Great Circle: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  —She sounds very gay.

  —What do I care what you think she sounds like?

  —Oh, I don’t give a damn about her.

  —She wouldn’t about you.

  —That doesn’t worry me, either. I’ve got enough cancers of my own. My dear Jitter, I’m lousy with them. I’m falling to pieces …

  —And I’m supposed to be dining with her.

  —Good beginning.

  —It will probably end like the others. What the hell.

  Smiling cynically, mysteriously, he rose without reply to this obviously quite true prediction, and walked rapidly past the bar, across the hall, and into the locker room which smelt of sour male sweat. This is what we smell like. Would a woman enjoy this quintessence? He took the jug and tin funnel from his locker, refilled his silver flask, and then stood for a moment with his forehead against the reticulated ironwork. Time. Nine o’clock. If a taxi to Harvard Square, driving slowly, and then on foot across the Common—the air would clear his head, prepare him for the scene—give him the necessary poise. But would it be late enough? Would they have—? Yes, at this stage, they would. Their time was still precious.

  —Harvard Square, please—and make it slow.

  —Slow, yes, sir, and which way would you like to go?

  —Across the Harvard Bridge, and along Memorial Drive.

  —Yes, sir.

  A surprise: the bridge was jammed with cars: something must have happened. From curb to curb they were packed, their black tops glistening with rain. Newcomers, joining the slowly moving mass, honked, hooted, skirled their Klaxons, yipped and snarled; but farther on, halfway across the bridge, with its double row of lights, beautifully arched into the night, a string of brilliantly lit streetcars marooned among them, the mass of sedans and taxis seemed to be motionless and silent.

  The driver slid back a glass panel.

  —This looks like a long job. Will I go the other way?

  —No, go ahead, plenty of time.

  The motor humming, the clutch engaging and disengaging, they crept forward, weaving a slow passageway among the creeping vehicles. All faces were turned forward, intent, curious, artificially bright over dashboard lights, like illuminated death masks. A hand, holding a cigar, hung out of a window, was held sparkling for a moment in the beam of a searchlight, waved lazily, and withdrew. People sitting upright in back seats, hatted and cloaked, motionless as waxwork specimens, their hands on the window ledges or crossed on their knees. And as they advanced, as they crossed the drawbridge, passed the first of the streetcars, the silence deepened, grew ominous, began to speak a meaning into which all this procession was irresistibly drawn. They were moving into the orbit of something more powerful than themselves—their own purposes, aims, directions, ideas, were suffering a fascinated change—they could no longer go at what speed they liked, or where they liked, but moved, like the lemmings, to the dark sea of their unknown desire. Ahead, to the left, the lights of Riverbank Court, high up, lightly shrouded through the fine rain, appeared to be looking downward at something, as if the dark focus of all this attention were somewhere below them.

  —Smash-up, looks like, said the driver.

  —It does.

  And why not, in the name of God? We specialize in smash-ups. If there’s anything we dearly love, it’s a nice little smash-up. We serve them hourly. And what more appropriate than this bridge, where Longfellow had once octosyllabically sentimentalized, and he himself, Andrew Cather, One-eye Cather, had won a bet of twenty-five cents by walking from Cambridge to Boston on the outside of the railing? X marks the spot. And here, too, the driver of the ice wagon, deep in thought on a summer’s day, had suddenly been catapulted off his high perch, over this same railing, twenty feet down with his cigarette still in his mouth, and drowned. Perfect example of the inscrutability of fate. Because the driver of the car behind the ice wagon had got dust in his eye—! But now the stream of cars was moving a little more quickly—the string of bright street cars had drawn ahead and crossed Memorial Drive—the policeman in his little tower could be seen frantically waving a white-gloved hand—and as at last the taxi swung to the left he saw the dark police boat on the dark rain-stilled water, with a solitary lantern in the bow, and two dark figures leaning waterward over the stern. Ah! they were dragging. Somebody was down there, somebody who this morning had had an egg for breakfast, and a cup of coffee, was down there, aimlessly drifting, his mouth wide open and his hands clenched.

  —Draw up where you can, and we’ll have a look at this.

  —Yes, sir.

  On foot, they dodged through the creeping parade of cars and joined the silent crowd at the water’s edge, three policemen stood on the float. The police boat, which had gone slowly upstream and turned, was now slowly coming back, and it could be seen that the two men in the stern held ropes.

  —Who was it?

  —An old man.

  —They ain’t sure.

  —Somebody saw him step off the float at six o’clock. They been dragging three hours.

  —Well, he don’t have to worry about his income tax.

  The crowd was hushed, all the faces stared downward at the water. The boat turned once more, moved out a little toward midstream, became invisible save for the lantern. The put-put of the exhaust came slowly and intermittently through the night.

  —It’ll take them all night. Let’s get going.

  —Hell of a job for a night like this.

  In the taxi again, he lit a cigarette, and noticed that his hands were trembling. Good God, was this a symbol, a kind of warning? Cling to life, you poor bastard—have your eggs and coffee for breakfast—and be damned glad you’re alive. Is it you down there, with your mouth open? Have you lost your felt hat? Has your watch stopped? Are you cold? What did you do with your money, and the incriminating letter in your pocket? Did you tell the Chinese laundry that they needn’t bother to finish ironing your blue shirt? Did you write to Deirdre in Pawtucket and tell her you wouldn’t be home for the week end? Did you did you did you did you? And if not, why not? And what did you want to die for anyway? Was it love or was it money? Speculation leads to peculation. The rain quickened on the taxi roof, he reached under his raincoat for the flask, unscrewed the silver stopper, and took a drink, a burning little gush of raw juniper-tasting gin, another, a third. No use trying to be sober. The scene would require reckless hilarity, a certain amount of blindness and denseness. Cheerfulness. No good being too sensitive. Let the imagination loose, let it run, let it fly. Give it a couple of alcoholic wings. What ho, Bertha, what ho, Tom, I’m home again with a boxing glove. I had a dozen little-necks with Jitter Peabody, and a flock of cocktails, and then, only pausing for three hours on the Harvard Bridge, I drowned myself, hat in hand. I am still there, lodged in the deep water against one of the piers, bowing, hat in hand, my mouth open in the act of saying Good evening, Madam. Do you see the water that drips from my shoes? The Charles River, my dears: I am newly come from the dead. This is my bright little doppelgänger, my alter ego, who stands before you and screeches with laughter at finding you thus together. Did you both brush your teeth before you went to bed, like good little children? Papa spank. Naughty naughty. You should never, never go to bed without first brushing the teeth. There’s a new toothbrush with black bristles, I especially recommend it for smartness, particularly in cases of mourning. So tactful. Like that story of the young woman in the Paris drugstore—Ah oui, Madame, quelle delicatesse! Madame is a widow! You remember? Tom? Bertha? So run along now and do it and after that I’ll tell you both a nice little bedtime story and you can go to bed again, with visions of sugarplums dancing in your little heads, and in the morning I’ll be Santa Claus and bring you your breakfast in bed. Madam will have a nice little grapefruit? Or a pruin? A few wild oats and cream? My dear Andy——

  And this was that street. Yes, that street. Where, a month ago, after the first rumor, after the first quarrel, the first quarrel about the first rumor, he had walked bli
ndly in the snow, under that very arc lamp, along this path, past the power station, the power station where years and years ago there had been a little tank swarming with turtles and alligators and gold fish. Here was the agony in the garden, the public garden. Why must one do such things? Why must one be hurt? Why need one so helplessly surrender? Better have a drink, old fellow. A few minutes more and the taxi will have reached Harvard Square, and there’ll be no chance, unless you prefer to tilt your flask in the rain-dark Common. He lifted and tipped the silver flask, the fiery trickle sluiced his tongue, ran down under his tongue against his teeth, burned the gums, burned the uvula, streaked the throat with flame. A month ago—he had been dead, and then alive again, and was now again dying. It was here that the first forsythia bushes would light their little yellow lights a few weeks hence, here that the young couples would lie on the scented grass in the early summer, the children playing at the water’s edge, where now were broken slabs of scabby ice. Crowds after the football games. Crews practicing in the spring, the coxswains barking through megaphones, the canoes, the motor-launches. And here once with Bertha—under the birch trees beyond the Newell boat-house—at midnight, looking across the velvet darkness of the river toward the lights—“No—” she had said—“no—no—no.” And “Yes—” he had answered, “yes—yes—yes.” The bells, the pleas of water, the slow sleepy seethe of new leaves, the beginning of the world, the quiet beginning. Oh, God, that do’st with toothpicks take the world apart and gladly break the mechanism of the spring for schoolboy glee in such a thing!

  —Turn right here—up Plympton Street.

  —Yes, sir, I always do miss that turn.

  He leaned forward, staring, watched the flight of buildings, wet poles and trees, an empty yard with a forlorn and ruined car standing in gleaming mud, broken palings of a white fence, Mount Auburn Street, the Lampoon building. Here with a snowshoe once. The polychrome marble of the basement floor. The green lampshade full of Mib’s homemade punch. Dooley, with a roller towel around his neck, “pully-hauling down the bay.” And the midnight operas, with Tom at the piano, the screams of bumwad, bumwad, Heeney’s Palace of Pleasure, falling down the thickly carpeted stairs, out of the shower bath, with a cake of soap in his hand——

  Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad, bumwad. The first step toward Haydn, and a more refined appreciation of music. Oh, yes! Oh, yes, indeed.

  —All right—stop here.

  Enter, to grow in wisdom.

  A dollar, ten cents for the tip.

  And now to take the rain on the chin, and the world on the heart. The solar knockout. Through the Yard? Through the Square? But Tao is round and square by turns, and perfectly indifferent to its participant particles: what does it matter: salute the cheerful lights of the Square: walk under them: bathe in the lamplit perpendiculars of the rain: count the drugstores: the restaurants: the dealers in athletic goods: the skates in the windows: the fur-lined gloves and neckties. In that lighted room up there, as a freshman, I carved my initials on the window sill, meanwhile saying over and over to myself, “tu pupila es azul, y quando lloras—” I who had never wept, to whom tears were unknown, whose little griefs were the merest trifling creak of growing wood. Christ. How things change. And here, all of a sudden, it was almost half past nine, a hundred years later, and gray hairs beginning to show above his ears, rain falling on a row of yellow taxis beside the subway entrance, and now a deep swirling bell striking the half hour, half past nine, half past God, and only a ten minutes’ walk between him and a new destiny with a new dragon shape and new dragon eyes. Be calm, old fellow. Look at it carefully and quizzically, from a distance, measure it with a calculating eye, count the hackles and spines on its back, offer it a tin of condensed milk. Perhaps it will be friendly. Perhaps it will curl up before you like a pet cat, and go to sleep. Why worry? Will a mere disaster kill you? Is love so damned essential? Or pride?

  But you should have called her up on the telephone. You should have called her up. It isn’t fair. You aren’t giving the poor girl a chance. Girl? Don’t make us laugh. Yes, just the same, you know it’s true, you should have called her up. Why not do it now. Here at the drugstore. What difference does it make? Even over the telephone, if she’s guilty, she’ll know you know she’s guilty. Say you’ll be home in five minutes: that wouldn’t give her time to put things to rights. All the little telltale things: the caught breath, the changed voice, the ill-chosen word, the overdone welcome, and then the hairpins on the pillow.

  He stood at the counter, put his wet hand on the edge of nickel, looked down at the rows of cigars in cedar boxes, the gaudy paper covers with lithochromes of Cuban beauties, flags, palm trees. The row of telephone-booths were just beyond, at the back, beside the little tables and chairs of twisted copper. He saw them with the corner of his right eye. Come on Andy, be a good guy and call her up. Give them a chance. But whose funeral was this? It wasn’t Bertha that was going to suffer—it wasn’t Tom—it was himself. This was nothing but cowardice, cowardice, cowardice masquerading as consideration. The thing must be cut off instantly, with a knife. Fsst: and done. Antiseptic. A pure and beautiful therapeutic murder, severance of connections now no longer real or useful, in order that each of them, released, might continue to grow. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Just the same——

  —Yes, sir.

  —A package of Camels.

  Just the same——

  His eyes were full of rain. Unreasonable. Church Street, where the lilacs used to be, and were no more, and the gray wooden steeple of the Unitarian Church, pointing upward toward the low bright illuminated clouds full of Cantabrigian and Bostonian rain. And the old gymnasium there, among the stables, and the huge book on physiology which they had all read in secret. Sex! Good jumping Jesus, to think of the nuisance, and nothing but nuisance, that sex had been. And after all this time, after a hundred years, at half past nine, or half past God, this final climax. This banal climax.

  At the corner of the old graveyard, beside the milestone, he paused in the rain, hung hesitating, watched the brightly lighted Belmont bus splash through a wide sheet of water. Garden Street, or through the Common? Common or Garden? What on earth did it matter? Better take the shorter way, and get the thing over. Past the cannons, which he used to straddle. Past the baseball-field, where he used to strike out every time he came to bat. And the Civil War monument, about which the French architect had said, “Ah! Il est sorti!” This is your life here, here are all the days and nights, the sunlit afternoons, the school mornings, the bird-hunting expeditions to the Botanical Gardens or the Observatory, here was the dancing-school, misery of miseries, where later too, in freshman year, were the Coffee Parties, the Cheap and Hungries, all your past life here lies about you, cauchemar of echoes and whispers, here palpably still vibrating in the rain and darkness. Take hold of them. Resume them. Immerse yourself in them. Pull yourself, as it were, together. You are only a football field in the frost, the hard frozen turf, the raw knuckles, the mud on the cleats, the baseball-glove rubbed with olive oil, the baseball with scarred skin. You are only a drawing of a bowl of nasturtiums, the flowers drawn faintly and delicately, with tenderest self-love, the leaves heavily and boldly outlined, black-leaded, the veins deliberately varicosed. Here you are still bringing across the dance floor a glass cup of lemon sherbet to your darling Bertha, who waits for you in a varnished folding chair, with a white shawl drawn across her young shoulders, the violets pinned to her waist, her eyes still looking up at you shyly as you approach, as you continue forever approaching, like an eternal variable which never reaches its ultimate in God. Shall we sit this one out? Shall we go down to the steps for a breath of air? It’s so hot in here. You know, I’m so afraid I bore you. Bore me! You couldn’t bore a hole in a wall. I saw you yesterday on Brattle Street. Did you really—why didn’t you come and speak to me? I saw you walking with a girl by Fresh Pond. Oh, yes, we went to see the pumping station. And the algae. The algae? The algae. You know, Miss W
entworth is so interested in lichens and algae. Well, it seems a harmless taste, doesn’t it? Would you rather have had chocolate ice cream—I ought to have come and asked you, but there was such a crowd packed round the table that I thought I’d better get what I could. Tom wants the next dance—I think I’d better let him have it. It would look better. Here he is, coming now, laughing as usual, with that long athlete’s lunge of a step, his beautiful slippers turned inward in studious imitation of the Indian walk. Another variable approaching another limit—and now—no no no no no no. But it couldn’t be. No. This is not that time, that year, this is later, another world, another place, another pause between star-ruins, there is no connection, no logic. You are here alone in the cold rain, under the lighted windows of the new apartment house, under those very windows where a fortnight ago the man and girl were found shot in a suicide pact. Two dead in Love Nest. You tear open the package of cigarettes, breaking the blue stamp with your forefinger, pinch the edge of a cigarette between two finger nails, draw it forth, light it on the corner of Concord Avenue and Follen Street. This is you, Andrew Cather: you have changed: you are no longer there, in that dance hall, nor there at Arlington Heights looking for star flower and False Solomon’s Seal and anemone, nor do you still wait patiently for hours in the Botanical Gardens with a pair of opera glasses, hoping to see the scarlet tanager or the grosbeak. These have nothing to do with you. This is dead. You are dead. You are at most a shadow of those events, they no longer concern you: cut yourself off from them: give up forever that pale Narcissus who everywhere wants to walk beside you: beat him down, away, break him as you would break a false mirror, walk freely away from the shining fragments, which still would whisper to you their intriguing lies. This is you, this being whose steps stagger just slightly with alcohol, whose hands just now again trembled as you again lit your cigarette, in whose hip pocket the flask of gin is beginning perceptibly to grow warm: taste it and see. Why this desperate and eleventh-hour attempt to recapitulate? You are engaged in a victory, an exodus, not a recapitulation. Cut them off with a word. Blow them out of the window, out of the world, out of bed, with a word. One ringing word like Roland’s horn, winding among the wind-worn Pyrenees.