by Gore Vidal
“What is?” They separated.
“To go to Europe with you, to live with you.”
“It could be done.”
“Maybe....No, it wouldn’t work.”
“Why?”
“It just wouldn’t be practical.”
No, she thought, it wouldn’t be practical.
Then the passion came back to them and she almost forgot his withdrawal. She fell back onto the pillows, his body over hers.
He whispered in her ear, “You know I really have to leave after this.”
“Of course you must,” said Carla, dying gently.
3—THE YELLOW WOOD
Chapter Thirteen
THE EARLY MORNING WAS COLD AND ROBERT HOLTON SHIVERED as he left the warm lobby of the hotel. He stood outside on the sidewalk and wondered where he was. He turned to the left and walked a few steps and then he remembered the street he was on, remembered where east and west were. He turned to the right and walked rapidly toward Fifth Avenue.
The streets were almost deserted. Occasionally a taxicab would clatter by. Occasionally a tired couple looking for a room would pass him on the sidewalk. As he walked, his own footsteps made sharp regular noises on the pavement.
He came at last to a subway entrance. He breathed deeply, took a last breath of clean air and went down inside the ground.
Pale lights burned in old sockets and a sleepy Negro sat within the money-changer’s booth. A sailor stood vomiting in a corner; he was very quiet about it and the Negro paid no attention to him.
Robert Holton put his nickel in the turnstile.
On the platform several people were waiting for the train. They were all tired. Another sailor had a girl and he was standing very close to her. They were both drunk and made strange little movements with their heads and hands, slow-motion movements, as though they were flying.
Robert Holton stood against an iron pillar. He felt exhausted but physically serene. He rested his head on the hard rough surface. It was pleasant to stand like this, underground.
The uptown train stopped with a jolt, the doors opened and Robert Holton stepped into the lighted train. The doors closed and the train started again.
Everyone in the car was weary or drunk or both. Papers and cigarette butts covered the floor. A pair of dirty gloves lay at his feet, forgotten by the owner, unwanted.
Robert Holton tried to sleep but the glare of light through his eyelids was distracting. His physical exhaustion was lessening, too, and he began to feel a return of energy.
He would not think of Carla, though; he would not think of her for a little while. He would wait until he was in his room.
After a long time, after ten minutes, the train stopped at his station and he climbed out of the ground and stood on the concrete surface of the earth; a suggestion of morning was in the sky and the wind blew fresh and cold from the river. He walked to his hotel.
“Evening,” said the clerk behind the desk.
“Good evening,” said Holton.
“Is it getting colder out?”
Holton nodded. “Probably be a real cold day tomorrow.” He walked over to the counter. “Have I got any mail?”
“Let’s see...that’s...?”
“Holton.”
The clerk looked, then shook his head. “No mail, Mr. Holton.” He paused. “You was in the army?”
“Yes, I was in the army.”
“So was I.” The clerk was lonely and wanted to talk and Holton was still tired and nervous and wanted to think. “It sure is nice being out,” said the clerk.
“Yes, it’s good to be out.”
“I was with the 82nd; you remember the 82nd, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“We had a good group of guys.”
“I know you did.”
“Nothing like being a civilian, is there?”
“No,” said Robert Holton, “there’s nothing like being out. Good night.”
“Good night.” The clerk who had been with the army was sad to see him go.
He turned the light on in his room. It was all just the same, the troubling painting and the crowded dresser. Sometimes he would come into his room and have a feeling that everything would be changed when he turned on the light, that something exciting would have happened to change his room. It was always the same, though; always the way he left it.
Holton went into the bathroom. He should take a bath; he wanted to take a bath but he was too tired. In the morning; there would be time for that in the morning.
He undressed and put on the bottom of his pajamas; he never used the tops. Then he looked at himself in the mirror for a long time. He did not see himself in the mirror; he saw no image; rather he was trying to find an image, an explanation in the glass. But he found nothing and as he realized his failure the reflection of his face appeared in the mirror and he looked at it without interest because it was familiar and because he could see nothing behind it.
He turned and went into his room. He sat down on the bed and wondered whether he could sleep or not because his mind was uneasy. Holton turned out the lights and stretched out on his bed. He would make himself sleep; he would not think of Carla or of the day ended.
But his mind was too active now for him to sleep. He tried to hypnotize himself, tried not to hear the odd words and conversations in his ears.
He gave up finally. The barriers went down.
George Robert Lewis’s voice sounded in his head and the clashing colors of the fairy night club glittered in his head. Lewis’s voice, flat and nasal, became articulate.
“I do feel that religion is merely a substitute for the loss of a personal vision.” His sharp little laugh sounded and the words repeated themselves over and over again in Robert Holton’s ear: “loss of a personal vision...a vision...and elision....” The words became a refrain. The repetitions went on until Holton felt himself losing control. He was angry. He made the repetitions stop.
George Robert Lewis began to talk again.
“I feel that we can find some way through the morass of life, some way to be serene and not sterile, not static. I think probably art is the way for the sensitive. If one has talent one can practise a medium; without talent one can appreciate.
“Love? What does that word mean, darling? I’ve tried so awfully hard to be sincere about it and I’ve had some delicious attempts at it. Did you ever know Philip?...No, of course you wouldn’t have known. But as I was saying...what was I saying?”
Holton tried consciously to recall what Lewis had said. But when he tried to hear speeches again he could not. Lewis’s voice began again, a disembodied voice speaking among colors in a place where all emotions were in a minor key.
“I think one must really barricade oneself against the world. One must retreat. Now don’t tell me it’s cowardly to retreat. Nothing in this world should be put on such a superficial basis as that. We are talking on different planes. That’s why communication is so difficult. Every argument is true and false and can be argued rightly from either side. To have any agreement those discussing should decide right away on what plane they want to talk. On a superficial and obvious one the terms bravery and cowardice and right and wrong have a certain meaning. On a deeper plane they have different, sometimes opposite, meanings—sometimes no meaning at all.
“Well, to get back to my point, on the deepest level of understanding only instinct and what is natural counts. If one can’t arrive at love (and so many of us, darling, haven’t the capacity for it) then one must make a substitute, something to take up the sixty or seventy years one is alive. That’s where art is important. I understand business men feel the same way about business, though I’m not at all sure about that.
“And then as for all this driveling about going to Rome let me say I do feel that religion is merely a substitute for the loss of a personal vision....”
The sound of Lewis’s voice became louder and continued until finally the voice became so loud that it ceased to be a v
oice and became silence.
Robert Holton wanted to sleep but there were so many things that had to be arranged first.
There was also the dream of the night before to be recalled. He would think of that later.
He remembered Jim Trebling. He thought of the days on the boat when they had talked about the future.
Against a background of sea he could recall the image of Trebling. Details were absent and he could not make out the face but he could hear the voice and he could see the ocean.
“I hate the idea of being tied down any more than I have to be. You know, Bob, we’ve lived the most unnatural life there is during this war. I get the feeling sometimes that we’ve lost a lot of time. I keep wanting to start over again.
“I might want to start my own business. I think that’s not so bad: it’s worse working for somebody else. It’s funny but I’d just as soon never work. I’d just as soon drift the rest of my life.”
And Robert Holton had agreed. He agreed in those days.
“Of course you have to have money to loaf. Maybe if we hadn’t been raised in such a sound middle-class way we could be bums but we’re too used to being comfortable. No, we’re too used to being comfortable. We’ve got to get the money first.”
Robert Holton had agreed to that, too. He had agreed to everything. He wanted to be as free as possible. At least he thought he had then. Because his friend wanted it he felt he did too. He assumed a similar identity.
Trebling had more to say and his deep laughing voice continued: “No, were going to have to work a little. Not much, just a little to get enough ahead. We’re going to be careful though not to get bogged down, not to get too interested in working. It’s dangerous to get to like it.”
Holton agreed.
“Well, Bob, get your mind on the ball. How’re we going to spend that army money? I think pottery out in California sounds easy.”
Yes, pottery was easy. Then they separated and they changed. Or perhaps only he, Holton, had changed. He’d done the easiest thing, he thought. But it was true that he was entangled now for the rest of his life with Heywood and Golden; with them or another like them.
Trebling was entangled, too. Holton was pleased by that as he lay in the dark. Trebling hadn’t done better. He belonged to the army now and his chances of beginning a business were slight. He might try it though; he might be able to live the way he wanted to. Holton shuddered. It would be awful to miss freedom so narrowly.
There was a problem, still unsolved: what did he want?
“You know,” said Trebling’s voice, rising up out of the sea, “you know you make things tough for yourself. You don’t make up your mind.”
That wasn’t true, he was always plotting; most of the time, anyway.
“You try to be like everybody else.”
He was safest when he was like the rest of them. No, that wasn’t a bad thing to do; besides, he wasn’t that way really. He was different from the others in the office. They sensed that. He would probably go a long way and most of them wouldn’t. Perhaps he was like Heywood. That wasn’t bad. Heywood was a success. He could be free if he liked. He had money and he could do whatever he liked.
Trebling’s voice was fainter now and the sound of the sea behind it was becoming loud. “Sure we might flop but if we don’t we’re just fine. I’m not worried; I’m not worried about anything except being stuck in an office and working for somebody. That’s a lot to worry about, I suppose, but I’m not bothered. It’s going to work out. You’re a long time dead, I figure....”
The sea came into Holton’s room then and he was whirled on the top of a wave; for a moment there was nothing but sensation. He opened his eyes in the dark and the sea was gone.
Trebling’s voice was lost.
Holton turned over on his side, troubled, tired, looking for sleep. He thought of Carla. He had to think of her; there was a decision to be made.
She had been quiet when he left her in the apartment. She had not looked him in the eyes and he had been eager to leave, to escape.
Now she began to speak again. She had talked to him as he was dressing.
“I don’t think it would work now. I’d hoped it would; for a long time I’ve thought about you, about our living together. But you don’t want to.”
He had tried to deny this but he could not deny what he felt.
Her voice came back to him now, a sad thin echo; there was no vibrancy in the remembered voice. She was whispering in an empty room.
“You’re going to accept a pattern and I can’t stop you. I can’t bring out the capacity for love in you. You have it, I know, but I’m not enough to make you aware....”
Again the denial and again the sad voice whispering.
“No, I was wrong to try to change your life. It’s very selfish to do things for people they don’t want done. I wanted you so much. You’re the one I’m not supposed to have, though, and that’s sad for me.”
He had talked to her then and explained that he could not take the risk of living with her, that he must be within the pattern. But he could not make any of these things sound convincing. Somehow everything got confused as he tried to explain himself to her. He tried to tell her that he did love her but that he couldn’t live with her. She had listened and when he had finished she had talked again. Now her voice entered his room; it was a shadow’s voice murmuring in his ear.
“I don’t think I’d better see you again, Bob. It’s very hard for me but I’m going to control myself. I am going to forget all the things I had dreamed about since Florence. I shall find a new object and that’s a hard thing to do. It’s hard to change but I will.”
That was true, of course. There was also more.
She walked with him to the door; she let him go free to his chosen prison.
The little voice no longer whispered in his ear and there was nothing but silence and the beating of his heart, the slow beating of his heart.
The shade of the window fluttered in the outside wind. Bits of light gleamed around the shade as it fluttered. Lights from signs and behind those lights, gray and massive, was the light of early morning. The room grew colder.
He got under the blanket and he closed his eyes tight and thought of nothing: thought of shapes and shadows and lights and colors and all the things that comprise nothing: he could not sleep.
Robert Holton made a case for himself as he lay in the occasionally broken dark.
He had no gift. He was an average person. Perhaps not quite average, he had had many advantages. He was among the many, though. He could not make a world separate. He wished now that he had told Carla that: he could not make a world separate. He belonged to the world of all people and it was wrong to retreat from that world. He felt noble as he thought of this: it was an excellent argument and he wished that he had used it.
To have gone to live with Carla would have been a retreat from all that was right. Right? What had Lewis said about the planes of understanding? It didn’t matter because Lewis was just another little fairy. He was perverted in everything. No, it was right not to live with Carla. He had to do what was expected of him.
Robert Holton built himself an argument, and as he built his barricades stronger he was aware of discontent, well-hidden beyond the barricade but still alive. Duty was important and difficult. Nothing that was right was easy. Was that true? He was becoming confused.
He had worn too many faces. He thought of the myriad faces he had been made to wear. He had been different with every person he’d ever known. This lack of consistency bothered him. In the army he had been without care, without ambition; he had been like Trebling.
With the people in the office he had been cold or warm, as they were. He had given them what they expected. He had been an actor with too many rôles to play. Tonight he had played all of them for Carla and then he had become lost and he had tried to be himself and he found that he was not enough.
Every person saw him differently, not entirely because every person was
different, but because he had also intended it to be that way. Now he did not know himself. He had no way of knowing the person behind the myriad faces.
For a moment he felt himself sinking. It was like a dream of falling. He seemed to be descending into a pit without bottom. There was no longer a Robert Holton: only a series of masks, cracked now and no longer usable, no longer convincing. He could never use one again.
He stopped falling; by an effort of will he stopped himself. Carla was gone and he was sorry. There was no one else and loneliness now crept out of the silence. He would have to build the barricades stronger and higher. He would shut loneliness out.
The masks were no longer good. Carla had helped him break them. This was to be a beginning then. He would assume an identity. He would become a decided person and he would cease to be changed by others.
Robert Holton would become a successful broker working in an office.
The decision was made and he felt secure at last. The words and thoughts that had been in his mind, troubling him, stopped abruptly. He had a magic of his own and he had used it and it worked. Now he was free. There would be no more talk of going away to Florence and living with a pretty woman who loved him and wanted him to be different. He was resolved at last. It was as simple as that. With great effort he assumed an identity and freed himself from doubt.
He stopped twisting. The fever was leaving and he was tired.
Robert Holton turned over on his stomach and took a deep breath. Soon he would be asleep. All his questions were solved—except one. There was still something to be taken care of, something not very important, but bothersome. He frowned with his eyes shut. Then he opened them and he looked across the room at the dark outline of the picture frame.
The dream.
He hadn’t been able to remember the dream of the night before: the troubling, unpleasant dream. It had great significance, he knew.
His only half-conscious mind tried to remember. He kept it purposefully unawake because in this state, between sensation and memory, most dreams could be recalled.
For a long time he wondered. But he could not remember, and he went to sleep finally, exhausted, and in his mind was hidden the dream of the night before, the secret dream, the dream of death, of living. He had almost remembered.