The Party at Jack's

by Thomas Wolfe

  * * * * *

  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.

  On the ship there were two brothers whose faces were to haunt his dreams forever. They were enormous men of middle age; they were expensively dressed and they drank wine all day long. Their ponderous jowls hung down from their great red faces comically, they had large flowing moustaches, and their eyes were large and brown and gentle as a cow’s. They held long folding maps in the great muttons of their hands, and all day long, as the ship went down the river, they looked from time to time at their maps, grunting with a guttural satisfaction of discovery: “Ach—die Lorelei! Ach—das Rheinpfalz!” Then they would return solemnly to their eating and drinking. They were comical in the solemn intentness of their glutting, and yet in their great size, their huge red glowing faces, their thick brown moustaches and their great gentle brown eyes, there was a profound and impressive nobility, such as great well kept bulls might have.

  Then day faded on the ancient hills, the ruined turrets melted into dusk, and night came on.

  Jack stood alone in darkness watching as the dim white breast of the boat feathered against dark flowing waters, and Jack could hear dark hoofs rushing on the land, and he thought he heard the mermaids singing.

  * * * * *

  Then, out of the dream of time into the dream of time, Mr. Frederick Jack awoke with sad defunctive music in his brain, and instantly he knew that it was morning, May the second, nineteen hundred twenty-eight. A fine bright day and spring at last, he thought, with golfer’s relish. April’s ended.

  MORNING

  • • •

  JACK ERECT

  • • •

  Mr. Frederick Jack rose quite early in the morning and he liked the sense of power. The best of everything was good enough for him, and he also loved his family dearly. He liked the odor of strong inky news-print together with the sultry and exultant fragrance of black boiling coffee the first thing in the morning. He liked lavish plumbing, richly thick with creamy porcelain and polished silver fixtures, he liked the morning plunge in his great sunken tub, the sensual warmth of clean sudsy water and the sharp aromatic clean-ness of the bath salts. He had a keen eye for aesthetic values, too, and he liked to watch the swarming dance of water spangles in their magic shift and play upon the creamy ceiling of the bathroom. Most of all, he liked to come up pink and dripping, streaked liberally from head to toe all over his plump hairy body with strong wholesome soap-suds, and then he loved the stinging drive and shock of needled spray, the sense of bracing conflict, hardihood, triumph and, finally, of abundant glowing health as he stepped forth draining cleanly down upon a thick cork mat and vigorously rubbing himself dry in the folds of a huge crashy bath-towel.

  Mr. Jack also liked the opulent bowled depth and richness of the creamy water-basin, and he liked to stand there for a moment with bared lips, regarding with considerable satisfaction the pearly health and hue of his strong front teeth, the solid clamp and bite of the molars edged expensively with gold. Then he liked to brush them earnestly with a brush of stiff hard bristles and an inch of firm thick paste, turning his head strongly from side to side around the brush, and glaring at his image in the glass until he foamed agreeably at the mouth with a lather of pink spittle tinged pleasantly with a fresh and minty taste. This done, he liked to spit it out, soft flop and fall of blobsy bubbled pink into the open basin where clean running water washed it down, and then he liked to rinse his mouth and wash his throat and tonsils with the tonic antiseptic bite of strong pale listerine.

  Mr. Jack also liked the tidy crowded array of lotions, creams, unguents; of bottles, tubes, brushes, jars, and shaving implements that covered the shelf of thick blue glass above the basin. He liked to lather his face heavily with a large silver-handled shaving brush, rubbing the lather strongly in with firm stroking finger tips, brushing and stroking till his jaws were covered with a smooth thick layer of warm shaving cream. Then Mr. Jack took the razor in his hand and opened it. He used a long straight razor, murderously sharp, and he always kept it in excellent condition. At the crucial moment, just before the first long downward stroke, Mr. Jack would flourish slightly forward with his plump arms and shoulders, raising the glittering blade aloft in one firm hand, his legs would widen stockily, crouching gently at the knees, and his lathered face would crane carefully to one side and upward, and his eyes would roll aloft, as if he was getting braced and ready underneath a heavy burden. Then holding one cheek delicately between two daintily arched fingers, he would advance deliberately upon it with that gleaming blade. He grunted gently, with satisfaction, at the termination of the stroke. The blade had mown smoothly, from cheek to jowl, an even perfect swath of pink clean flesh across his ruddy face. He exult
ed in the slight tug and rasping pull of wiry stubble against the smooth and deadly sharpness of the blade, and in the relentless sweep and triumph of the steel. Then he liked to rinse his glowing face first with hot, then with cold water, to dry it in a crisp fresh towel, and to rub face and neck carefully with a soft, fragrant, gently stinging lotion. This done, he stood for a moment, satisfied, regarding his image, softly caressing the velvet texture of shaved ruddy cheeks with gentle finger tips.

  Mr. Jack also liked to twist his close-clipped moustache ends into fine waxed points and carefully to part exactly in the middle his grey distinguished-looking hair, which was somewhat thin, and cropped closely up the sides in German fashion.

  Elegant in dress, even perhaps a trifle foppish, but always excellently correct, Mr. Jack wore fresh garments every day. No cotton touched him. He wore undergarments of the finest silk and he had over forty suits from London. Every morning he surveyed his wardrobe studiously, and he chose with care and with a good eye for harmony the shoes, socks, shirts and neckties he would wear, and before he chose a suit he was sometimes lost in thought for several minutes. He loved to open wide the door of his great closet and see them hanging there in thick set rows with all their groomed and regimented elegance. He liked the strong clean smell of honest cloth, the rich dull texture of good material, and in those forty several shapes and colors he saw forty pleasing reflections and variations of his own character. They filled him, as did everything about him, with a sense of morning confidence, joy, and vigor.

  Mr. Jack also had the best room in the house, although he had not asked for it. It was an immense and spacious chamber, twenty feet each way and twelve feet high, and in these noble proportions was written quietly a message of wealth and power. In the exact centre of the wall that faced the door was placed Mr. Jack’s bed, a chaste fourposter of the Revolutionary period. A chest of antique drawers was placed in the centre of another wall, a gate-legged table, with a row of books and the latest magazines, two fine old Windsor chairs, a few tasteful French prints on the walls, an old well padded easy chair, another little table at the side of his bed, on which was set a small clock, a book or two and a little electric lamp, and curiously, an enormous chaise longue, such as women use, but of a sober grey hue and long and wide enough to receive the figure of an eight foot man, which stood at the foot of the bed, and in which Mr. Jack liked to stretch himself and read—this was about all the furniture the room had in it. The total effect was one of a modest and almost austere simplicity combined quietly and subtly with a sense of spaciousness, wealth, and power. Finally, the floor was covered with a thick and heavy carpet of dull grey. Mr. Jack liked to walk across it in his bare feet, the floor below it neither creaked nor sagged. It was as solid as if it had been hewn in one single block from the timber of a massive oak.

  Mr. Jack liked this. He liked what was solid, rich, and spacious, made to last. He liked the sense of order and security everywhere. He even liked the thick and solid masonry of the walls, through which the sounds of the awaking city all around him came pleasantly to his ears with a dull, sustained, and mounting roar. He liked to look through the broad window of his room into the canyon of the street below, and see the steep cool morning shadows cut cleanly by the young and living light of May. He liked to raise his eyes aloft upon the glittering pinnacle of the building opposite him and see the young light of the morning flame and glitter on the arrogant bright silver of the city’s spires and ramparts. He liked to look down upon the oiled bluish ribbon of the street below him and watch the trucks and motors as they began to charge furiously through that narrow gulch in ever-growing numbers. The thickening tide of the man-swarm, as it began to stream past to its labors in a million little cells, was also pleasing to him. Founded like a rock among these furious, foaming tides of life Mr. Jack saw nothing but security, order, and a radiant harmony wherever he looked.

  And all of this, he felt, was just exactly as it should be. He loved the feeling of security and power that great buildings and rich and spacious dwellings gave to him. Even in the furious thrust and jostle of the crowd his soul rejoiced, for he saw order everywhere. It was the order of ten million men who swarmed at morning to their work in little cells, and who swarmed at evening from their work to little cells. It was an order as inevitable as the seasons, as recurrent as the tides, and in it Mr. Jack read the same harmony and permanence that he saw in the entire visible universe around him. And he liked order. He did not like for things to shake and tremble. When things shook and trembled, a slight frown appeared between his eyes, and an old unquiet feeling, to which he could not give a name or image, stirred faintly in his heart. Once, when he awoke at morning, he thought he felt a faint vibration, a tremor so brief and slight he could not be certain of it, in the massive walls around him. Then Mr. Jack had asked the door man who stood at the street entrance a few questions. The man told him that the building had been built across two depths of railway tunnels, and that all that Mr. Jack had heard was the faint vibration that might have come from the passing of a train twelve depths below him. Then the man assured him it was all quite safe, that the very trembling in the walls, in fact, was just another gauge and proof of safety.

  Still, Mr. Jack did not like it. The news disturbed him vaguely. He would have liked it better if the building had been built upon the solid rock.

  * * * * *

  For breakfast he liked orange juice, two leghorn eggs, soft boiled, two slices of crisp thin toast, and tasty little segments of pink Praguer ham, which looked so pretty on fresh parsley sprigs, and coffee, coffee, he liked strong fragrant sultry coffee, cup by cup.

  With simple comforts such as these Mr. Jack faced the world each morning with strong hope, with joy breast and back as either should be. The smell of the earth was also good, and fortified his soul. Up through the pavements of thick stone, out of the city’s iron breast, the smell of the earth was coming somehow, immortal and impalpable, cool, pregnant, moist and flowerful. It was loaded to its lips with the seeds of life and always coming onward, upward, out of steel and stone or subterranean rock, never to be seen or touched and like a miracle as it impended in the bright living morning air in waves of subtle and premonitory fragrance.

  Mr. Jack, although city bred, could feel the charm of Mother Earth. Accordingly with eyes half closed, the strong deep volutes of his nostrils trembling gently, he arose and sniffed that living laden air with zestful satisfaction. This was more like it, now. Made him feel like a young colt again. He breathed deeply, slowly, deliberately, his hands pressed with firm tenderness against his swelling diaphragm.

  He liked the cultivated forms of nature: the swarded greens of great estates, gay regiments of brilliant gardened flowers, the rich clumped masses of the shrubbery, even the gnarled old apple tree of other times which had been left cunningly by the architect to lend a homely and familiar touch at the angle of the master’s room. All this delighted him, the call of the simple life was growing stronger every year, and he was building a big house in Westchester County.

  He also liked the ruder and more natural forms of beauty: he liked the deep massed green that billowed on a hillside, the smell of cleanly mown fields, and he liked old shaded roads that wound away to quietness from driven glares of speed and concrete. He knew the values in strange magic lights of green and gold, and he had seen an evening light upon the old red of a mill, and felt deep stillness in his heart (all—could anyone believe it?—within thirty miles of New York City). On those occasions the distressful life of that great and furious city had seemed very far away. And often he had paused to pluck a flower or to stand beside a brook in thought. But after sighing with regret as, among such scenes, he thought of the haste and folly of man’s life, Mr. Jack always came back to the city. For life was real, and life was earnest, and Mr. Jack was a business man.

  Mr. Jack also liked the more expensive forms of sport. He liked to go out in the country to play golf; he loved bright sunlight and the fresh mown smell of fairways. T
he rich velvet of the greens delighted him, and afterwards when he had stood below the bracing drive of needled showers, and felt the sweat of competition wash cleanly from his well-set form, he liked to loaf upon the cool veranda of the club, and talk about his score, and joke and laugh, pay or collect his bets, and drink good Scotch with other men of note. And he liked to watch his country’s flag flap languidly upon the tall white pole because it looked so pretty there.

  It was of golf that Mr. Jack was now thinking as he sniffed the morning air.

  Mr. Jack also liked to gamble and he gambled everywhere he could. He gambled every day upon the price of stocks: this was his business. And every night he went and gambled at his club. It was no piker’s game he played. He never turned a hair about a thousand dollars. Large sums did not appall him. He counted by the hundred thousand every day; he was not frightened by amount or number. When he saw the man-swarm passing in its million-footed weft he did not sicken in his heart. Neither did his guts stir nauseously, growing grey with horror. And when Mr. Jack saw the ninety story buildings all about him, did he fall down grovelling in the dust? Did he beat a maddened brain against their sides, as he cried out, “Woe! O woe is me!”? No. He did not. The brawling shift and fury of great swarms of people warmed his heart, and beetling cliffs of immense and cruel architectures lapped his soul in strong security. He liked great crowds and every cloud-lost spire of masonry was a talisman of power, the monument to an everlasting empire. It made him feel good. For that empire was his faith, his fortune, and his life. He had a place there. Therefore, the fury of great crowds, the towering menace of great buildings did not oppress his soul. He never felt that he was drowning. A ruddy compact human atom, five feet seven inches tall, he was, he knew, if not a man among a million, at least a man among some thousands.