The Unpossessed

by Tess Slesinger

  Bruno saw them moving, swaying (Elizabeth whirling in her stiff bright lettuce-green, her little-girl skirts flying gayly) one-dimensional figures on a shaking paper screen; but close to his vision and moving strong and sudden, their number multiplying, he saw six others, flesh and blood: the Black Sheep rising in a body.

  He looked down, meeting Firman’s eye, prepared to meet irony with irony or anger with anger. But to his endless shame and horror the eyes of Firman and of all the Black Sheep were lit with pity for him; as though like some youthful jury they had sat in judgment on him and grown mellow; sure of themselves and mature at last they were suddenly able to get on without him, able to endure with sorrow their master’s vast defeat.

  “Where are you going, you adolescent fools!” he roared; “didn’t you hear your professor, Literature 71 with full credits, didn’t you hear—‘strike me dead, the track has vanished’ . . . where do you think you’re going?” He threw back his head as though they had struck him, and addressed his speech to passing, non-committal dancers. “There is a band of decadent optimists among us, traitors to their class—Black Sheep in fact—who refuse to stay drinking and dancing on our merry sinking ship. Like rats they will desert us. Very well,” he cried with drunken dignity, “we can dance, we can drink, we can fornicate on our graves, without you. . . .” He resumed his lost professorial grace and spoke with a familiar mingling of his irony and sincerity. “My advice to all young rats and Sheep,” he lowered his voice and spoke closely to the band of youngsters, “is to get out, here and now; go west, young men, go south, go north—go anywhere out of our God damned city. New York is the precocious head of the adolescent body of America. America is still growing—I presume it is, if it exists at all—still angles and painful joints, and it’s too big for New York to coordinate. The city’s got dementia praecox, and the intellectuals along with it. . . . Maybe as intellectuals we’ve got some part to play; but take it from the old Chinese: this army of the lame, the halt, the blind, will come to an end, will be wiped out from start to finish, before the workers’ movement will be widespread and successful . . . if there is a workers’ movement,” he revived his cynical eyebrow with gallant insincerity. “The only way,” he continued as though he pulled his finger from his verbal dykes, “to come to this cause is to come ‘clean’—that is to come not in order to solve one’s individual neuroses, but to come already free of them. My friends and myself are sick men—if we are not already dead. Our values were mixed in our intellectual cradles; we’ve muddled the idea of love and sex until we are psychically incapable of either; from being ashamed and afraid we have thrown out one and degraded the other to the level of show-window exhibitionism, or taking of twentieth century snuff. . . . You may think me sentimental; but the lie in our private lives is important, it makes our public lives unreal and fraudulent—a man can’t do good work with an undernourished psychic system. . . . In each individual case a Vambery could give you valid special reasons—but when an epidemic’s so widespread, it has a deeper basis than the individual. I suppose we’re victims of the general social catastrophe in some way we’re too close to to figure out. . . . So we come, each of us, believing in nothing and certainly not believing in ourselves, equipped with little but our private hate and the symptoms, each one of us, of our own personal disease . . . and play at making revolutions for a band of workers we’ve never even seen. . . . Our meetings are masterpieces of postponement, our ideologies brilliant rationalizations to prevent our ever taking action. . . . I think I’m talking life, not communism—all I know is myself and my friends have never had a good look at either. . . . Listen, you kids, get out of it, get out of it while you can, leave us rotting in our blind alley, we’ve lost the way, we’ve dug ourselves in . . . you kids get out. . . .”

  “Don’t worry about us, Doctor Leonard” (their voices rang with triumph) “we want to say goodbye” “and thank you” “gosh, you’ve done a lot for us” “please tell the Dean” “to hell with hot-house education” “we’ve started breaking the rules already” “Firman and Corny got married this afternoon” “and now” “hell with the ole diplomas if they won’t take us back” (their voices rose in concert) “we’re going anyway” “we’re going to bum our way to Washington and see the Hunger March”

  He reeled as though their flag were too bright for his eyes. They stayed a minute—he thought he saw Cornelia’s eyes go misty—as though like crusaders on their way they might pause to succor the sick. He waved them savagely away. “Go on, go on, get to hell out of here, beat it—I don’t believe there is a Hunger March—go on, why don’t you, what are you waiting for, I’ll give your message to the Dean. . . .”And as they still lingered, as though at the end of their childhood they hoped for one last sanction from their elders he shook his fist in warning, smiled like a very old professor over the top of his glasses: “Run, Sheep, run!” They smiled, Firman and Cornelia, Irish Kate and Little Dixon, both the Maxwell brothers—or were there more of them? were they all the decent children in the world? were they the vanguard of the newest intellectuals who, not remaining aloof with their books and their ideas, had strength to mingle with the living and bring their gifts among them?—and about-faced, marching from him, marching from the ballroom to “bum” their way to Washington, their flag one piece at last. O my God, moaned Emmett; and followed his generation to the ballroom door; but he was too weak, or else the Sheep were ruthless—for Bruno saw him turn and mount the stairs, like a lost child climbing to the nursery. He caught sight of Elizabeth, whirling, whirling, gay in Jeffrey’s arms, he caught the look of pain in Miles’ tortured face as Miles saw his second God killed before his eyes, he laughed to Margaret Flinders who sat, her beauty gray and troubled, he waved to Norah dancing bewildered and unwilling in a stranger’s arms, turned his eyes from Elizabeth’s merry glassy stare over Jeffrey’s shoulder. . . . “Listen, fellow-bastards!” roared Bruno unheard at the punchbowl; “drink, drink with me! Up with your glasses, down with your hopes! TO THE REVOLUTION, FELLOWLICE: THE MOST INGENIOUS OPIATE OF THE INTELLECTUAL.” O my God, sobbed Emmett, trailing up the stairs.

  Faster and faster his arms went around her, the arms of the stranger, the lone wolf Jeffrey, the weak-willed Denny, art-colony Ferris, faster and faster their arms went around her, they danced and they danced and they swayed and they bent (Margaret, Margaret, I can’t stand it), they danced and they swayed, they bobbed and they bent (Margaret, Margaret, won’t you understand? how can we bring a child to this?) careening faster on the fast-express, the rollicking jittery cocktail express, nothing can matter—so wear down, you nerves, no brakes, no goal, no love, no faith, on we go glittering jittering twittering, steward a drink for the lady! Ah Jeffrey, my lover, my unloving partner, the eye of a stranger, the eye of a man, it’s the old army game, the train’s roaring again—she gave him the glad eye, the mad eye, the sad eye, he terrified gave it back. Why Jeffrey, why stranger, she said bitterly, brittley, why Dennis, why Ferris, don’t you like me, don’t you love me, I’m so gay, I’m so light, I bounce here and there like a light rubber ball—yet you tremble, you shrink . . . can I help it if I’ve lost the track? The eye of a man, the eye of a man—then off with you Jeffrey, I’ll have me the next one—Terrill, Terrill? eyes like Brownlow, voice like Ferris, will I never see a whole new man again? They danced and they danced and they swayed and they bent, faster and faster his arms went around her, the arms of the stranger, the lone wolf Terrill, the weak-willed Terrill, haven’t I met you before Mister Terrill, maybe in an art colony maybe on a boat? (Norah, Norah, I saw you with Mr. Middleton, dancing and dancing, Norah you wouldn’t ever, would you Norah, oh I’d kill you, Norah, I’m so glad to be back, to be with you again, darling Norah, I love you Norah, I feel as though I’d been on such a journey.) Why yes, Mr. Draper, delighted I’m sure, you look like somebody I vaguely know, like everyone I somehow know—amusing? the younger generation? oh yes, oh yes, we’re all of that, ah no we don’t give a damn for anything, only aspirin
the morning after—but you, don’t you feel the shaking of the boat, the roaring of the train? (No, I don’t like her Norah, I’m afraid of her, I don’t like my women clever, darling, I like them to be like you, listen Norah, promise me something, I’m drunk but I want you to promise me something) hurry, Mr. Middleton, whirl me, whirl me, before I change trains and jingle-jangle along again on my fast-express, the twentieth century unlimited, twentieth century unspirited, hell-bent for nowhere our fast-express, the only non-stop through express. (No, I guess I want to promise you, Norah, listen darling, listen, I promise you never to leave you again, never to be unfaithful, I want to promise you that Norah, can I, can I—she kissed him warmly; he knew she was not asking him to promise, he knew that he would never keep it; but the promise felt good, lent him in the midst of chaos a certain queer stability—his cycle was done for a time, he had come home again to Norah) . . . Faster and faster their arms went around her, the fast train hurtling, no love just lust no joy no pain, Elizabeth saw the wreckage ahead, piled up ahead on the glittering twittering railroad track, she saw the train headed downward, the downhill special, she saw Bruno in his sailor-suit, Bruno on his bicycle, Bruno downhill headed . . . Faster and faster they spun and careened, Ferris-Terrill-Brownlow-Denny, no stopping them now they were headed for hell. . . . The wreck loomed larger, larger, she saw the disaster with her inside eye, Bruno pedalling on his bicycle, her mother calling from the nursery window, the ship was shaking, the whole train quaking like an avalanche . . . she saw the train, she was the train. . . .

  Let me go, I dance faster alone, she screamed and danced from her partner’s arms and danced down the vanished track to rescue Bruno, herself, the twentieth century—before it was too late.

  O very good, ve-ry good, said old Miss Ballister, seeing one of those young things, sixty years her junior, gyrate and spin in a lettuce-colored dress, so gay, so young, so mad.

  PART FOUR

  MISSIS FLINDERS

  “HOME YOU go!” Miss Kane, nodding, in her white nurse’s dress, stood for a moment—she would catch a breath of air— in the hospital door; “and thank you again for the stockings, you needn’t have bothered”—drew a sharp breath and turn ing, dismissed Missis Flinders from the hospital, smiling, dismissed her forever from her mind.

  So Margaret Flinders stood next to her basket of fruit on the hospital steps; both of them waiting, a little shame-faced in the sudden sunshine, and in no hurry to leave the hospital —no hurry at all. It would be nicer to be alone, Margaret thought, glancing at the basket of fruit which stood re spectable and a little silly on the stone step (the candy-bright apples were blushing caricatures of Miles: Miles’ comfort, not hers). Flowers she could have left behind (for the nurses, in the room across the hall where they made tea at night); books she could have slipped into her suit-case; but fruit— Miles’ gift, Miles’ guilt, man’s tribute to the Missis in the hospital—must be eaten; a half-eaten basket of fruit (she had tried to leave it: Missis Butter won’t you . . . Missis Wiggam wouldn’t you like . . . But Missis Butter had aplenty of her own thank you, and Missis Wiggam said she couldn’t hold acids after a baby)—a half-eaten basket of fruit, in times like these, cannot be left to rot.

  Down the street Miles was running, running, after a taxi. He was going after the taxi for her; it was for her sake he ran; yet this minute that his back was turned he stole for his relief and spent in running away, his shoulders crying guilt. And don’t hurry, don’t hurry, she said to them; I too am better off alone.

  The street stretched in a long white line very finally away from the hospital, the hospital where Margaret Flinders (called there so solemnly Missis) had been lucky enough to spend only three nights. It would be four days before Missis Wiggam would be going home to Mister Wiggam with a baby; and ten possibly—the doctors were uncertain, Miss Kane prevaricated—before Missis Butter would be going home to Mister Butter without one. Zig-zagging the street went the children; their cries and the sudden grinding of their skates she had listened to upstairs beside Missis Butter for three days. Some such child had she been—for the styles in children had not changed—a lean child gliding solemnly on skates and grinding them viciously at the nervous feet of grown-ups. Smile at these children she would not or could not; yet she felt on her face that smile fixed, painful and frozen that she had put there, on waking from ether three days back, to greet Miles. The smile spoke to the retreating shoulders of Miles: I don’t need you; the smile spoke formally to life: thanks, I’m not having any. Not so the child putting the heels of his skates together Charlie Chaplin-wise and describing a scornful circle on the widest part of the sidewalk. Not so a certain little girl (twenty years back) skating past the wheels of autos, pursuing life in the form of a ball so red! so gay! better death than to turn one’s back and smile over one’s shoulder at life!

  Upstairs Missis Butter must still be writhing with her poor caked breasts. The bed that had been hers beside Missis Butter’s was empty now; Miss Kane would be stripping it and Joe would come in bringing fresh sheets. Whom would they put in beside Missis Butter, to whom would she moan and boast all night about the milk in her breasts that was turning, she said, into cheese?

  Now Miles was coming back, jogging sheepishly on the running-board of a taxi, he had run away to the end of his rope and now was returning penitent, his eyes dog-like searching her out where she stood on the hospital steps (did they rest with complacence on the basket of fruit, his gift?), pleading with her, Didn’t I get the taxi fast? like an anxious little boy. She stood with that smile on her face that hurt like too much ice-cream. Smile and smile; for she felt like a fool, she had walked open-eyed smiling into the trap (Don’t wriggle, Missis, I might injure you for life, Miss Kane had said cheerfully) and felt the spring only when it was too late, when she waked from ether and knew like the thrust of a knife what she had ignored before. Whatever did you do it for, Missis Flinders Missis Butter was always saying; if there’s nothing the matter with your insides—doesn’t your husband . . . and Won’t you have some fruit, Missis Butter, her calm reply: meaning, My husband gave me this fruit so what right have you to doubt that my husband . . . Her husband who now stumbled up the steps to meet her; his eyes he had sent ahead, but something in him wanted not to come, tripped his foot as he hurried up the steps.

  “Take my arm, Margaret,” he said. “Walk slowly,” he said. The bitter pill of taking help, of feeling weakly grateful stuck in her throat. Miles’ face behind his glasses was tense like the face of an amateur actor in the rôle of a strike-leader. That he was inadequate for the part he seemed to know. And if he felt shame, shame in his own eyes, she could forgive him; but if it was only guilt felt man-like in her presence, a guilt which he could drop off like a damp shirt, if he was putting it all off on her for being a woman! “The fruit, Miles!” she said; “you’ve forgotten the fruit.” “The fruit can wait,” he said bitterly.

  He handed her into the taxi as though she were a package marked glass—something, she thought, not merely troublesomely womanly, but ladylike. “Put your legs up on the seat,” he said. “I don’t want to, Miles.” Goodbye Missis Butter Put your legs up on the seat. I don’t want to—better luck next time Missis Butter Put your legs I can’t make out our window, Missis Butter Put your “All right, it will be nice and uncomfortable.” (She put her legs up on the seat.) Goodbye Missis But . . . “Nothing I say is right,” he said. “It’s good with the legs up,” she said brightly.

  Then he was up the steps agile and sure after the fruit. And down again, the basket swinging with affected carelessness, arming him, till he relinquished it modestly to her outstretched hands. Then he seated himself on the little seat, the better to watch his woman and his woman’s fruit; and screwing his head round on his neck said irritably to the man who had been all his life on the wrong side of the glass pane: “Charles Street!”

  “Hadn’t you better ask him to please drive slowly?” Margaret said.

  “I was just going to,” he said bitt
erly.

  “And drive slowly,” he shouted over his shoulder.

  The driver’s name was Carl C. Strite. She could see Carl Strite glance cannily back at the hospital; Greenway Maternity Home; pull his lever with extreme delicacy as though he were stroking the neck of a horse. There was a small roar—and the hospital glided backward: its windows ran together like the windows of a moving train; a spurt—watch out for those children on skates!—and the car was fairly started down the street.

  Goodbye Missis Butter I hope you get a nice roommate in my place, I hope you won’t find that Mister B let the ice-pan flow over again—and give my love to the babies when Miss Kane stops them in the door for you to wave at—goodbye Missis Butter, really goodbye.

  Carl Strite (was he thinking maybe of his mother, an immigrant German woman she would have been, come over with a shawl on her head and worked herself to skin and bone so the kids could go to school and turn out good Americans—and what had it come to, here he was a taxi-driver, and what taxi-drivers didn’t know! what in the course of their lackeys’ lives they didn’t put up with, fall in with! well, there was one decent thing left in Carl Strite, he knew how to carry a woman home from a maternity hospital) drove softly along the curb . . . and the eyes of his honest puzzled gangster’s snout photographed as “Your Driver” looked dimmed as though the glory of woman were too much for them, in a moment the weak cruel baby’s mouth might blubber. Awful to lean forward and tell Mr. Strite he was laboring under a mistake. Missis Wiggam’s freckled face when she heard that Missis Butter’s roommate . . . maybe Missis Butter’s baby had been born dead but anyway she had had a baby . . . whatever did you do it for Missis Flind . . .