sound, pass, with laughter and a maze of voices at its apex, and recede into far sounds and silence. From time to time a cab would pass by in the street outside, and Robert could hear the velvet rumble of its wheels and the sound of the horse, moving at a spanking trot as its hooves struck with a sharp metallic ring upon the frosty pavement.
Among these sounds, these living presences of the moment, the horse lived like a timeless spirit, the house lived the time’s spirit, remote, withdrawn, everlasting, and phantasmal. The streets of life cried sharply with their voice of now, the splendid frosty stars were burning overhead, and no wind blew. Among the metes and marks of mortal time, joined breath to breath, and link to link, the time here spoken of was some sixteen thousand days and nights ago upon this earth, and now the hoof, the wheel, the sound of all the vanished steps and voices, are forgotten; and my cousin Robert is old and fat and sad.
Robert had the plump white freckled skin, the blue eyes and the curly hair of flaming red that one often sees in Jewish children. He was a good hearted and earnest little boy, generous and affectionate, and his feelings were very easily touched. At the present moment he sat alone in the living silence listening to people passing in the street, and he was a little grieved and thoughtful because suddenly he had been forsaken. That night he had had no dinner. On this spacious and luxurious house where Bella lived, and to which he had so often come with his mother as a favored and pampered guest, a disquieting silence, a silence that removed the house from life and detached it from the cheerful hustle of the streets, had fallen. This was the house of plenty, the house where he had so often stuffed his belly with good things, and Bella was the giver of richness and joy. Therefore he had come here with his mother on this night with the old stir of happy anticipation, and now he found himself, inexplicably, deserted and alone.
People were in the house, and there was life and movement in the house, mysterious life and movement of which he was given a few brief glimpses, but from which he was shut out. They had forgotten him. When he spoke to one of them—to Bella, to his mother, to Bella’s husband, or to Else, the cook, they answered him carelessly, indifferently, brusquely. Sometimes they made no answer at all. Once when he had spoken to her, Bella had laid her warm glowing hand, that hand that gave out love and plenty, upon his head; it was an absent and affectionate gesture.
Sometimes a door in the hall above would open; there would be a moment’s wedge of soft light, a sudden hiss of quiet voices, a sense of quick but subdued movements. These invasions of life and movement upon the animate silence of the house gave to the boy a sense of intense but quiet activity behind the doors which had been closed to him. From time to time someone would pass him swiftly, softly on the way downstairs, sometimes the heavy waddling form of Else would pant swiftly past him up the stairs. Then doors would open and close gently and the house would lapse into its living quiet again, its breathing silence marked by the slow pulse of the clock.
It was not this momentary and unaccustomed silence that now gave Robert this sense of ominous apprehension; his thought leaped to the living and cheerful activity of the season of which bright scraps and flickers came to him from the streets, and of which this house had always been a living part. It was a few days before Christmas, and the presence of the holiday was everywhere visible, in the streets, in the shops, most of all in the mind of a child which gives to this time a sensuous and mysterious quality, which makes all things—earth, air, fire, and water, the texture of men themselves, different in time and quality from other times. A child breathes ecstasy and hope into him at this season, exultancy gathers in him, he lives with an incomparable intensity, there is mystery and joy in the air around him and he cannot endure to have this rapture broken.
