The Town and the City: A Novel

by Jack Kerouac

  “That crazy bastart Alex!”

  “What a guy! Did you see him last Saturday night when he jumped up on the table and began to recite poetry!”

  “Yeah. He don’t give a damn.”

  “What a happy-go-lucky maniac!”

  “And then he starts singing that Paris song, ‘The Boulevard of Bwoken Dweams’—”

  “And crying all over the place!”

  “Everybody’s looking at him but he don’t care, he goes right on reciting poetry and yelling his head off.”

  “I gave him a cigar Sunday night and he almost choked on it. You shoulda seen him smoking that cigar! He he he!”

  “What a good kid he is, though, you know?”

  “Yeah—Alex is a damn good kid. A little crazy but the best damn kid in the world.”

  “He’s got a heart, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Oh, he’s probably home writing poetry. Don’t worry, you’ll hear every line of it Saturday night!”

  “That crazy bastart Alex!”

  One day that Summer Alex took Peter to his house and introduced him to his mother, telling her in Greek that he was a dear friend of his and a good boy to his own mother, whereupon the sorrowful old woman clasped young Martin by the hand and stood gazing at him with tears in her eyes—as though she was receiving him into the family—while some of Alex’s sisters stood behind with a joyous yet mournful air, and the whole ramshackle house seemed to brood all around with a dark ecstasy, something was dreaming wildly in the corners, something melancholy and griefstricken lurked in the very odors of cooking and in the old furniture in the dank front room and in the lopsided porch out front where the children were chattering and screaming at each other.

  One day Alex stopped on the sidewalk when they were walking past a little crippled boy in a wheelchair, and he began crying. Peter asked him what was the matter.

  “But don’t you see the brotherhood of man in that little boy’s eyes? Oh, don’t you see?” he choked convulsively.

  And Peter the grave, plain-mannered, unobtrusive, football-playing young American boy could only stand there and be struck by the wonder of such a heart in a human being, and at the same time feel a burning embarrassment because it was all so demonstrative and tortured, somehow all so unreal.

  “You don’t understand!” Alex kept saying.

  “But I do understand—it’s only that … that you don’t have to show your feelings that way, people will just think you’re crazy.”

  “Let them think whatever they wish!” Alex cried proudly. “I’ll always do what my heart tells me to do, and to the devil with what people will say.”

  “But other people feel like crying when they see things like that,” said Peter angrily, “but they don’t go around showing off.”

  “Showing off!—you have the cruelty to stand there and tell me that I’m showing off! No! you don’t understand!”

  “But I do!”

  “I have feelings that other people don’t have. Can I help it? Can I help it?” shouted Alex.

  “But other people do have those feelings! I have them too!”

  “No, no, no. Not like I have, Pete. Not like I have—”

  “Pig’s ass!” muttered young Martin.

  “No, no, no! And I don’t mean it as insulting, but no one in the world can feel the way I do when I see a crippled little boy, or a sick old woman, or someone dead in a coffin! Don’t you see? The brotherhood of man appears to me in all its heartbreaking glory, and then everyday life suddenly doesn’t mean anything any more! I just see the soul of the whole whole world, nothing else! What do I care about what people do! Oh, Pete! Pete! If only you knew what goes on in my soul!”

  They often argued because there was a powerful division in their personalities and backgrounds and upbringing that could have separated them before their friendship could grow. But Peter was always wonderingly aware of the essential fury of Alex’s really sensitive heart. He knew he was a good-hearted and generous boy, and Alex was always aware of the underlying tenderness and understanding in Peter himself, and they stuck together. For there was also great exuberance, affection, and sheer gladsomeness in their friendship, they were young and hopeful of everything. They got boisterously drunk with the gang and everything was all right.

  That Summer Peter saw very little of his brother Francis, who had begun to spend more time around Boston with his new acquaintances after his first year at Harvard. Joe, of course, was away, and Peter’s only contact with him was through writing. One of Joe’s postcards that Summer said:

  Howdy Pard, I’m sure glad to hear from you and know that you’re well. Don’t be so damn tight with your letters—use more paper and more than one paragraph. Give me the lowdown on the boys and the goings on. Adios, Joe.

  It was postmarked “Sundance, Wyoming,” where Joe was working on a ranch now.

  In September Peter packed up again, said good-bye to his family—this time with more cheer and self-confidence than when he left for prep school the year before—and he started off for his first year of college feeling that everything was opening up for him, feeling himself grow stronger by the hour and more “experienced” in the ways of the world. He was now embarking on a greater adventure—a big college in a big city: he was going to the University of Pennsylvania.

  [5]

  And what does the rain say at night in a small town, what does the rain have to say? Who walks beneath dripping melancholy branches listening to the rain? Who is there in the rain’s million-needled blurring splash, listening to the grave music of the rain at night, September rain, September rain, so dark and soft? Who is there listening to steady level roaring rain all around, brooding and listening and waiting, in the rain-washed, rain-twinkled dark of night?

  What do little children think when it rains on the roof all night, on gable-top and turret? What do little boys write in their diaries? What does little Mickey say tonight?

  “Rain today. No school. Played in my room all day. Ole Charley and me played games in my room tonight. Gee, it’s raining.”

  How does the rain needle softly on the waters, and roll with the old river in darkness? Who walks along the river listening to the rain? Alexander Panos—he walks the town at night in sheets of shrouded rain.

  “And I know that I shall die young, I know that I shall die …”

  In his room, in the feverish white light of the bulb, in the littered room of papers and books, he writes at his desk, he writes to Peter at Penn, and the rain patters on the windowpane, the rain beads his windowpane and rolls softly like tears.…

  “Pete, old friend, don’t think me insane, but I know, I know that I shall die young, I know I shall die—And yet I am not sad, no, I am not sad—Here tonight it is raining in Galloway—and the nostalgic reverie of old songs returns—‘April in Paris,’ Peter, and ‘April Showers’ and ‘These Foolish Things’ and ‘In My Solitude’—And why do these songs return to me always, and so many others—‘Jalousie’ and ‘Dark Eyes’ and that ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’—The oldies stealing back to haunt me in the faint melody above the pitter-pattering rain—”

  The pattering drone, the lull, the drowse of water falling, and all the thousand little rain feet in vast and twinkled dark, and all the old gaunt houses waiting beneath the trees, with dripping weeping eaves, and huge rotted sea-smells of rain all around—and the river bulging slowly—

  —Don’t forget to close your window before you go to bed, Ruth!

  —Pretty wet outside, hey, Ma!

  —Gee, it’s raining.

  Foggy rain falling on Galloway, Galloway dark at night, the streetlamps dripping—rain spearing down the darkness, splashing in the street—the vast million-twinkled rainsplash all around, all around—and the old wagon in the rain, the soggy rag in mud, the tin can tinkling in the alley—and the town sleeping in the rain, and the old dark river there—what did it say? What did it say?

  Old Erne
st Berlot the barber lies abed listening to the rain, it splatters and shatters on the courtyard, it drums and roars, vast, vast, and God, but it’s strange, he remembers so much, and God, but he feels sad and old.

  Splashing rain, splattering, dark and wet, in all the puddles and cobblestones and gutters, and this immense old silence in the town, all thoughts rain-drowned, mute, and dark …

  —So like I say, I always thought Bob was a pretty nice fella, you know? After all is said and done, you know?

  —Give me another cup of coffee while you’re there, will you, Jimmy?

  —Yup. Hey, gee! It’s really coming down now, ain’t it? Look at it coming down out there!

  —It’s really raining all right.

  —Gee!

  All of life is soft and dark now, and the huge and shrouded rain falls everywhere, in warm and rain-blue dark:

  It falls in the muddy loam beneath the pines, in the marshy bottoms of rainwashed earth, in the secret thicket of the wet woods at night, in the brooding hidden ditches, the culverts trickling, in the mystery and darkness of rain-haunted woods and heavy-hanging trees at night, in puddled earth, in rain-darkened bracken at the end of the road.

  And the rain falls sleeping on swarded meadows all greendark and damp, it falls washing on old stonewalls, and weeping on marble stone, and flowers there, and wreaths, it seeps and washes into every secret deep.

  It falls on highways too. George Martin comes driving home in the rain-hushed midnight hour, his lights go reaching across the slanted rainfall, across the asphalt glistening wet, and the rain spears in his window, the windshield wiper blurs and clicks, blurs and clicks, blurs and clicks.… What wonder and strangeness is in his heart? What does the sudden sight of the town all desolate and rain-blurred there, its lonely lights haloing in darkness, its empty streets, its houses brooding under trees, what does the sight of the town rain-drowned and silent do to him? What awaits him there?

  All thoughts, all hearts are melted softly, and asking rainy questions, and waiting and listening all night long.

  The river swells and elbows darkly through folded shores, all bulging, all softened by rain.

  Still the shrouds of rain come down.

  [6]

  Francis was beginning his second year at Harvard that Autumn—a brilliant student handling all his courses with ease, occasionally lagging in his duties but easily catching up in a few nights’ work, moving along towards his degree with an indifferent and rather lonesome air. He had no goal in mind. Like most commuter students at the college he never mingled with the others as much as he would have liked to, and often when walking around the Yard he had the nagging uncomfortable feeling that he didn’t “belong” at all. He went home every night by painful circuitous routes, taking the subway to North Station in Boston, then the old smoky rattling trunkline train to Galloway, and finally the bus from the depot to his family’s house. He carried his books with him on these daily journeys, and sulked miserably, and arrived home tired and discontented.

  He considered it emblematical of his uninteresting fate that of all the people he could have known at Harvard, it was a commuting student who attached himself to him. The student made it a regular habit of sitting next to Francis on the train and conversing eagerly till getting off at a little country town. He was a strange, shapeless kind of person, named Walter Wickham. He staggered under the weight of scholarly tomes, always attired in the same tight-fitting suit, the same black shoes, the same battered hat, always wearing an expression of absorbed eagerness and zeal.

  Francis wanted to know the “least objectionable” Harvard men—this is the way he actually mused on it—the ones who looked like Harvard men, who spoke and acted and lived like Harvard men. He saw them everywhere on the campus, in the lecture rooms, on the Cambridge streets, elegant, casual, well-dressed, a little facetious and exclusive, always suave-looking and composed and luxuriously belonging to the place the way he never could.

  He wanted to find some way of earning money so he could afford to live on the campus itself; sometimes he almost wished he was a football player like Peter and receive the various benefits accruing from that status. His father paid his tuition but the rest was a little too much for the Martin budget now. Meanwhile he scrimped and saved money for trips to visit Wilfred Engels in New York.

  “Ah, well,” he thought, “there’s a saying about wearing old shoes gracefully.” He thought of young Samuel Johnson who had hurled out of the window at Oxford a pair of new shoes left at his door by some charitable nobleman. “Some philanthropist from a middlewest brewery clan may leave a can of beer at my door—or a barrel, perhaps, which I could go about in.”

  It amused him to consider that he was no better than a pauper in what was universally regarded a rich man’s college. And when Wickham habitually rushed up to him on the train and dropped his load of books on the seat in an inelegant, slapdash, high-school way, Francis was always rather amused—embarrassed also, perhaps—but amused. Wilfred Engels was his one contact with “interesting” people, but Engels’ stay in New York was still indefinite and Francis was not brash enough to look up the people he had met at Engels’ parties.

  Meanwhile, Peter had broken his leg in a freshman football game against Columbia that Fall. For several weeks he went hobbling around the Penn campus with a crutch and a plaster cast on his lower leg. Though he looked a little drawn and disheveled from the discomfort of his injury, he nevertheless began enjoying college life and his new-found leisure tremendously.

  Alexander Panos came joyously from Galloway to visit him, and they took a train to New York for the weekend, spending avid days and nights exploring the great city together. They drank beer in longshoremen’s bars, stood vigil on Brooklyn Bridge in the dead of night, visited museums and theaters, sailed on the ferry to Staten Island, and quoted poetry at dawn in scraggly streets. The ardent young Greek from Galloway, happier than he had ever been in his life, stood on the parapets of parks bawling great cries to the rising sun, while Peter grinned beside him.

  One Saturday night they were crossing the cobblestones underneath dark girders of the Third Avenue el, Peter limping with the aid of crutches. An illkempt man came staggering out of the shadows of a doorway holding out a cigarette butt in a gesture demanding that someone light him up. And at the same moment they saw two men strolling nearby who were, inexplicably, Wilfred Engels and Francis Martin. Francis looked dark and severe in the New York night.

  “This is crazy!” yelled Peter. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’ve already made a new friend, I see!” laughed Engels, rushing over, delighted.

  Peter was leaning on the crutches holding out his cigarette, to which the shabby stranger bent solicitously, nervously, trembling, muttering incoherent speeches: “Fine-looking boy! Too bad, too bad, you hurt yourself. Hurt your leg, huh?” He held Peter’s arm with a long, bony, shivering hand.

  “Well, how are you, football player!” greeted Engels, joyfully extending his hand to Peter. “I see you’ve become a martyr in the great American cause for bigger and better concrete stadiums!” He pumped Peter’s hand vigorously, and then shook hands with Alex Panos, who was flushed and pleased to be meeting a “real sophisticated New Yorker” for the first time. Francis, displeased somewhat, stood back watching in silence.

  The hobo continued to stare intently at Peter during the flurry of greetings and conversations, and went right on talking incoherently. “Even if you hurt yourself—I wish I was you! No kidding! Fine-looking boy—young—got your life ahead of you. You got your health just the same—”

  “Hey now,” cried Peter, pressing the man’s shoulder and laughing, “you don’t look unhealthy to me! What’ve you got to be so gloomy about? You got a couple of drinks in you, you feel good, don’t you? You’ve got just about as much money as I have, which is none, isn’t that so?”

  The man flinched back, as though he had received some profound insult yet wanted to avoid embarrassing Peter.

&nbs
p; “I’m not bumming money off you!” he yelled anxiously. “I only wanted a light! I’m no bum, I’m no bum!” He looked around at everyone and nodded his own eager confirmation, keeping his grip on Peter’s arm.

  “I don’t mean that,” said Peter. “I mean you talk as if I were a happy-go-lucky millionaire or something. I’ll be down on the Bowery with you before long, don’t worry!”

  The man was ravenously excited. He was getting more attention than he had had for years. He stood there by a sooty girder weaving and grinning and showing broken yellow teeth, looking up and down the street with an expression of idiotic joyousness, gazing at them benignly, cocking his head one side sentimentally, examining them all with the fervent enthusiasm of an old friend. Suddenly he heaved himself up to full height and cried: “I’ve got my health, huh? Is that what you say?”

  “You look all right to me.”

  “Okay,” he cried, poking Peter in the ribs, laughing savagely. “You have it your way!” And suddenly he pulled up his pant leg and held up his foot for all to see. There was a dirty bandage flopping over his ankle, and above it a ghastly sore surrounded by shining swollen coal-black flesh all the way up to the knee. He held it there, swaying drunkenly and grinning with inquisitive slyness.

  Wilfred Engels gasped in horror: “Good heavens! Could that be gangrene?”

  “That looks terrible!” cried Peter. “How did you get that?”

  “I stepped through a manhole on Second Avenue last week. It’s getting worse, huh?”

  “It’s all infected! You’ve got to go down to Bellevue and have it cut!”

  “Cut? Whattayoumean cut?” the man demanded, with a look of fear.

  “I mean cauterized!” yelled Peter with a kind of nervous relief. “Go right down now! Here’s a nickel for the subway!”

  “I’ve got a nickel!” yelled the poor man indignantly. “You think they’ll fix it?” he asked anxiously now.

  “Sure! You gotta go down right now!”

  Engels and Francis had moved off to the other side of the sidewalk. “Come along, come along!” Engels called out now to Peter and Alex. “There’s no sense standing around there, let’s go have a drink.”