Great Circle: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  With long thrusts, with smooth and powerful lunges of speed, they overtook another train, measured bright window against bright window, drew abreast of statuesque lethargic passenger after passenger, newspapers, hats, hands lifted or falling, swaying coats, listless inquiring eyes, men, women, girls, a final clack, and gone. The porter bent deprecatingly with his whisk, he rose and followed him, fishing in his pocket for a quarter, feeling for the right size, the milled edge.

  —You all gettin’ off Back Bay, boss?

  —Yes, I’ll take my bag myself.

  —All right, boss.

  The pale girl in green satin passed him, humming, holding her thin arms away from her thin swaying body for balance, the white hands a little lifted, self-conscious. Too bad, darling—where have you been all my life? If only you had introduced yourself more efficiently, perhaps at the ticket gate, or last night, or last year, things might have been very different. We’d now be like an old married couple. What secrets left? None. Do you perspire freely? Snore? Chew gum? Sing in your bath? Do you scratch the mole on your left clavicle every night till it bleeds? Cascara or castor oil? And exactly how good a liar are you? Liars need good memories. Yes, indeed. Don’t forget how you were caught in that little fib about Mehitabel Mockingbird and the dead pansy, or that other one about Methuselah and his sponge bag. Ah ha! We know all about it. And my God, the quarrels, the late night wrangles, the three-day silences, the weepings in dark rooms face downward on disheveled beds, the blows struck in sudden fury, the livid eyes of hate over the morning grapefruit! And lying beside each other for sleepless hours at night, the hands clenched, the eyes wide open but unseeing, eyeless at Gaza, while the digestion of each in turn interrupts the dramatic silence with obscene squeals and snickers. Love? after all that? My dear woman, pull yourself together. Go your way, take your little smells and snoops to another station, send your laundry to the North Pole, order a sandalwood coffin at Woolworth’s.… Marriage. In Cambridge there shall be neither giving nor taking in marriage, but all shall be as one sex, and that shall be without which is without, only the dead moon will dare to maculate the red macula. My dear Andy——

  He put on his hat, his heart was beating, he felt a curious constriction in his throat, as if speaking would be difficult, his voice somehow misplaced. Think, you idiot! Think—don’t feel. Be calm. Cast a sure and slow balance of the figures in the situation, weigh the years one with another, measure each room, each wall, against the last. Why, to be sure, the sitting-room in the Shepard Hall apartment was smaller, much smaller, than the lounge at the Harvard Club, and there was no bar beneath it, nor was there a bison’s head above the fireplace, nor a pair of brass shells from the Somme. There were no palm trees in it, as in the lobby of the Touraine, not even a newsstand behind which one could take shelter: and as for the natatorium, why, the poor fool of an architect had left that out entirely. Just the same, they were getting on swimmingly. Come on, Andy, come on, Bertha, come on in, the water’s fine. Let’s walk down to the Square and get a cup of coffee; let’s go down and skate on the Common; let’s see what there is at the movies and make loud remarks about the hero. But it was all so innocent, so natural and boylike, so good-natured, so ringed about with brassy and wholesome laughter, how could one suspect anything wrong?… Patience. Run the eye slowly along the edge of the chair back, note the reflected lamp in the dark lustrousness of the windowpane, and another station passing; listen to the mournful rain-quenched cry of the whistle, cut off abruptly by a bridge, released again, silent. The train began shuddering and slowing, shuddering and slowing, lurched, glided, lurched again, and then quietly, evenly, with rhythmic soft hisses of steam which fogged the windows, no longer like a train, but like a ship on even keel in quiet waters, slid past slowing lights, and stopped with a last prolonged profound sigh.

  —Back Bay … Back Bay.

  —Back Bay.

  —Back Bay.

  Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the rang’d empire fall. Here is my—station. A taxi, please. And now the solid rain-drenched antipathy of Boston, the buildings in Copley Square all aloof and black, Trinity Church withdrawn and cowled in rain like a weeping nun, the Library staring down from an immense height with Florentine hauteur—what was this change, this difference, this withdrawal of friendliness? It was a new and hostile city. The people were foreigners, the wet streets were menacing, the bare trees brooded like skeletons over Commonwealth Avenue. We knew you, Andy. We know you not. We knew you, Andy. We know you not. Was this the guy that went to New York with bells on and now returns with horns? Give him a hand, boys, give the little fellow a great big hand. Drop a twig on him or a dead leaf, or maybe a brick. That’s the guy—that little feller in the Armstrong taxi, with the text of a textbook on Spanish literature in his suitcase. Tu pupila es azul. Y quando lloras—What was that dirty crack? No more of that. Cold shoulder him, boys—it’s nothing but El Diablo Mundo. The very spittin’ image with number eight shoes, a Harvard Coop hat, and deformed toenails. Cut him dead. What he’s got he deserves. He was askin’ for it. Give him the snake’s eye, Fairfield Street, Gloucester Street, Hereford Street, Massachusetts Avenue—! He’s made his bed, let his friend lie in it. Wot’s de flower bed between friends? Begonia. Look how nervous he is. He’s sticking his finger down his collar for no good reason. Not a thought to his navel. Say, if he had to pay the taxi by the heartbeat! Call the taxicologist, and we’ll have him stuffed. To the Peabody Museum with him, quam celerrime, we’ll show him up. Give him a birthday present. Ha! For Christ and the Church.

  Horror preceded him into the Harvard Club, but evaded him among these friendly walls and stained-plaster Corinthian columns. Even here the familiar, the warm, the assuring, eyed him aslant, sneered when he turned his back. My dear Andy, it’s none of our business, but—! And what should stare him in the face but a row of telephone booths, five of them numbered, the sixth a pay station. A Greek Chorus. Stationary chorus. Call her up, Andy—give the poor girl a chance. Our ears are in Shepard Street. Warn her! Tell her you’re coming home after dinner! Tell her to ask Tom in for a drink! Make it easy for her, leave it all in darkness, in subterfuge, in evasion, in the hell of the forever unknown. Hello, darling! Is that you, Chuck? This is Andy. Yes, Andy—your premature Andy, back from the bright lights, back from the unearthly paradise, wizened little Tithonus returned from false heaven. But we won’t go into that, no, we’ll talk of something else. I meant nothing by it. Just my foolish little joke, that was all. Make the bed up, hang clean towels in the bathroom, run to the corner fruit store for another can of grapefruit juice, and start the cocktails.… No, impossible. This must not be evaded—whatever the issue, the situation must first of all be faced. No warnings, no signal, not even an inquiry at Tom’s apartment to find out if he were absent—in a melodrama one must above all be melodramatic. If later one prefers to turn it into a farce——

  And who should be standing at the bar, eating little-neck clams as usual, but Jitter Peabody, that ruined scion of a noble race, half-shot too as always, leaning with supercilious languor against the bar, his long horse-face flushed with gin, his drooping mustache dripping clam juice on to his weak chin.

  —Hello, One-eye!

  —Mr. Peabody, I presume?

  —You do presume.

  —I suppose you wouldn’t join me in a little mild elbow lifting? The better the deed, the better the day.

  —No, I’ve sworn off till I finish these sea fruits.

  —Tom, you might take this flask, and empty it, and make as much old-fashioned out of it as it’ll make. And you might get me a dozen of these little pink little-necks. And two glasses.

  —Good evening, Mr. Cather—yes, sir. That’ll go quite a little ways.

  —What’ve you been doing, Jitter?

  —None of your damned business.

  —That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. Only the other fellow was politer.

  —That must have been in New York—couldn’t have b
een in Boston.

  —How did you guess it?

  —I was in the train with you.

  —The hell you say! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?

  —I saw you, but I was asleep at the time. Only just waked up.

  —Ah, I see. So you were in New York on business.

  —Shhhhhh. Very private. I went down on the midnight and came back this afternoon.

  —Alone?

  —Legally speaking. I’d have stayed, but my fiancée expects me to dinner.

  —Thanks, Tom. Come on, Jitter. I’m thirsty and heartbroken.

  —What you need—! You damned walking textbook.

  —We won’t go into that.

  —No, you wouldn’t.

  —Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

  This turmoil must stop, and Jitter would help to stop it, Time out. Time out for a little peace, a little leisure, a little cool unhurried reflection, for a calm reshuffling of the pack of marked cards which is the mind. In the presence of a person so disorganized, it was easier oneself to become righteously or recognizably organized: one felt again vividly the numbered inches between the hat and the shoe. Think, you idiot! Think, don’t feel! Your brain depends upon it, the brief roman candle’s parabola of your sanity. Follow green arrow for shuttle train to Grand Central. Follow red arrow for trail to bottom of Grand Canyon. If one had been cornuted, was a chiropodist the thing? Or must one be chiropracted? Kindly remove the imaginary, but all too palpable, horns. A present from my best friend. Kind of him, but so inconvenient when one wears a hat, unless one is a horse. Let us order a striped calico bonnet, with holes for the ears.

  —And so, Jitter, you’ve been spying on the Vincent Club again.

  —Who told you?

  —I won’t have any soup—I’ll begin with the fish.

  —So will I.

  —But just why you should have gone to all that trouble, to see Boston’s Best Bosomless Beacon Street and Back Bay Beauties clad only in their canvas shifts, I can’t imagine.

  —My dear One-eye, that’s only the half of it.

  —What was the other half—the better, I hope.

  —You’re vulgar. You always were.…

  A telephone was ringing. Bertha? University O!O!O! Put the salt neatly on the edge of your plate, my boy. Or fling it over your shoulder. An old Spanish custom, to avert the evil eye. The glass eye was the root of all evil. Green glass eyes on a plush tray—are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Tu pupila es azul. And when you cry, you cry with two eye sockets, but one eye. How much had this affected Bertha? And that heartless nickname! Jesus. It was no wonder. She had probably heard of him as One-eye Cather long before she had met him. With sympathy? Pathos? Horror? Or more likely a mixture of pity and disgust. Poor fellow—he can’t judge distances. Have you heard how he lost it? Such a shame.

  —Drink up, Jitter—there’s another round.

  —Say, what’s come over you?… anyway.

  —Well, what do you mean by that?

  Fool. You will now be accused of unnecessary sobriety.

  —Aren’t you drinking a little too much for one of your habits?

  —Don’t make me laugh.

  Jitter pulled his mustaches mournfully, slouched back in his chair, narrowed his long low-lidded eyes.

  —You always were a failure.

  —Says you?

  —Even your talk is a fake.

  —One puts the fake in one’s windows.

  —Make it singular.

  —Window.

  —Well, to hell with you anyway.

  —Keep the change.

  But there was no clock in this room. Time, in this room, was not recognized, was excluded, relegated to the more conscious upper floors, where there was no bar. Singular foresight, for which perhaps one ought to be grateful. Where were they now? Dining at the Commander? At the Greek’s? Oysters, followed by broiled live lobster, or chicken pilaf, or chicken livers en brochette? Sitting opposite each other, with their feet together on the table rung, or side by side in the leather seat in a booth? And where were his hands in that case? The little hard nodule of her garter clasp, felt through the skirt. Unprotesting.… Or in the kitchen at Shepard Hall, side by side beside the stove, a dishcloth hung over his arm, Tom the waiter and Bertha the cook—scrambled eggs or shrimp soufflé.

  —What’s wrong with you, anyway? Jitter was saying. I don’t think I ever quite made you out. I don’t think I ever really liked you, even at school. Something fishy about you. Too damned secretive. God knows you can talk the hair off a dog’s back; you can talk all right, but Christ, what a life you lead. Now look at me, you think I’m a drunken rotter, and so I am, and I don’t give a damn, I’ve done everything from digging ditches to laying rails or busting bronchos, I can’t keep a job, every one thinks I’m just a good-for-nothing shite. That’s all right, the point is I’m intelligent and I live my life the way I want to live it, family and conventions can go to hell. I’m honest. But you, One-eye, I think you’re yellow—you’re even afraid of a whore! Good God, I’ll never forget that night when you spent the night at my place and sat there shivering in a blanket when I brought that bitch in at two in the morning to talk to you. Anybody’d have thought you were trying to talk to some God-damned duchess. And that wife of yours—where in the name of God did you ever pick her up! Just the sort of damned Brattle Street lemon you would pick out …

  —Thanks for the battalion of compliments. No defense. I’m both yellow and secretive—that’s the fate, my boy, of the self-conscious. Also manic depressive. Advance one day, retreat the next.

  Jitter’s drunken gaze, slit-eyed, roved about the room indifferently, as if delighting in nothing it saw, least of all in his vis-à-vis. His collar was dirty, his necktie was skewed to one side, his skeleton fingers were yellow with cigarette smoke. When he talked, it was as if to himself—his diction beautiful, clear, caressing, but the voice monotonous and whining, low-pitched, as if the effort, for one so picturesquely exhausted, were almost insupportable.

  —Oh don’t talk to me about psychology. I know all that stuff—I’ve lived it all—what do you know about it? You read books and think you know a lot, but I’d like to see you break a horse, or a woman, for that matter. I know you can sling words better than I can, but where the hell has it ever got you? Here you are writing rotten little textbooks and tutoring for a living and going to your damned little teas—what kind of a life is that.

  But there was no clock in this room, this room which had once been the billiard room, this room where so many evenings had been spent in playing cowboy pool with Tom, and which now, decorated with Paris-green Audubon prints of precise birds in fantastic landscapes, had become grillroom and bar. There was no clock, the time seemed as vague as Jitter’s wandering melancholy monologue, full of changes and pauses, ticking and then resting, but with this difference, that after every rest, every pause, it resumed its course more heavily, more menacingly, more swiftly, the tick becoming louder and more insistent, the bloodstream in the artery threatening with every beat of the pulse to breach its walls. It was as if, also, this stream more and more persistently and meanly were choosing and following an inimical direction, like a snake with its eyes on the heart, which nothing could deflect or dissuade. Pressingly and insinuatingly it encroached; forgotten or ignored for a moment, when next looked at it would be a little nearer, a little more vivid, a little brighter, a little more alert. To be in a hurry, but not to be able to hurry—the familiar nightmare sensation, of course, that appalling slow-motion, languid agony, with which one tries to escape the vague claw of the unknown. On the train it had been better, for there one had at least had the satisfaction of being immersed in speed, of rushing forward from one place to another; but even in the train he had felt at moments an almost overwhelming desire to get out and run, as if this more primitive effort might somehow be more effective. Hurry—hurry—hurry—the world was hurrying, the night was hurrying, and nevertheless here was this exasperat
ing slow counterpoint of conversation, this idiotic talk, this exchange of profoundly uncandid candors, each lying laboriously and laconically to the other. And so odd to be perfectly indifferent to Jitter’s drunken and intentionally injurious remarks! What would Jitter make of that? An added yellowness, no doubt. Yes, and then no, he said, no, and then yes, finding that Jitter had reached a point at which replies were immaterial to him. He was talking about the actress to whom he was engaged, describing her, reporting fragments of her vaudeville slang, what she had done in Paris, how they managed to sleep together on the steamer. My dear Andy, it’s none of my business—but suppose it all turned out to be nothing, a delusion? No. It wasn’t a delusion. There had been that look of Bertha’s at the fortuneteller’s, that strange deep, secret look, that appeal as to the person most intimately known and liked. And the episode at the breakfast table, when, breaking a lifelong habit of Cantabrigian modesty, not to say prudishness, Bertha had come to the table in her pajamas, very self-conscious and flushed and so obviously pleased by Tom’s surprise. Was this the way all things ended? Was it inevitable? If not Tom, would it have been another? And precisely how much did it matter? Damn. Blast. Putrefaction. A deep wound opened in his heart. A gulf fell through him, dividing all things, he held hard to the edge of the oak table, trembling.