Thomas Wolfe, page 384
He had been eager to tell them of his wealth, his great possessions, of the glittering life he lived, and of the fabulous world he lived in. He wanted to tell them of his three expensive motor cars, and of his chauffeur to whom he paid over seven hundred marks a month—yes! with fine food and lodging for his family thrown in!—which was more than most of them could earn in three. He wanted to tell them of the great house he was building in the country which would cost him more than five hundred thousand marks when it was finished, and of the apartment in the city to which he had recently moved, and for which he paid a rent of more than fifty thousand marks a year. And he wanted to tell them of the four maids who got three hundred fifty marks a month apiece, and of his cook—a German woman!—whom he paid five hundred marks a month, and of his offices, where he paid two hundred thousand marks a year in rent, and where even the humblest of his fifty employees—even the office boys—were paid four hundred marks a month.
He had licked his chops in triumph a thousand times as he foresaw the look of stupefaction on their faces when he told this tale of magic. He could see the pipe poised halfway to the gaping mouth, and hear their guttural fascinated grunts of disbelief and wonder as he went on from height to dizzy height, telling his story quietly and modestly, without vain boasting or affectations. He would laugh good-naturedly at their astonishment, and when they asked him if such marvels as he had described were not almost unheard of, even in the legendary country where he lived, he would assure them they were not—that he was nothing but a minnow in an enormous pond, and that he had many friends who considered him a poor man—Ja! who spent and earned more in a month than he did in a year!
With fast-gathering impulse, in a tidal sweep of strong desire thicker and faster than his power to utter them, the images of splendor swept up from his memory. He would tell them of great buildings soaring eighty floors into the sky, and of towns the size of Koblenz housed within a single building. He would tell them of a city built upon a rock, and of tunnels bored below the whole length of the city through which at every moment of the day nameless hordes of men were hurled to destinies in little cells.
Then he would tell them of the night-time world of wealth and art and fashion in which he cut a figure. He would tell them of the style and wit and beauty of his daughter, and of pearl necklaces he gave her, and of money spent upon her clothes in one year’s time that would keep a German family comfortably for ten. He would tell of the ability and shrewdness of his wife’s sister—as smart a woman as ever lived!—and of her great position as vice president of a fashionable woman’s store. He would speak casually of the four trips she made to Paris every year, and of the fortunes which the wives and mistresses of the millionaires spent every year for clothes. He would tell of the business ability of his only son, who was barely twenty-four, but who was prized and trusted like a man of forty by his employers, and who earned four hundred marks a week in a broker’s office.
Finally he would tell them of his beautiful and talented wife. He would tell them of the high place she had won for herself in the art-world of the city, and of the famous people who knew her and respected her, and how celebrated men and women came and sat around his table every night, and how they called him “Fritz” and how he called them by their first names, and knew all the ways and secrets of their lives.
Jack had thought and dreamed of this triumphant moment for thirty years, but now that it had come, he could not talk to them. All that he had to say stormed wildly at the gates of speech, but when he tried to speak he could not. Instead, a fast thick jargon broke harshly from his lips, filling his ears with terror, and stirring the air about him with its savage dissonance. He paused, stricken to silence by that unaccustomed sound. He tried again; a speech that was no speech, a sound more brutal than the jargon of a tongueless maniac smote terror to his heart.
Now madness seized him. The veins swelled upon his forehead, his face grew purple with his rage and bafflement, he beat the table and shouted into their faces, he cursed, snarled, and jeered at them, but nothing but a bestial and incoherent jargon came from him. Then he saw that they were all looking at him with quiet and sorrowful eyes, and their look told him that they knew all, understood all that he had wished to say. And at the same moment it seemed to Jack that he heard that strange whispering echo—that sound filled with acquiescence, with the resigned and final knowledge of men who had known all that any men on earth could know—and which seemed to say, although he could not be certain any words were spoken: “Yes. We know.”
He said no more. His friends were looking at him with their weary and sorrowful eyes in which there was neither any trace of envy or mockery, nor any of youth’s pride or pain or passion. There was only the agreement of an old and final wisdom, an immense and kindly understanding. Without speaking they seemed to say to him: “We know, we understand you, Frederick, because we have all been young and mad and innocent, and full of hope and anguish. We have seen the way the world goes, and we have seen we could not change it, and now we are old and have seen and known as much of it as men can know.”
Now Jack no longer wanted to tell them of his triumphs in the world. He no longer wanted to boast about his wealth, his power, his family, or his high position. Instead, it seemed to him that for the first time in his life, his heart had been cleansed of vanity and pretense. He had for these men a feeling of trust and affection such as he never before had for anyone. And suddenly he wanted to talk to them as he had never talked to anyone, to say and hear the things he had never said and heard.
Like the Mariner who found that he could speak again as soon as he had blessed the living creatures in the sea, so now it seemed to Jack that he could speak and be free again if in penitence and shame he could unpack the sorrowful and secret burden that lay heavy on his heart. He wanted to ask the old men what their own youth had been like and if any of them had known the bitter misery of loneliness and exile in a foreign land. He wanted to tell them the secret dreams and visions of his youth which he had never told to anyone and to hear what dreams and visions they had known. He wanted to tell them of the first years of his life in America, of his little room in a boarding-house, and of the little room he had lived in later in his uncle’s house, and how, forlorn, lonely, poor and wretched as his life had been, he had brought into these little rooms all the proud hope and ecstasy youth can know. He wanted to tell them how he had dreamed of growing rich and famous and of how for years a proud and secret image had sustained his spirit with its prophecy of love and triumph.
That image was this: in an ancient cobbled street like this one and in one of the old and elfin houses in this street a woman lived. The woman had the face and figure of a young woman he had seen in Bonn when he had stopped off there for a visit to a kinsman on his way to America. He had seen the woman seated at a table with two men in an old dark tavern such as this one where the students at the university went for beer. She was a great blonde creature, lavish of limb and full and deep of breast. She looked toward him once and smiled and he had seen that her eyes were grey and clear and fathomless. Jack had never forgotten her and in the dream which was to haunt and sustain his spirit during his first years in America he saw himself as a rich, famous, and distinguished man who had returned to find her. And although he had seen this woman just one time and only for a moment and knew nothing more about her he was certain that he would know where she was when he went to find her. He could see the street, the house, even the room where she would be. The street was like the picture of a destiny, and the old red light of fading day that lay quietly on the gables of the houses, resting there briefly without violence or heat, with a fading and unearthly glow, was like the phantasmal light of time and dreams. And Jack watched with prescient certitude to see himself, as he turned in from a corner to the street and approached the house where she was waiting for him. He heard her singing as she combed her long blonde hair and he knew the song and all the words she sang as well as all the words that she would speak to him.
Her lips were red and full, half-parted, living, warm and fragrant as her breath, her hair was like ripe wheat and spun as fine as smoky silk, her eyes as blue and depthless as unfathomed water, and her voice and the song she sang as rich, as strange and haunting as any songs that sirens sang from fabled rocks. Then she received him into her great embrace, he lay drowned in the torrent of her hair, cradled in the fathomless undulance of her great blonde thighs, borne upon the velvet cushion of her belly, engulfed in the lavish bounty of her breasts, and lost to time, to memory, to any other destiny save dark night and the everlasting love of her great flesh to which, a wisp of man, he surrendered blindly with a passionate and willing annihilation.
This was the dream as it had come to him a thousand times in the first years of poverty and exile to fortify his soul with its triumphant music of love and victory and now he wanted to tell his friends about it and ask them if they too had known such dreams as this in youth. He wanted to tell them how he had gained the power and wealth his heart had visioned and how he had lost the dream and he wanted to ask them if they had also known such loss. He wanted to tell them how the loss had not come bitterly and suddenly but how it came insensibly day by day so that man’s youth and visions slip away from him without his knowing it and time wears slowly at his life as a drop of water wears at rock. He wanted to ask them if they had learned as he had learned the hard knowledge which the world can give a man and which he must get and live by if he is to draw his breath calmly without pain and not to die maddened, snarling, beaten, full of hate, like a wild beast in a snare.
Jack wanted to ask the old men if they too had found that a boy’s dreams and visions passed like smoke and were like sand that slid and vanished through his fingers for all the good that they might do him. He wanted to ask them if they had learned that a suave and kindly cynicism was better than all the tortured protest in the painful and indignant soul of man and a wise and graceful acquiescence to the way of the world more sensible than all the anguish and madness youth can know. He wanted to ask them if they too had found there is no shame too great to be endured but thinking makes it so and that the wise men of the world have eyes to see with when they need them, ears to hear with when they want to use them for that purpose, but neither eyes, ears, tongues or words for what had better not be seen or known or spoken.
He wanted to ask them if they too had found that a hard word breaks no bones, that envy, venom, hatred, lies and slander are poisons to which man’s hardy flesh may grow immune and the falseness of one’s wife or mistress is an injury less harmful to sound sleep than an ill-cooked meal or a lumpy mattress—yes! far less harmful to the healthy slumber of a man of great affairs than the ravings of a drunken boy upon the telephone in the middle of the night. Such injuries as this were real and not to be endured. But cuckoldry! Why, cuckoldry was nothing, a joke, a thing to be made light of or ignored by people of experience, something sophisticated people laugh about, a subject for light comedy in the theatre, an evil only to some yokel who would not take the world as it was made.
Had they not found it so? Was a serious man to lose his own good sleep because his wife had gone to bed with other men? Was it a matter of moment that a woman gave her body for an hour or so to a lover? What did it matter so long as she behaved herself discreetly and got home in time for dinner. Cuckoldry! Why, a man might even take some pride in it, a kind of secret and illicit joy, if his wife had only made him cuckold with a celebrated man—a famous painter, say, or a distinguished lawyer—yes, even if the lover was only a nameless and infatuated fool of a boy, a man might feel a cynical and urbane amusement, an almost paternal and friendly interest. But to lose sleep, to writhe with jealousy or grow sick with shame, to be tortured by a thousand doubts and fears, to waste in flesh and lose all interest in one’s business, to strangle with hatred and choke with murderous fury for revenge, because of the illicit rhythms of a woman’s hams, the infidelities of a few inches of hair and gristle—it was a grotesque idiocy, a childish and provincial superstition, and not to be thought of by a grown man. Jack wanted to ask his friends if they had not found it so.
Jack also wanted to know if his friends had steeped and stained their souls in the hard dyes of the earth’s iniquity. He wanted to know if they were crusted hide and heart with the hard varnish of complaisance. He wanted to know if they had seen the good man drown and the mad boy perish, if they had held their peace and saved their lives by losing them, buying success at the price of one man’s failure or another’s folly, paying for position as they went, and sure of nothing except that prizes go to men who yield consent.
The words of shame and penitence rushed to his lips in a hot and choking flood releasing the foul packed burden of his heart of a weight it had not known it bore. Yet when he tried to speak, he could not, no more than when vain boasting filled his mouth. But suddenly he saw their quiet and sorrowful eyes fixed on him, he heard again a strange and wordless whisper full with its weary final knowledge and he knew that they had known all this too and had for him neither reproach nor loathing because of it.
The old men sat there looking with their quiet eyes into the street where it was always morning. Bright sunlight, ancient, sorrowful, and autumnal sunlight, cut into the cool steep shadows of the street and the sunlight was like wine. Between the terraces of October hills, he knew, the Rhine was flowing. Bathed in the sorrowful harvest of that light, premonitory with its sense of death and parting, the wine hills rose steeply from the edges of a fabled river and the river was itself a tide of golden wine.
Then Jack bought the old men wine.
He shouted loudly to the waiter with the brutal and friendly face, and the man came quickly towards the table with his heavy limp. Jack flung great sums of money on the table, and he bought the old men wine. He bought frantically, lavishly, as if he could somehow consummate the only act and answer that was left for him. He bought until the old carved table was covered with tall slender bottles of the golden wine. The old men poured the potent wine into their throats. Again and again they filled their glasses with wild golden wine and drank it down. Then the old men lifted up their lined and worn faces and, looking out into the street with their quiet and sorrowful eyes, which never changed or faltered in their expression of a single and final knowledge, they sang out strongly in the hoarse, worn voices of old men such songs as young men sing, which they had sung themselves in youth. They sang again the songs of love and hope and wandering, of drunkenness and glee, and of wild and strange adventure.
Jack turned his face away into his hand and wept bitterly.
—
Now Jack thought he was standing with his mother on the Rhine-boat landing. Bright October sunlight lay upon the terraced hills and filled the river with its light. It was morning, the landing place was swarming with an immense energy of arrival and departure, but the breath of autumn, sorrowful and foreboding, was in the air. Jack felt an immense and nameless excitement stirring in him, and also a sense of incommunicable sadness. The Rhine boat had just come in, people were streaming up the landing from the boat, and other people were streaming into the boat. The porters were diving feverishly among the crowd, loading, unloading, stockily bowed with people’s baggage, uttering sharp cries of warning as they rushed on and off the boat. In the crowd Jack saw many people that he knew.
He spoke to his mother, but she did not hear him or answer him. Instead, she stood motionless, looking with a fixed stare at someone who was standing on the top deck of the crowded boat, as if she wanted to fix his image in her mind forever. Jack followed his mother’s glance, and he saw that she was looking at a plump fresh skinned boy of seventeen. The boy was neatly dressed in a somewhat comical and countrified fashion, and he was wearing a flat student’s cap. He stood looking back at Jack’s mother, with the same fixed voracious stare, as if he too was trying to fix forever in his memory this final picture of her. The boy was also trying to smile, but his eyes were glazed and wet with tears and from time to time he turned his plump ruddy face away and wiped furtively at his eyes with the sleeve of his coat. Then he would begin to look at Jack’s mother again with the same fixed and ridiculous effort at a smile.
Jack saw that the boy was himself and he began to shout to him in an excited voice. But the boy paid no attention to him and did not seem to hear him. Then the porters pulled the landing bridge back on the landing stage, the whistle sounded sharply twice, the great paddle wheels began to churn, and the white Rhine-boat moved out swiftly into the river. On the top deck the boy stood, a small, plump, forlorn figure, waving frantically with his handkerchief as the boat receded. Jack’s mother kept her eyes fixed on that small receding figure until she could see it no more, and the boat had dwindled to a white dot in the distance. Then she turned and began to walk away blindly, with tears streaming down her cheeks and her powerful dark face twisted and contorted in the convulsive mask of sorrow of the Jew. Jack ran after her shouting frantically: “Mother, mother! Here! Look at me! I am here! It is Frederick.” But she neither turned nor glanced at him, no more than if he had been a viewless ghost. He shouted to the people around him at the top of his voice. No one heard him. No one looked at him. No one saw him.
—
The Rhine-boat was a miracle of shining white and polished brass and glittering glass. All day in the rich fading sunlight of October its dove white breast was feathering the surface of the golden river. The boat was loaded with a crowd of people who sang and drank and ate and shouted constantly. All day long the waiters rushed back and forth across the decks bearing steins of foaming beer, bottles of wine, and trays filled with food and sandwiches. All day long the white Rhine-boats passed along the river, and as they passed the powerful voices of the young men singing rolled across the water and echoed in the hills. And all day long they passed the great Rhine barges churning swiftly down the river towards the sea and Holland, or up the river towards Mainz.
