by Thomas Wolfe
And these examples, as bright as beings in a shining water, as literal as morning, as incontrovertible as the savage thirst and hunger with which we nailed them to the walls of our fierce memory could be multiplied, as everybody knows, indefinitely, but to no advantage, for everyone has seen them, everyone has known them for himself, and we all know this radiant and exultant power has struck like lightning everywhere on earth, and has been chosen as its rare agents the most obscure and humble people as often as the most renowned. Certainly it had never made its dwelling in a richer earth than in this woman, for it seemed to inhabit not only every atom of her flesh, but to be part of the whole radiance and energy of her spirit, so that it was in everything she did, everything she touched, everything she said, and if she had done, said, or touched nothing, it would have been with her, and around her, filling the very silence with the presence of its exultancy and joy: For this reason, she brought magic with her everywhere.
MORNING
• • •
JACK AND HIS WIFE
• • •
He rapped lightly at the door and waited. There was no answer. More faintly, listening, he rapped again.
“Are you there?” he said. He entered the room. She was sitting with her back to him at the other side of the room, seated at a small writing desk between the windows with a little stack of bills, business letters, and personal correspondence on her left hand, and an open check book on her right; she was vigorously and rapidly scrawling off a note. As he advanced toward her, she put the pen down, swiftly blotted the paper, and was preparing to fold and thrust it in an envelope when he spoke.
“Good morning,” he said in the pleasant half ironic tone that people use when they address someone who is not aware of their presence.
She jumped, turned around quickly and then spoke to him in the jolly and eager but somewhat bewildered voice with which she usually responded to a greeting.
“Oh, hello, Fritz,” she cried in a high, rather dazed tone. “How are you? Hah?” clapping her small hand swiftly to her ear.
He stopped in a somewhat formal and teutonic fashion, planted a brief, friendly and perfunctory kiss on her rosy cheek, and straightened, unconsciously shrugging his shoulders a little, and giving his sleeves and the bottom of his coat a brief tug to smooth out any wrinkle that might have appeared to disturb the faultless correctness of his costume. And although she continued to look at him with a jolly, eager, and innocent face, still seeming a little confused and bewildered, as deaf people are, she had missed not even the remotest detail of his costume for the day—shoes, socks, trousers, coat, and tie, together with the true perfection of a tailored line, and the neat gardenia in his buttonhole,—all this she observed in an instant together with his ruddy face and the small waxed points of his moustache, and she felt a swift secret and ironic amusement which did not tell even for a second upon her jolly and eager face. And as he straightened, her innocent and merciless eye swept briefly across the faultless smoothness of his buttoned coat, noting a just faintly perceptive disturbance in the smooth line of his coat at the place where his inside breast pocket was.
And remembering the small square envelope with the thin spidery writing which she had seen among the mail that morning, she thought with an ironic faintly bitter amusement: “Well, he’s got it. Right over the heart—or, anyway, just underneath the pocket book.” Yet, during all this time of merciless cognition, the somewhat confused and good-humored expression of her jolly face did not change a bit. Instead, as she sat there with her glowing face bent forward and her hand held firmly to one ear in an attitude of eager attentiveness, her jolly face had the puzzled and confused look of good-natured people—and particularly of good-natured people who are somewhat deaf—which seemed to say: “Now, I can see that you are laughing at me about something? What have I done now?”
As for Jack, he stood before her for a moment, feet apart, and hands akimbo on his hips, looking at her with an expression of mock gravity and sternness, in which, however, his good humor and elation were apparent.
“Hah?” she cried again, eagerly, bending forward with a cupped ear as if to hear what he had said, although he had said nothing.
In answer, Jack produced the newspaper which he had been holding folded back in one hand, and tapped it with his index finger, saying:
“Have you seen this?”
“No, who is it?” she cried eagerly. “Hah?”
“It’s Elliot in the Globe. Like to hear it?”
“Yes. Read it. What does he say?”
And as he prepared to read, she bent forward, her rosy face glowing more deeply with excitement and attention, and one hand held firmly to her ear. Jack struck a pose, rattled the paper, frowned, and cleared his throat with mock pretentiousness, and then began in a slightly ironic and affected tone, in which however his own deep pleasure and satisfaction was manifest, to read the fancy and florid words of the review.
“Mr. Shulberg has brought to this, his latest production, the full artillery of his own distinguished gifts for suave direction. He has paced it brilliantly, timed it—word, scene, and gesture—with some of the most subtly nuanced, deftly restrained, and quietly persuasive acting that this too too jaded season has yet seen. He has a gift for silence that is eloquent—oh! devoutly eloquent—among all the loud but for the most part meaningless vociferation of the current stage. All this your diligent observer is privileged to repeat with more than customary elation. Moreover, Mr. Shulberg has revealed to us in the person of Montgomery Mortimer the finest youthful talent that this season has discovered. Finally”—Jack cleared his throat solemnly, “Ahem, Ahem”—flourished forward his short arms, and rattled the paper expressively, and for a moment stared drolly at her. “Finally, he has given us with the distinguished aid of Esther Jack a faultless and unobtrusive decor which warmed these ancient bones as they have not been warmed for many a Broadway moon. In these three acts, Miss Jack contributes three of the most effective settings she has yet done for the stage. Subtle, searching and hushed, with a slightly rueful humor that is all their own, there is apparent, in her elvishly sly design, a quiet talent that is growing constantly, and that need make obeisance to no one. She is, in fact, in the studious opinion of this humble but diligent observer, the first designer of her time.”
Jack paused abruptly, looked at her drolly and gravely with a cocked head over the edges of the paper, and said:
“Did you say something!”
“God!” she yelled, her jolly face flushed with laughter and excitement. “Did you hear it! Vat is dees?” she said comically, making a Jewish gesture with the hands. “An ovation,—what else does he say?” she asked eagerly, clapping her hand to her ear and bending forward, “Hah?”
Jack proceeded:
“‘It is, therefore, a pity that Miss Jack’s brilliant talent should not have better fare to feed as than was given it last evening at the Arlington. For the play itself, we must reluctantly admit, was neither—’”
“Well,” said Jack, stopping suddenly and putting down the paper, “the rest of it is—you know,” he shrugged slightly and made a gesture with his hands, “—a sort of so-so. Neither good nor bad! He sort of pans it.—But say!” he cried, with a kind of jocular indignation. “I like the nerve of that guy! Where does he get this Miss Esther Jack stuff? Where do I come in?” he said. “Don’t I get any credit at all for being your husband? You know,” he said, “I’d like to get in somewhere if it’s only a seat in the second balcony. Of course”—and now he began to speak in the impersonal manner that people often use when they are being heavily sarcastic, addressing himself into the vacant air, as if some invisible auditor were there, and as if he himself were only an ironical observer—“Of course, he’s nothing but her husband, anyway. What is he?—Bah!” he said in a scornful and contemptuous tone. “Nothing but a fat little stock broker who doesn’t deserve to have such a brilliant woman for his wife. What does he know about art? Can he appreciate her? Can he understand a
nything she does? Can he say—What is it this fellow says?” Jack demanded, suddenly looking at the paper with an intent stare and then reading it in an affected and ironic tone—“‘subtle searching, and hushed with a slightly rueful humor’—a slightly rueful humor,” Jack said ironically, “Not a rueful humor, but a ‘slightly rueful humor that is all their own.’”
“I know,” she said in a tone of pitying contempt, as if the florid words of the reviewer aroused in her only a feeling of commiseration, although the pleasure and excitement which the words of praise had given her were still legible on her flushed face—“I know. Isn’t it pathetic! They’re all so fancy—these fellows, they make me tired.!”
“‘There is apparent in her elvishly sly design’” Jack continued—“‘Elvishly sly’—now that’s a good one! Not sly, but elvishly sly,” he said, then with a droll and Jewish gesture of the palms he demanded of his unseen auditor—“Could her husband think of a thing like that? Nah-nah-nah!” he cried suddenly, in a curiously guttural accent, shaking his head with a scornful and angry laugh and waving a plump forefinger sideways before him. “Her husband is not smart enough!” he cried furiously. “He is not good enough! He’s nothing but a common business man! He can’t appreciate her!” he shouted in a furious and guttural tone,—and suddenly, to her amazement, she saw that his eyes were shot with tears, and that the lenses of his neat gold rimmed spectacles were being covered with a film of mist.
For a moment she stared at him in stupefaction, her warm and jolly little face bent towards him in an expression of startled and protesting concern, but even at the same moment she was thinking, as she had often thought: “What a strange man!” and feeling obscurely yet strangely, as everyone has felt, that there was something in life she had never been able to find out about, or to express. For she knew that in this sudden and reasonless display of strong feeling in this plump grey-haired, and faultlessly groomed man, there was no relation whatever to the review in the paper, which had praised her work so warmly. Neither was his chagrin because the reviewer had referred to her as “Miss,” anything more than a playful and jocular pretense.
She knew that he was really bursting with pride and elation because of her success, and with a sudden poignant, and wordless pity—for whom, for what, she could not say—she had an instant and complete picture of the great chasmed downtown city, where he would spend his day, and where all day long, in the furious drive and turmoil of his business, excited prosperous looking men would pause suddenly to seize his arm, to grasp his hand, and to shout: “Say—have you seen today’s Globe?—Did you see what it had to say about your wife?—Aren’t you proud of her?—Congratulations!”
And she could see also his spruce plump figure, and his ruddy face beginning to blush and burn brick-red with pride and pleasure, as he received the tribute of prosperous men, and as he tried to answer them with an amused and tolerant smile, and a few casual and indifferent words of acknowledgment as if to say: “Yes, I think I did see some mention of it—but of course you can hardly expect me to be excited by a thing like that. That’s an old story to us now. They’ve said that kind of thing so often that we’re used to it.”
And when he came home that night he would repeat what had been said to him—what Rosenthal and Straus, his two rich partners, had said to him, what Liliencron, the president of his luncheon club, had said, and what Clark and Stein, two of his richest customers, had said. And although he would repeat their words at dinner with an air of faintly cynical amusement, she knew that his satisfaction would be immense and solid, and that it would be enhanced by the knowledge that the wives of these rich men, handsome and splendid-looking Jewesses, as material-minded in their quest for what was fashionable and successful in the world of art, as were their husbands, for what was profitable in the world of business, would also read of her success, would straightway go to witness it themselves, and then would speak of it in brilliant chambers of the night; where even the heavy glowing air received an added menace of something cruel and erotic from the lavish bodies and the cruel faces of these handsome, scornful and sensual looking women.
All this she thought of instantly as she stared with an astounded face at this plump, ruddy, grey haired man, whose eyes had suddenly and for no reason that she knew, filled with tears, and whose firm scornful mouth now had the pouting, bitterly wounded look of a hurt child. “What a strange man!” she thought again, for she had seen these sudden and unexplainable surges of feeling come over him before, and had never known what they meant, but even as she thought all this, and as her heart was filled with a nameless and undefinable sense of pity, she was crying warmly in a protesting voice: “But, Fritz! You know I never felt like that! You know I never said a thing like that to you,” she cried indignantly. “You know I love it when you like anything I do—I’d rather have your opinion ten times over than one of these fellows in the newspaper. What do they know anyway?” she muttered scornfully. “They make me tired, they’re all so fancy.”
And he, having taken off his glasses and polished them angrily, having blown his nose vigorously and put his glasses on again, now suddenly lowered his head, braced his thumb stiffly on his temple and put four plump fingers across his eyes in a shielding comical position, saying rapidly, in a muffled, guttural and apologetic tone:
“I know! I know! It’s all right! I was only choking,” he said with an absurd and pathetic smile, and then lowering his head abruptly, he blew his nose vigorously again, his face lost its ridiculous expression of wounded feeling, and he began to talk in a completely natural matter-of-fact tone, as if nothing he had done or said had seemed at all extraordinary:
“Well,” he said, “How do you feel? Are you pleased with the way things went?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” she answered in the dubious, vague and somewhat discontented tone she always used on these occasions, when her work was finished, and the fury, haste and almost hysterical tension of the last days before a theatrical production were at an end. Then she continued: “I think it went off pretty well—don’t you? Hah? I thought my sets were sort of good—or did you think so” she demanded eagerly. “No,” she went on in the comical and disparaging tone of a child talking to itself, shaking her head in a depressed fashion but hoping for the warm denial of the connotation of its elders. “I guess they were just ordinary—pretty bad—a long way from my best—hah?” she demanded, clapping her hand to her ear.
“You know what I think,” he said angrily, “I’ve told you. There’s no one who can touch you. The best thing in the show!” he said, strongly. “They were by far the best thing in the show!” (And, as always, in moments of strong feeling, his accent became guttural—and, instead of “show,” he said “joe”)—“By far! By far!” he said. Then, in a quiet tone, he said, “Well, I suppose you’re glad it’s over. That’s the end of it for this year, isn’t it.”
“Yes,” she said, “except for some costumes that I’ve promised Irene Morgenstein I’d do for one of her damned ballets. And I’ve got to meet some of the company for fittings again this morning,” she concluded in a weary and dispirited tone.
“What, again! Weren’t you satisfied with the way they looked last night? What’s the trouble?”
“Oh,” she said in a disgusted and impatient tone, “What do you think’s the trouble, Fritz? There’s only one trouble—it never changes: It’s always the same! The trouble is that there are so many half-baked God-damned fools in the world who’ll never do the thing you tell them to do! That’s the trouble! God!” she said frankly, “I’m too good for it! I never should have given up my painting. The thing you do is so wonderful—the thing that happens when you design,” she went on in an earnest but rather confused tone, wrinkling her low forehead in an almost animal-like expression of perplexity as if she knew exactly what she wished to say, but could not find the words to explain it, and as if that fault lay rather in the understanding of other people, and in the dimensions of language, rather than in herself. “Honestly! You d
on’t know what goes on in me when I design!” she cried in an earnest half-accusing tone, as if, by not knowing, he were guilty of some fault: “No one ever asks me how it happens: No one seems to want to know,” she said in an aggrieved and half resentful tone, “But it’s the most wonderful thing you ever heard of! At first, it’s all solid, like one thing. It’s one solid mass up here,” she went on tapping her head, and frowning again with the curiously bewildered and animal-like frown:—“Then, it all gets broken up somehow in little bits, like a picture,” she went on vaguely, still frowning in the confused manner, “it all sort of swims around and arranges itself until—there it is! I’ve got it—all clear!” she cried triumphantly, “—The design!” She was silent, frowning in the perplexed and troubled fashion for a moment, then she burst out suddenly with her straight warm indignation, “Isn’t it a shame!” she cried, “that a wonderful thing like that has got to be wasted on those people?”
“What people?” he said.
“Oh, you know,” she muttered, “the kind of people that you get in the theatre. Of course there are some good ones—but God!” she said frankly, “Most of them are such trash! Did you see me in this and did you read what they said about me in that, and wasn’t I a knockout in the other thing?” she muttered in a sullen and resentful tone. “God, Fritz, to listen to the way they talk you’d think the only reason a play ever gets produced is to give one of them a chance to strut around and show himself off upon a stage! When it ought to be the most wonderful thing in the world!—Oh! The magic you can make, the thing you can do with people if you want to—It’s like nothing else on earth!” she cried. “Isn’t it a shame no more is done with it!” She brooded for a moment with an angry almost sullen flash upon her face. Then, suddenly, her breast and warm full throat began to tremble, a burble of wild humor welled up in her throat, and finally she cast back her head and laughed, a wild full yell of woman’s laughter, as she spoke: “‘As for me—as for me,’” she choked, “‘I am noted for muh torso’”—and rich wild helpless laughter rose from her and rang around the spacious room.