The Web and the Rock - Thomas Wolfe

by Thomas Wolfe

  Her tone was now so earnest and reproachful that he released her, and stood back, glaring at her with a look of guilty and yet angry shame. "I don't blame you for laughing," he said. "I know it sounds as if a damn fool wrote it. Please let me have it and I'll tear it up.

  I'd like to forget about it."

  "Oh, no," she said, softly and gently. "It was a beautiful letter. Let me keep it." She put it back in her purse again, and closed it; and then, as he still glared at her with a guilty, baffled face, as if not understanding what to do, she held the purse against her breast and patted it with her gloved hand, looking at him and smiling with the proud, childlike smile he had seen before.

  Then they started to go out. She looked around and took the fare well look that people always take of rooms where they have worked, each time they leave them. Then she picked up her key, handed him the brief case, thrust her purse beneath her arm, and turned out the light. A corner lamp from the street outside threw some of its radiance into the room, and across the white board of the table.

  They paused there, just for a moment, and then awkwardly he put his arm around her waist. It was the first time during the whole evening, the first time since the last meeting on the ship, that they had been alone and silent with each other, and now, as if some recognition of that fact was in the minds and hearts of each, they felt a sense of deep and strong embarrassment. He tightened his hold around her waist and made a half-hearted effort to embrace her, but she moved clumsily and uneasily, and murmured indefinitely, "Not here -all these people." She did not say who "all these people" were, and indeed most of the people in the theatre were now gone, for the place was now silent; but he understood that her embarrassment and con fusion came from the sense of this intimacy here where her associa tions with her friends and her fellow workers were still so recent; and he, too, feeling--he did not know why--a strong sense of embarrass ment and impropriety, made no further effort, and in a moment clumsily withdrew his hand.

  They said no more, but opened the door and went out. She locked the door, and both of them went down the stairs together, still with that strange feeling of confusion and constraint, as if a barrier had suddenly been imposed between them and neither of them knew what to say. Below, the house was dark and quiet, but the old night watch man, an Irishman with a thick brogue, let them out into the street through the stage entrance. The streets around the theatre also looked barren and quiet, and after the so recent gaiety and brilliance of the performance and the crowd, the place seemed cold and sad. He hailed a taxi cruising past; they got in and were driven uptown through the almost deserted streets of the East Side and the darkened stretch of lower Broadway. She would not let him take her home, but left him in front of his hotel.

  They shook hands and said "good night" almost formally. They paused and looked at each other for a moment with a troubled and confused look, as if there was something that they wanted to say. But they could not say it, and in a moment she was driven away; and with a sad, bewildered, and disappointed sense of something baffled, incomplete that had eluded both of them, he went into the hotel and up to his small room.

  21

  The Birthday

  OUT OF THE NAMELESS AND UNFATHOMED WEAVINGS OF BILLION-FOOTED life, out of the dark abyss of time and duty, blind chance had brought these two together on a ship, and their first meeting had been upon the timeless and immortal seas that beat forever at the shores of the old earth.

  Yet later, it would always seem to him that he had met her for the first time, had come to know and love her first, one day at noon in bright October. That day he was twenty-five years old, she had said that she would meet him for his birthday lunch; they had agreed to meet at noon before the Public Library. He got there early. It was a fine, shining day, early in October, and the enormous library, set there at the city's furious heart, with its millions of books, with the beetling architectures that towered around it, and the nameless brutal fury of the manswarm moving around it in the streets, had come to evoke for him a horrible mockery of repose and study in the midst of the blind wildness and savagery of life, to drown his soul with hopelessness, and to fill him with a feeling of weariness and horror.

  But now his excitement and happiness over meeting her, together with the glorious life and sparkle of the day, had almost conquered these feelings, and he was conscious of a powerful, swelling certitude of hope and joy as he looked at the surging crowds upon the street, the thronging traffic, and the great buildings that soared up on every side with a sheer and dizzy frontal steepness.

  It was the day when for the first time in his life he could say, "Now I am twenty-five years old," and, like a child who thinks that he has grown new muscle, a new stature over night, the magic numerals kept beating in him like a pulse, and he leaned there on the balustrade feel ing a sense of exultant power inside of him, a sense of triumph for the mastery, the conviction that the whole of this was his.

  A young man of twenty-five is the Lord of Life. The very age itself is, for him, the symbol of his mastery. It is the time for him when he is likely to feel that now, at last, he has really grown up to man's estate, that the confusions and uncertainties of his youth are behind him. Like an ignorant fighter, for he has never been beaten, he is exultant in the assurance of his knowledge and his power. It is a wonderful time of life, but it is also a time that is pregnant with a deadly danger. For that great flask of ether which feels within itself the illusions of an invincible and hurtless strength may explode there in so many ways it does not know about--that great engine of life charged with so much power and speed, with a terrific energy of its high velocity so that it thinks that nothing can stop it, that it can roar like a locomotive across the whole continent of life, may be derailed by a pebble, by a grain of dust.

  It is a time when a man is so full of himself, of his own strength and pride and arrogant conceit that there is not much room left at the center of his universe for broad humanity. He is too much the vaunt ing hero of his cosmic scheme to have a wise heart for the scheme of others: he is arrogant and he does not have a simple heart, and he is intolerant and lacks human understanding, for men learn understanding--courage also!--not from the blows they give to others, but from those they take.

  It is the time of life when a man conceives himself as earth's great child. He is life's darling, fortune's pet, the world's enhaloed genius: all he does is right. All must give way to him, nothing must oppose him. Are there traces of rebellion there among the rabble? Ho, varlets, scum--out of the way! Here's royalty! Must we rejoice, then, at the beatings which this fool must take? Not so, because there is so much virtue in the creature also. He is a fool, but there's a touch of angel in him too. He is so young, so raw, so ignorant, and so grievously mis taken. And he is so right. He would play the proud Lord, brook no insolences, and grind his heel into the world's recumbent neck. And inside the creature is a shaft of light, a jumping nerve, a plate so sensitive that the whole picture of this huge, tormented world is printed in the very hues and pigments of the life of man. He can be cruel, and yet hate cruelty with the hate of hell; he can be so unjust, and give his life to fight injustice; he can, in moments of anger, jealousy, or wounded vanity, inflict a grievous hurt upon others who have never done him wrong. And the next moment, thrice wounded, run through and pinioned to the wall upon the spear of his own guilt, remorse, and scalding shame, he can endure such agonies that if there really were a later hell there would be no real damnation left in it.

  For at the end the creature's spirit is a noble one. His heart is warm and generous, it is full of faith and noble aspiration. He wants to be the best man in the world, but it is a good world that he wants to be the best man in. He wants to be the greatest man on earth, but in the image of his mind and heart it is not among mean people, but among his compeers of the great, that he wishes to be first. And remember this thing of this creature too, and let it say a word in his defense: he does not want monopoly, nor is his fire expended on a pile of dung.

/>   He does not want to be the greatest rich man in the world, to beetle up out of the blood-sweat of the poor the gold of his accretions. It is not his noble, proud ambition to control the slums, to squeeze out in his own huge ciderpress the pulp of plundered and betrayed humanity.

  He does not want to own the greatest bank on earth, to steal the great est mine, to run the greatest mill, to exploit the labor and to profit on the sweat of ninety thousand lesser men. He has a higher goal than this: at very least he wants to be the greatest fighter in the world, which would take courage and not cunning; and at the very most he wants to be the greatest poet, the greatest writer, the greatest composer, or the greatest leader in the world--and he wants to paint instead of own the greatest painting in the world.

  He was the Lord of Life, the master of the earth, he was the city's conqueror, he was the only man alive who ever had been twenty-five years old, the only man who ever loved or ever had a lovely woman come to meet him, and it was morning in October; all of the city and sun, the people passing in the slant of light, all of the wine and gold of singing in the air had been created for his christening, and it was morning in October, and he was twenty-five years old.

  And then the golden moments' wine there in the goblet of his life dropped one by one, the minutes passed, and she did not come. Some brightness had gone out of day. He stirred, looked at his watch, searched with a troubled eye among the thronging crowd. The minutes dropped now like cold venom. And now the air was chilled, and all the singing had gone out of day.

  Noon came and passed, and yet she did not come. His feeling of jubilant happiness changed to one of dull, sick apprehension. He began to pace up and down the terrace before the library nervously, to curse and mutter, already convinced that she had fooled him, that she had had no intention of coming, and he told himself savagely that it did not matter, that he did not care.

  He had turned and was walking away furiously towards the street, cursing under his breath, when he heard a clatter of brisk, small feet behind him. He heard a woman's voice raised above the others, calling a name, and though he could not distinguish the name, he knew at once that it was his own. His heart gave a bound of the most unspeakable joy and relief, and he turned quickly, and there across the pavement of the court, threading her way through the fast weavings of the crowd, he saw her coming towards him eager and ruddy as an apple, and clad in rich, russet, autumnal brown. Bright harvestings of young October sun fell over her, she trotted towards him briskly as a child, with rapid step and short-paced runs. She was panting for breath: at that moment he began to love her, he loved her with all his heart, but his heart would not utter or confess its love, and he did not know of it.

  She was so lovely, so ruddy, and so delicate, she was so fresh and healthy-looking, and she looked like a good child, eager and full of belief in life, radiant with beauty, goodness, and magic. There was an ache of bitter, nameless joy and sorrow in him as he looked at her: the immortal light of time and of the universe fell upon her, and the feet swarmed past upon the pavements of the street, and the old hunger for the wand and the key pierced to his entrails--for he believed the magic word might come to unlock his heart and say all that he felt as he saw Esther there at noon in bright October on the day when he was twenty-five years old.

  He went striding back towards her, she came hurrying up, they came together in a kind of breathless collision and impulsively seized each other by the hands, and stood there so, panting, and for a moment too excited to speak.

  "Oh!"--she gasped when she could speak. "I ran so!... I saw you walking away--my heart jumped so!" And then, more quietly, look ing at him, with a shade of reproach, "You were going away," she said.

  "I thought--" then paused, groping, not knowing what, in this in toxication of joy and relief, he had thought. "I waited for you," he blurted out. "I've been here almost an hour--you said twelve."

  "Oh, no, my dear," she answered quietly. "I told you I had an appointment at the costumer's at twelve. I'm a few minutes late, I'm sorry--but I said twelve-thirty."

  The emotion of relief and happiness was still so great that he scarcely heard her explanation.

  "I thought--I'd given you up," he blurted out. "I thought you weren't coming."

  "Oh," she said quietly but reproachfully again, "how could you think that? You must have known I would."

  For the first time now, they released each other from the hard clasp in which, in their excitement, they had held each other fast. They stepped back a little and surveyed each other, she beaming, and he grinning, in spite of himself, with delight.

  "Well, young fellow," she cried in a jolly tone, "how does it feel to be twenty-five years old?"

  Still grinning, and staring at her foolishly, he stammered: "It--it feels all right.... Gosh!" he cried impulsively, "you look swell in brown."

  "Do you like it--hah?" she said, eagerly and brightly. She stroked the bosom of her dress, which was like the red one she had worn the first night at the theatre, with the kind of pride and satisfaction a child might take in its belongings. "It is one of my Indian dresses," she said, "a sari. I'm glad if you like it."

  Arm in arm, still looking at each other and so absorbed that they were completely oblivious of the crowd, the people passing, and the city all around them, they had begun to walk along, and down the steps that led to the street. On the curb they paused, and for the first time became aware of their surroundings.

  "Do you know?"--she began doubtfully, looking at him--"Where are we going?"

  "Oh!" He recollected himself, came to himself with a start. "Yes!

  I thought we'd go to a place I know about--an Italian place on the West Side."

  She took her purse from under her arm and patted it.

  "This is to be a celebration," she said. "I got paid this morning."

  "Oh, no you don't! Not this time. This is my party."

  Meanwhile, he had stopped a taxicab and was holding the door open for her. They got in, he gave the driver the address, and they were driven across town towards the place that he had chosen.

  It was an Italian speakeasy on West 46th Street, in a row of brown stone houses, of which almost every one harbored an establishment similar to this. Certainly New York at that period must have contained thousands of such places, none of which differed in any essential detail from Joe's.

  The setting and design of the establishment was one which a few years under the Prohibition Act had already made monotonously familiar to millions of people in New York. The entrance was through the basement, by means of a grated door which opened underneath the brownstone steps. To reach this door one went down a step or two from the sidewalk into what had formerly been the basement areaway, pressed a button, and waited. Presently the basement door was opened, a man came out, peered through the grating of the gate, and, if he recognized the visitor, admitted him.

  Within, too, the appearance of the place was one that had already grown familiar, through thousands of duplications, to city dwellers.

  The original design of a city house had not been altered very much.

  There was a narrow hallway which led through the place from front to rear, and at the end of it there was a kitchen; to the left, as one entered, there was a very small room for the hat-check woman. On the right-hand side, in a larger but still very dark and narrow room, there was a small bar. From the bar one entered through a door into a small dining room of about the same dimensions. Across the hall there was a larger dining room, which had been created by knocking out the wall between two rooms. And upstairs on what had once been the first floor of the house, there were still other dining rooms, and private ones, too, if one desired them. On the floors above were--God knows what!--more rooms and lodgings, and shadowy-looking lodgers who came in and out, went softly up and down the carpeted tread of the old stairs, and, quickly, softly, through the entrance of the upper door. It was a life secret, flitting, and nocturnal, a life rarely suspected and never felt, that never intruded upon the hard, b
right gaiety, the drunken voices, and the raucous clatter of the lower depths.

  The proprietor of this establishment was a tall, thin, and sallow man with a kind of patient sadness, a gentle melancholy which one some how liked because he felt and understood in the character of the man a sense of decency and of human friendliness. The man was an Italian, by name Pocallipo, and since he had been christened Giuseppe, the patrons of the place referred to it as "Joe's."

  The history of Joe Pocallipo was also, if one could probe that great catacomb of life that hives the obscure swarmings of the city millions, a familiar one. He was one of those simple, gentle, and essentially decent people whom circumstance, occasion, and the collusions of a corrupt period had kicked upstairs, and who did not really like this ruthless betterment.

  Before the advent of the Prohibition Act, he had been a waiter in a large hotel. His wife had run this same house as a lodging house, her clientele being largely derived from actors, vaudeville performers, and somewhat down-at-the-heels theatrical people of all sorts. As time went on, the woman began to provide some of her guests with an occasional meal when they would ask for it, and Joe, whose skill as a chef was considerable, began himself, on his "off day," to prepare a Sunday dinner, to which paying guests were invited. The idea, begun really as a kind of concession to the lodgers in the house, caught on: the meals were cheap, the food was excellent, people came and came again, re turning often with their friends, until Joe's Sunday dinners had achieved a kind of celebrity, and the man and his wife were sorely taxed to accommodate the numbers that now came.

  This involved, of course, the taking on of extra service and the en largement of the dining space; meanwhile, the Prohibition Act had gone into effect, and now people at these Sunday dinners began to suggest the advisability of his serving wine to those who wanted it.