Thomas Wolfe, page 392
Thus, in his view of the world, every man had certainly his price, as every woman had hers, and if, in any discussion of conduct, it was suggested to him that people had acted as they had for motives other than those of total self-interest and calculating desire—had acted as they had because they loved each other, or because they would rather endure pain themselves than cause it to other people that they loved, or were loyal because of loyalty, or could not be bought or sold for no other reason than the integrity of their own characters—Jack’s answer to this was to smile politely but cynically, make a brief motion with his arms and hands, and say: “All Right. But I thought you were going to be intelligent. Let’s talk of something else that we both understand.”
And that was all.
Such a man, then, was this ruddy, smartly groomed, and faultlessly tailored little fellow of fifty-four who was hurled southward to his business every morning in a powerful projectile of glittering steel that was driven by a maniac and who, as immense and cruel architectures beetled all about him, and he saw the man-swarm passing in its million-footed weft, found nothing strange therein.
Such a man was Frederick Jack—a spruce, assured, and very prosperous looking figure, who had in his bearing, dress, and feature something of the “distinguished” manner of the great banker, together with that little extra and indefinable cut to everything—a somewhat heightened color, cut, and vividness, an added knowingness and swagger, a kind of sporty dash and tone and recklessness, that was like a dash of paprika, and that somehow related him with others who live constantly among the theatrical and feverish excitement of a life which is disturbed, out of focus, and unnaturally stimulated—in other words, with politicians, gamblers, quack joint-and-gland and lay-the-hand-on specialists, and all other quacks whatever fashionable psycho-analysts, hit-the-trail evangelists, suave racketeers—and actors!
Such a man was Frederick Jack: a little man forever certain and forever wrong, a resident in a world which accepted the fabrications of its own distorted and intoxicated fury as the very heart and care of harsh reality, and which rejected reality itself with an impatient and dismissing gesture and a cynic’s smile. Frederick Jack was a man who daily lived, breathed, and believed in all the acts and passions of a fantastic, theatrical and incredible world, and who subscribed to a vision of life that was as black, as vile, as viciously false and ineptly, uselessly sinister as any on this earth could be—and yet he was a man with as much grace, kindliness, and charity as anyone could wish for the most liberal and tolerant spirit.
He was a loving and indulgent father, who lavished gifts and luxuries upon his two children with prodigal hand, and he had on countless occasions responded with the instant and liberal help of his purse not only to the needs of friends but also to the troubles of many people whom he scarcely knew—to all the improvident, drunken, haphazard, or futile people whom his wife had met in her experience in the theatre, and who, in time of distress inevitably clustered about her strong, clear and victorious personality as slaves of steel cluster about a powerful magnet—as well as to a great motley regiment of others—to a raw-boned half-demented old nurse who had been in attendance at the birth of his two children, and had subsisted largely on his bounty ever since, to his wife’s childhood and schoolgirl friends who had made poor marriages, to decrepit or impoverished relatives of his own and his wife’s family, no matter how distant the relationship or how heartily he detested them, and finally, and always, to members of his own family living in Germany, and to his own begotten blood and seed.
For strangely, curiously, and pathetically, this little man who lived among all the furious and constantly shifting visages of a feverish and unstable world, had always held with a desperate and tenacious devotion to one of the ancient traditions of his race and youth—a belief in the sacred and inviolable stability of the family. And through this devotion, in spite of the sensational tempo and its furious constantly mounting instability of the city life, in spite of the unwholesome life of the theatre in which each member of his family was somehow involved, and which constantly menaced the security of the family life, he had managed to keep his family together. And this was really the only bond which now connected him with his wife. They had never loved each other, they had long since ceased to care what separate loves and ardours each might have, but they had joined together in a material effort to maintain the unity of a family life, as distinct from the lives of each individual in it. And through this effort, and by this compromise—which avoided deliberately and almost studiously, a close inspection of the individual life—they had succeeded in keeping the unity of the family group, and for this reason, and on this ground, Jack respected and had a real affection for his wife.
Such was the well-groomed little man who was delivered at his business every morning by a maniac. And if such dissonance between his own belief and practice, between his sinister view of men’s acts and motives, and the charity and generosity of his own character, seems remarkable, or if his skill and cunning in the acts of balance seems remarkable, where his sole remaining anchor to an older and more traditional form of life was his belief in the permanence of the family, it was by no means so. For every morning, within a hundred yards of the place where his maniac delivered him, ten thousand other men, in dress, style, form and feature much the same as he, in their fantastic and sinister beliefs, and even in kindness, mercy, love and tolerance, much the same as this portly little Jew, were even as he descending from their gleaming thunderbolts and moving towards another day of legend, smoke and fury.
—
At length, having been delivered at his business with a murderous haste by this furious automation, Jack was shot up to his office where all day long men in whom this same unnatural and feverish energy seemed to be at work, bought, sold, and traded in an atmosphere which was not so openly, obviously and frantically alive, as it was quietly, murderously alert, with madness.
This madness was everywhere about him all day long, and Jack was himself aware of it. Yet he said nothing. For it was one of the qualities of this time that men should see and feel and know the madness all about them, and never mention it. Jack had known for several months, for example, that Rosenthal, the senior partner of his firm, was mad. Everyone else knew it as well, yet no one spoke of it until two years later when Rosenthal had to be confined in an asylum. Then, to be sure, they all said, with wise nods: “Sure, we knew it, all the time!”
But often in the morning Rosenthal would ride up in the same elevator with Jack, and not only would he fail to respond to his junior partner’s morning greeting, but he would stare at Jack with a gloomy Napoleonic look, seeming to stare right through the other man who was not a foot away from him. Moreover, when Rosenthal entered his office he would enter through a certain door, and give orders that an office boy and his secretary must always be there in the room to greet him, standing at attention and facing the door when he would enter, even when there was no real reason for their being there.
Having seated himself at his magnificent desk—for everything he had as we shall see, pens, paper, desks, inkwells, chairs, and so forth, now had to be the most magnificent and expensive that money could buy—having seated himself at his magnificent desk Rosenthal would at once go into a gloomy Napoleonic attitude of deep meditation from which he would presently start up and rouse himself to say in a harsh tone of voice to his secretary who still was standing dutifully at attention: “Who is waiting?” The girl would answer that Mr. Clark—or whoever it was—was waiting, whereupon Rosenthal would wave his hand in a furious and gloomy gesture of dismissal saying: “Tell him I cannot see him today,” although he had himself made the appointment just the day before.
Then he would lapse into his moody soliloquy again, from which he would presently rouse himself to mutter gloomily: “And who comes next?”
“Mr. Seligman, sir—at nine-thirty.”
There would be a portentous darkening pause, and finally Rosenthal would whisper hoarsely: “Tell him—tell Mr. Seligman—that I shall see him—at ten-fif-teen,” although there was no reason whatsoever for the delay.
Again, when about to sign a letter, he would start to dip his pen in the inkwell, and suddenly stop, drawing back from the inkwell and shuddering as if it were a viper and had stung him.
“This—this—” he would say in a choked and trembling tone, throwing down his pen and pointing to the inkwell with a palsied finger. “Where did this come from?” he would scream, although it had been there on his desk all the time. Then he would seize the inkwell and hurl it against the wall or smash it on the floor, yelling that it was a disgrace that such a man as he should have to use such an inkwell. Then he would shout out orders, and demand the finest inkwell for himself and his secretary “that money could buy.” And they would finally arrive, as his awed secretary would tell her fascinated auditors when she went home to Brooklyn—“made of saw-lid silveh—Duh one on his desk costs sixteh-seven dollehs—an’duh one on my desk costs fawty-six dollehs! O-O-oh! Ya know, I think that’s aw-w-ful! I think that’s ter-ri-bul!”
But this frightened little stenographer was the only one who did. As for the others—Rosenthal’s business partners, and his clients, although they saw the man was mad they considered his madness as being another evidence of his financial genius.
Thus, when he would suddenly emerge from his office and come out into the great room where the stock-board was, casting wild and gloomy glances all about him, peering intensely into the faces of men he had known for twenty years without speaking to them or giving any indication that he recognized them, the while he muttered and mumbled cunningly to himself words that no one understood, rubbing his white plump hands softly and greedily together, and from time to time chuckling craftily as he peered about him, his associates accepted this strange conduct as evidence that deep and cunning projects were being contrived in his brain, and that presently he would startle the entire market with a series of brilliant financial manipulations.
Among all these people, only the frightened little stenographer read in the man’s conduct the omens of ruin and collapse, not only for Rosenthal himself but for the whole structure that supported him, and gave to such a madman its final utter faith. Day by day, this poor girl would go home to the great jungle of obscure and nameless people from which she came and tell her stories, which grew constantly more extravagant and incredible to an awed circle of shop girls, fellow stenographers, and bewildered elders.
“Gee! D’ya know what he says to me this mawnin?” she would begin, as they all crowded forward eagerly. “D’ya know what he asts me? He says ta me, he says, ‘Who is dat man, Miss Feinboig? Who is dat man dat just came in here?’ ‘Wah-h-, Misteh Rosenthal!’ I says. ‘Dontcha re-membeh—gee!’ I thought he was kiddin’ me or somethin’—you know!” she cried. “‘Dontcha remembeh Misteh Mahtin? Wah he’s been comin’ in heah to see ya faw yeahs!’ ‘Who’s dat?’ he says. ‘Wah Misteh Mahtin—gee!’ I thought he maht be kiddin’ me or somethin’—you know!” she cried painfully. “So I says, ‘You been doin’ business with Misteh Mahtin all yoeh life.’ ‘Neveh hoid of ’im before,’ he says, ‘Wah-h, Misteh Rosenthal!’ I says. He don’t remembeh any moeh,” she now cried earnestly. “Honest, he don’t know what he’s doo-in,” she said with comical solemnity. “‘Ya gotta ’n engagement, Misteh Rosenthal. Ya gotta ’n engagement to have lunch mit Misteh Huddlem’ an’ ah says, An’ honest! He don’t know what I’m tawkin’ about—He acts as if he’s neveh hoid of ’im—He don’t remembeh ’im at all! Gee! Ya know that’s ter-ri-bul! Ya know that’s aw-w-ful!”—But this shocked and frightened little typist was the only one who did.
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THE GREAT BUILDING
(APRIL, 1930)
From the outside the building was—just a building. True it was a very impressive one. It was not beautiful, certainly, but it impressed one by its bulk, its weight, its squareness, its sheer massivity. In the course of a day’s journey on that fabled rock one would see a hundred buildings that one could remember more sharply for some startling or sensational quality. There were sky-soaring spires and splintered helves of steel and stone, and dizzy vertices, cliff-like facades, stupendous architectures that seemed themselves a part of the cold atmosphere of the high air. They were an aether of imperial stone and steel that framed the sky in etchings of immortal masonry, that caught the breath of man, appalled his eye, put a cold numbness in his flesh, and gave to that sea-girt isle a portion of its own fabulous and special weather, its time-sense that was so strange, so peculiarly thrilling, so different from the time of any other place on earth.
Yes, there were more special shapes that gave the swarming rock its startling quality, its fabulous uniqueness, its distinctive place among the super-cities of the world. These were the shapes the European thought about when he thought about “New York,” about “America,” the thing that caught the breath of travelers spell-bound, looking from a liner’s deck, as that appalling and inhuman loveliness sustained there lightly on the water like a congeries of fabled smoke first went home to their seafilled eyes, and stilled their tongues.
This building, then, was none of these. In this great brede of appalling and man-daring shapes, the frame of this insolent and tormented loveliness, this square and massive building would have gone unnoticed, and had one seen it in his questing of the tortured rock he might not later have remembered it.
And yet the building in its way was memorable. In all that scheme of splintered jaggedness, the transient landscape of these tormented, ever-changing skies, the building stood for permanence, for enduring substance in the midst of ceaseless change.
It had, where so much else was temporal and ethereal, a monumental quality. The splintered helves would go and be replaced by madder stalactites of steel and stone, the spire-pierced skies would alter to new shapes of jaggedness—but this, one felt, was changeless and would still endure.
A mighty shape, twelve stories high, with basal ramparts of enduring stone, above huge planes of rather grimy, city-weathered brick, spaced evenly by the interstices of a thousand square and solid windows, the great building filled a city block, and went through squarely to another city block, and fronted on both sides. It was so grand, so huge, so solid, and so square-dimensioned that it seemed to grow out of the very earth, to be hewn from the everlasting rock itself, to be built there for eternity, and to endure there while the rock itself endured.
And yet this really was not true at all. That mighty building, so solid-seeming to the eye, was really tubed and hollowed like a giant honeycomb. It was sustained on curving arches, pillared below on riddled vacancy. It was really a structure upon monstrous stilts, its nerves and tubes and bones and sinews went down depth below depth among the channeled rock: below these basal ramparts of enduring stone, there was its underworld of storied basements. Below all these, far in the tortured rock, there was the tunnel’s depth.
Therefore, it happened sometimes that dwellers in this imperial tenement would feel a tremor at their feet as something faint and instant passed below them, and perhaps remember that there were trains there, there were trains, far, far below them in these tunneled depths.
Then all would pass, recede, and fade away into the riddled distances of the tormented rock. The great building would grow solidly to stone and everlastingness again, and people would smile faintly, knowing that it was enduring, solid, and unshaken, now and forever, as it had always been.
A little before seven o’clock, just outside the building, as he was going in for the night’s work, old John was accosted by a man of perhaps thirty years who was obviously in a state of vinous and unkempt dilapidation.
“Say, Mac—” At the familiar words, uttered in a tone of fawning and yet rather menacing ingratiation, the face of the old man reddened with anger, he quickened his step, and tried to move away. But the creature in its greasy clothes kept after him, plucked at his sleeve with unclean fingers, and said in a low tone—“I was just wonderin’ if you could spare a guy a—”
“Nah-h!" the old man snapped angrily before the other one could finish the familiar plea. “I can’t spare you anything! I’m twice your age and I always had to work for everything I had. If you was any good you’d do the same!”
“Oh, yeah?” the other jeered, looking at the old man with eyes that had suddenly gone hard and ugly.
“Yeah!” old John snapped back in the same tone, and then went on, feeling that this ironic repartee was perhaps a little inadequate but the best he could do on the spur of the moment.
He was still muttering to himself as he entered the great arched entrance of the building and started along the colonnade that led to the South wing.
“What’s the matter, Pop?”—It was Ed, the day elevator man who spoke to him—“Who got your goat?”
“Ah-h!” John muttered, still fuming with resentment, and the unsatisfied inadequacy of his own retort—“It’s these panhandling bums! One of ’em just stopped me outside the building and asked me if I could spare a dime! A young fellow no older than you are tryin’ to panhandle from an old man like me! He ought to be ashamed of himself! I told him so, too!—I said, ‘If you was any good you’d work for it!’”
“Yeah?” said Ed, in a tone of mild interest.
“Yeah,” said John, feeling a little more satisfied this time with his answer—“‘If you was any good,’ I says, ‘you’d work for it—the way I always had to do.’” He seemed to derive a little comfort from the repetition, for in a moment he went on forcefully but in a less bitter tone. “They ought to keep these fellows away from here,” he said. “They got no right to bother the people in this building. The kind of people we got here oughtn’t to have to stand for it.” There was just a faint trace of mollification in his voice as he spoke the words, “the kind of people we got here”: One felt that on this side reverence lay—“The kind of people we got here” were, at all odds, to be protected and preserved.
