Thomas Wolfe, page 448
No one spoke for a moment and then old Mr. Helm said doggedly:
“Dere iss vorse t’ings in de vorld dan being Cherman! Dere iss as goot Cherman people as any vun!”
“Why, of course there are, Mr. Helm,” my sister now said kindly. “I know there are! I wasn’t casting any reflections on you, at all. Besides I never thought of you as being German—I always thought of you as an American.”
“Ja,” said Mr. Helm slowly and heavily, “I am an American—as goot an American as anyvun. But I vas also born in Chermany und all my beeple come from dere. De Kaiser iss a bat man—I do not say dat he iss not. All de time he vants to fight und he make all dis trouble! But de Cherman people iss all righd—as goot people as you vill find anyvere.”
“They have been,” my father said, clearing his throat, “among the finest citizens we have—and now it is a fearful, cruel, damnable and hellish thing that we should be called upon by that inhuman monster to go out and shoot down our own flesh and blood—for that’s what it amounts to in the end.”
“Ja,” said Mr. Helm emphatically. “Dot iss righd!”
“Well, I know,” my sister said with weary patience. “That may be true enough. There may be lots of us who feel that way, but we’re at war with them now and they’re our enemies. So you mustn’t talk like that. People don’t understand that kind of talk! You’ll get yourself in trouble!” she said sternly.
My father said nothing, but for a moment he rocked back and forth furiously, muttered under his breath, cleared his throat savagely once or twice as if about to speak, and then spat vigorously out across the rail. He had, as a matter of fact, until the outbreak of the war, been one of the most violent critics of President Wilson’s peace-time policies, had howled bitterly at the sinking of the ships and all the other insults to the nation’s outraged honor. Yes, in his recent patriotic frenzy he had fairly panted for satisfaction, painting a thrilling picture of what “Teddy would have done” had he been in office.
Under the formidable threats of twenty-four-hour ultimatums instantly dispatched, of armies, fleets and expeditions ready to set sail “at an instant’s notice,” my father saw the insolent enemy cringing into immediate submission and retreat—“as he made them do in the Venezuela dispute in 1904,” he howled, “when he told them he would order the fleet to set sail instantly if they did not withdraw their forces!” It was a splendid image of that proud lost world of San Juan Hill and cock-crow patriotism which would, my father thought, be magically brought to life again if only Teddy could be there to tell them how.
But suddenly, as instantly as it had flared, the fire was gone, and my father was an old man again. Even in the howling anathema of his attack on Wilson, there had been something different from the savage partisanship of other days—the days of Cleveland, Blaine, and Roosevelt—the strange lost days of Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes. There had been, in this new feeling of my father’s, something more personal and bitter, the hatred of an old man who is dying in a new world he no longer knows and understands and for whom, somehow, the unfamiliar forms of that new world are allied in his frenzy to the hated form of death.
Therefore he curses and reviles them in his sorrow and despair as if somehow “they”—unknown, cruel, and phantasmal “they” that will not let us live or give us rest—have done his life to death. My father had lived life with so fierce a love, and now he died so bitterly with such wild regret that it was a rending anguish of the soul to see him die, a horror that we could not forget.
But now, as if he too had suddenly felt the huge indifference of despair, and knew that the world he had so passionately evoked was lost to him forever, all of the fire had gone out of him and he was an old man again, sick and dying, the enfeebled ghost of his past strength sunken in a phantasmal memory—lost in the sorrowful shades of a world that I could never know, and that had gone from him forever.
“Ah, Lord!” my father said at length sadly, gravely, in a low almost inaudible tone. All the old life and howling fury of his rhetoric had gone from him: he was an old man again, sick, indifferent, dying, and his voice had grown worn, weary, old, and sad.
“Ah, Lord!” he muttered again, shaking his head sadly, thinly, wearily in the dark, “I’ve seen them come and go: Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Tilden, Blaine . . . Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes . . . and all . . . all . . . all of them are dead. . . . All, all are gone—the old familiar faces—I’m the only one that’s left,” he said illogically, “and soon I’ll be gone, too.”
Then for a moment he was silent as the tidal flood of time, dark time, strange time that haunts us with the briefness of our days, swept over him. “It’s been a long time—a long, long time,” he muttered. “It’s pretty strange when you come to think of it. By God it is!” And he was silent, and darkness, the huge enfolding mystery of great-starred night was all about us.
Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes—time of my father’s time, earth of his earth, blood of his blood, life of his life—living, real, and actual people in all the passion, power, and feeling of my father’s youth. And for me, the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea-depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable as the buried city of Persepolis.
And they were lost.
—
For who was Garfield, martyred man, and who had seen him in the streets of life? Who could believe his footfalls ever sounded on a lonely pavement? Who had heard the casual and familiar tones of Chester Arthur? And where was Harrison? Where was Hayes? Which had the whiskers, which the burnsides: which was which?
Were they not lost?
Into their ears, as ours, the tumults of forgotten crowds, upon their brains the million printings of lost time, and suddenly upon their dying sight the brief bitter pain and joy of a few death-bright, fixed and fading memories:—the twisting of a leaf upon a bough, the grinding felloe-rim against the curb, the long distant and retreating thunder of a train upon the rails.
Garfield, Hayes, and Harrison were Ohio men; but only the name of Garfield had been brightened by his blood. But at night had they not heard the howlings of demented wind, the sharp, clean, windy rain of the acorns? Had all of them not walked down lonely roads at night in winter and seen a light and known it was theirs? Had all of them not known the wilderness?
Had they not known the smell of old bound calf and well-worn leathers, the Yankee lawyer’s smell of strong tobacco spit and court-house urinals, the smell of horses, harness, men and sweating country men, of jury rooms and court rooms—the strong male smell of Justice at the county seat, and heard a tap along dark corridors where fell a drop in darkness with a punctual crescent monotone of time, dark time.
Had not Garfield, Hayes, and Harrison studied law in offices with a dark brown smell? Had not the horses trotted past below their windows in wreaths of dust along a straggling street of shacks and buildings with false fronts? Had they not heard below them the voices of men talking, loitering up in drawling heat? Had they not heard the casual, rich-fibred, faintly howling country voices, and heard the rustling of a woman’s skirt, and waiting silence, slily lowered tones of bawdry and then huge guffaws, slapped meaty thighs, and high fat choking laughter? And in the dusty dozing heat, while time buzzed slowly, like a fly, had not Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes then smelled the river, the humid, subtly fresh, half-rotten river, and thought of the white flesh of the women then beside the river, and felt a slow impending passion in their entrails, a heavy rending power in their hands?
Then Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes had gone to war, and each became a brigadier or major-general. All were bearded men: they saw a spattering of bright blood upon the leaves, and they heard the soldiers talking in the dark of food and women. They held the bridge-head in bright dust at places with such names as Wilson’s Creek and Spangler’s Spring, and their men smashed cautiously through dense undergrowth. And they had heard the surgeons cursing after battles and the little rasp of saws. They had seen boys standing awkwardly holding their entrails in their hands, and pleading pitifully with fear-bright eyes: “Is it bad, General? Do you think it’s bad?”
When the canister came through it made a ragged hole. It smashed through tangled leaves and boughs, sometimes it plunked solidly into the fibre of a tree. Sometimes when it struck a man it tore away the roof of his brain, the wall of his skull, raggedly, so that his brains seethed out upon a foot of wilderness, and the blood blackened and congealed, and he lay there in his thick clumsy uniform, with a smell of urine in the wool, in the casual awkward and incompleted attitude of sudden death. And when Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes saw these things they saw that it was not like the picture they had had, as children, it was not like the works of Walter Scott and William Gilmore Simms. They saw that the hole was not clean and small and in the central front, and the field was not green nor fenced, nor mown. Over the vast and immemorable earth the quivering heated light of afternoon was shining, a field swept rudely upward to a lift of rugged wood, and field by field, gulley by gulch by fold, the earth advanced in rude, sweet, limitless convolutions.
Then Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes had paused by the bridge-head for a moment and were still, seeing the bright blood at noon upon the trampled wheat, feeling the brooding hush of three o’clock across the fields where all the storming feet had passed at dawn, seeing the way the rough field hedge leaned out across the dusty road, the casual intrusions of the coarse field grasses and the hot dry daisies to the edges of the road, seeing the rock-bright sallows of the creek, the sweet cool shade and lean of river trees across the water.
They paused then by the bridge-head looking at the water. They saw the stark blank flatness of the old red mill, that somehow was like sunset, coolness, sorrow and delight, and looked at the faces of dead boys among the wheat—the most-oh-most familiar, plain, the death-strange faces of the dead Americans—they stood there for a moment, thinking, feeling, thinking, with strong, wordless wonder in their hearts:
“There is the bridge we crossed, the mill we slept in, and the creek. There is a field of wheat, a hedge, a dusty road, an apple orchard and the sweet wild tangle of a wood upon that hill. And there is six o’clock across the fields, again now and always as it was and will be to world’s end forever. And some of us have died this morning coming through the field—and that was time—time—time. We shall not come again, we never shall come back again, we never shall come back along this road again as we did once at morning—so, brothers, let us look again before we go. . . . There is the mill, and there the hedge, and there the sallows of the rock-bright waters of the creek, and there the sweet and most familiar coolness of the trees—and surely we have been this way before!” they cried.
“Oh, surely, brothers, we have sat upon the bridge, before the mill, and sung together by the rock-bright waters of the creek at evening, and came across the wheat field in the morning and heard the dew-sweet bird-song rising from the hedge before! O plain, O most-familiar and most homely earth, proud earth of this huge land unutterable, proud nobly swelling earth, in all your delicacy, wildness, savagery, and terror—grand earth in all your loveliness, beauty and exultant joy, terrific earth in all your limitless fecundities, swelling with infinite fold and convolution into the reaches of the west forever—American earth!—bridge, hedge and creek and dusty road—you plain tremendous poetry of Wilson’s Creek where boys died in the wheat this morning—O you unutterable far-near, strange-familiar, homely earth of magic, for which a word would do if we could find it, for which a word would do if we could call it by its name, for which a word would do that never can be spoken, that can never be forgotten, and that will never be revealed—O proud, familiar, nobly swelling earth, it seems we must have known you before! It seems we must have known you forever, but all we know for certain is that we came along this road one time at morning, and now our blood is painted on the wheat, and you are ours now, we are yours forever—and there is something here we never shall remember—oh, there is something here we never shall forget!”
—
[Hearing my father’s voice then on the porch, I thought:] had Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes been young? Or had they all been born with flowing whiskers, sideburns, and wing collars, speaking gravely from the cradle of their mothers’ arms the noble vacant sonorities of far-seeing statesmanship? It could not be. Had they not all been young men in the Thirties, the Forties, and the Fifties? Did they not, as we, cry out at night along deserted roads into demented winds? Did they not, as we, cry out the fierce goat-cry of ecstasy and exultancy, as the full measure of their hunger, their potent and inchoate hope, went out into that single wordless cry?
Did they not, as we, when young, prowl softly up and down the door-less avenues of night, seeing the gas lamps flare and flutter on the corner, falling with livid light upon the corners of old cobbled streets of brown-stone houses? Had they not heard the lonely rhythmic clopping of a horse, the jounting wheels of a hansom cab, upon those barren cobbles? And had they not waited, waited, trembling in the darkness till the horse and cab had passed, had vanished with the lonely recession of shod hooves, and then were heard no more?
And then had Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes not waited, waited in the silence of the night, prowling up and down the lonely cobbled street, with trembling lips, numb entrails, pounding hearts? Had they not set their jaws, made sudden indecisive movements, felt terror, joy, a numb impending ecstasy, and had waited, waited then—for what? Had they not waited, hearing sounds of shifting engines in the yards at night, hearing the hoarse, gaseous breaths of little engines through the grimy fan-flare of their funnels, the racketing clack of wheels upon the light, ill-laid, ill-joined rails? Had they not waited there in that dark street with the fierce lone hunger of a boy, feeling around them the immense and moving quietness of sleep, the heart beats of ten thousand sleeping men, as they waited, waited, waited in the night?
Had they not, as we, then turned their eyes up and seen the huge starred vision of the night, the immense and lilac darkness of America and April? Had they not heard the sudden, shrill, and piping whistle of a departing engine? Had they not waited, thinking, feeling, seeing then the immense mysterious continent of night, the wild and lyric earth, so casual, sweet, and strange-familiar, in all its space and savagery and terror, its mystery and joy, its limitless sweep and rudeness, its delicate and savage fecundity? Had they not had a vision of the plains, the mountains, and the rivers flowing in the darkness, the huge pattern of the everlasting earth and the all-engulfing wilderness of America?
Had they not felt, as we have felt, as they waited in the night, the huge lonely earth of night time and America, on which ten thousand lonely sleeping little towns were strewn? Had they not seen the fragile network of the light, racketing, ill-joined little rails across the land, over which the lonely little trains rushed on in darkness, flinging a handful of lost echoes at the river’s edge, leaving an echo in the cut’s resounding cliff, and being engulfed then in huge lonely night, in all-brooding, all-engulfing night? Had they not known, as we have known, the wild secret joy and mystery of the everlasting earth, the lilac dark, the savage, silent, all-possessing wilderness that gathered in around ten thousand lonely little towns, ten million lost and lonely sleepers, and waited, and abode forever, and was still?
Had not Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes then waited, feeling the goat-cry swelling in their throats, feeling wild joy and sorrow in their hearts, and a savage hunger and desire—a flame, a fire, a fury—burning fierce and lean and lonely in the night, burning forever while the sleepers slept? Were they not burning, burning, burning, even as the rest of us have burned? Were Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes not burning in the night? Were they not burning forever in the silence of the little towns with all the fierce hunger, savage passion, limitless desire that young men in this land have known in the darkness?
Were they not burning with the wild and wordless hope, the incredible belief that all young men have known before the wild promise of that huge mirage, the deathless dupe and invincible illusion of this savage all-exultant land where all things are impending and where young men starve? Were they not burning in the enfabled magic, mystery, and exultant joy of lilac dark, the lonely, savage, secret, everlasting earth on which we lived, and wrought, and perished, mad with hunger, unfed, famished, furious, unassuaged? Were they not burning, burning where a million doors of glory, love, unutterable fulfilment, impended, waited in the dark for us, were here, were here around us in the dark forever, were here beside us in the dark forever, were ready to our touch forever, and that duped us, mocked forever at our hunger, maddened our hearts and brains with searching, took our youth, our strength, our love, our life, and killed us, and were never found?
Had Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes not waited then, as we have waited, with numb lips and pounding hearts and fear, delight, exultancy and terror stirring in their entrails as they waited in the silent street before the shuttered windows of a house, proud, evil, lavish, lighted, certain, secret, and alone? And as they heard the hoof, the wheel, the sudden whistle and the immense and sleeping silence of the town, the lonely, wild exultant earth, the lilac dark, the huge starred visage of the night—did they not wait there in the darkness thinking:
“Oh, there are new lands, morning, and a shining city. Soon, soon, soon!”
And thinking, feeling, thinking, with wild secret joy, intolerable desire, as they heard the sudden shrill departure of the whistle: “There are women in the West and we shall find them. [Coming at evening to their door, a wanderer, we shall find them standing there with quiet eyes.] They will be waiting for us, calm, tranquil, corn-haired, lavish, unsurprised, looking across the wall of level grain with level eyes, looking into the flaming domains of the red, the setting sun, at the great wall, and the soaring vistas of the western ranges. “Oh, there are lavish, corn-haired women in the West with tranquil eyes!” cried Garfield, Arthur, Harrison and Hayes, “and we shall find them waiting in their doors for us at evening! [Then we shall base our heads upon the limitless depth, the snowy purity and the proud sustentions of their Atlantean breasts, lie cradled in the fragrant whiteness of their swelling and columnar thighs, possess the tender bounty of their yielding beauty with all the hunger of our limitless desire, taste the pure and wholesome liquors of their tongues, and feed on the red-rose ripeness of their mouths all night long. Then, having taken and possessed, we shall be conquered by their dear surrender and lie, all through the brooding mystery of lilac dark and great-starred night, engulfed in the huge domain of their love, surrounded by the infinite, fertile, and all-taking earth clasp of their lavish bodies, bedded upon the silken swelling unction, the insatiate tenderness, the soft-withdrawing, and slow-yielding undulations of their velvet bellies!
