The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

by William Saroyan

  Now the teacher was free to introduce me to art. She stood over me and gasped, and I got a strong odor from her. She began with the five arts and kept on. She had a schedule. She enjoyed going through the schedule, or else it was simply that, like so many teachers, she was unmarried and had to do something, had to talk at least. The first thing I began listening to was about line. It took me that long to get used to her odor.

  “By line,” she gasped, “we mean the boundaries of shapes. A vertical line denotes activity and growth. A horizontal line denotes rest and repose.” She had it pat. “A straight line is masculine,” she said. “A curved line is feminine.” She went on gasping. I couldn’t tell what pleasure she got from it. I certainly hadn’t encouraged her. “A vertical line,” she said, “slightly curved is considered a line of beauty.” There was an exclamation mark in her voice.

  “Considered?” I said. “How do you mean?”

  Then she understood that I was a radical, and that I was out for no good. She became confused for a moment, then blushed with bitterness, then walked away to get me paper and a pencil. She placed the paper and pencil before me and told me I could draw anything I liked. I tried to draw the dried-up lady who had been amazed about art, and while I was doing so I could hear the teacher gasping to someone else, “There are three fundamental forms. They are the sphere, the cone, the cylinder, or modifications of them.” My sketch of the amazed lady was very poor. I hadn’t been able to get her amazement into it.

  After an hour there was a short recess. Everyone sighed and went into the hall or out on the school steps. I offered the man who had sketched Lincoln a cigarette. He didn’t smoke, but he got to talking. He talked in a low dreary voice. We stood on the school steps and I listened to him while I smoked a cigarette. It was February. The evening was mild. I was standing there smoking, listening to the man. I didn’t get a word of what he was saying. I told him his sketch of Lincoln was as good as the one he had copied it from, maybe better. When the bell rang we walked back to the room and sat down again.

  The genius of the class came at eight for the second period only. She was a woman of about forty with a well-rounded body and gold teeth in her mouth. She wore a green sweater tight, and she was the only artist in the class who worked standing. She stood at the front of the class with her legs apart, one of those forty-year-old women who have young bodies. She was sketching a small plaster reproduction of a nude Grecian youth. With her back to me I could admire her, and there are women who are lovely from this point of view and unbearable from any other. One could sit and look at her for a long while, thinking about lines and which were feminine and which masculine, which denoted activity and which repose. It was a thing to do, a way to kill time. She had an old face, but from where I sat I couldn’t see her face.

  It felt splendid to be among such a group of people, and walking home after class I decided I would go back the next evening and find out more about the man who had sketched Lincoln, and the girl he secretly loved, and the lady in the green sweater, and the amazed one, and the fat teacher who gasped. It would be something to do for a while, a place to go in the evening.

  Snake

  Walking through the park in May, he saw a small brown snake slipping away from him through grass and leaves, and he went after it with a long twig, feeling as he did so the instinctive fear of man for reptiles.

  Ah, he thought, our symbol of evil, and he touched the snake with the twig, making it squirm. The snake lifted its head and struck at the twig, then shot away through the grass, hurrying fearfully, and he went after it.

  It was very beautiful, and it was amazingly clever, but he intended to stay with it for a while and find out something about it.

  The little brown snake led him deep into the park, so that he was hidden from view and alone with it. He had a guilty feeling that in pursuing the snake he was violating some rule of the park, and he prepared a remark for anyone who might discover him. I am a student of contemporary morality, he thought he would say, or, I am a sculptor and I am studying the structure of reptiles. At any rate, he would make some sort of reasonable explanation.

  He would not say that he intended to kill the snake.

  He moved beside the frightened reptile, leaping now and then to keep up with it, until the snake became exhausted and could not go on. Then he squatted on his heels to have a closer view of it, holding the snake before him by touching it with the twig. He admitted to himself that he was afraid to touch it with his hands. To touch a snake was to touch something secret in the mind of man, something one ought never to bring out into the light. That sleek gliding, and that awful silence, was once man, and now that man had come to this last form, here were snakes still moving over the earth as if no change had ever taken place.

  The first male and female, biblical; and evolution. Adam and Eve, and the human embryo.

  It was a lovely snake, clean and graceful and precise. The snake’s fear frightened him and he became panic stricken thinking that perhaps all the snakes in the park would come quietly to the rescue of the little brown snake, and surround him with their malicious silence and the unbearable horror of their evil forms. It was a large park and there must be thousands of snakes in it. If all the snakes were to find out that he was with this little snake, they would easily be able to paralyze him.

  He stood up and looked around. All was quiet. The silence was almost the biblical silence of in the beginning. He could hear a bird hopping from twig to twig in a low earthbush near by, but he was alone with the snake. He forgot that he was in a public park, in a large city. An airplane passed overhead, but he did not see or hear it. The silence was too emphatic and his vision was too emphatically focused on the snake before him.

  In the garden with the snake, unnaked, in the beginning, in the year 1931.

  He squatted on his heels again and began to commune with the snake. It made him laugh, inwardly and outwardly, to have the form of the snake so substantially before him, apart from his own being, flat on the surface of the earth instead of subtly a part of his own identity. It was really a tremendous thing. At first he was afraid to speak aloud, but as time went on he became less timid, and he began to speak in English to it. It was very pleasant to speak to the snake.

  All right, he said, here I am, after all these years, a young man living on the same earth, under the same sun, having the same passions. And here you are before me, the same. The situation is the same. What do you intend to do? Escape? I will not let you escape. What have you in mind? How will you defend yourself? I intend to destroy you. As an obligation to man.

  The snake twitched before him helplessly, unable to avoid the twig. It struck at the twig several times and then became too tired to bother with it. He drew away the twig, and heard the snake say, Thank you.

  He began to whistle to the snake, to see if the music would have any effect on its movements, if it would make the snake dance. You are my only love, he whistled; Schubert made into a New York musical comedy; my only love, my only love; but the snake would not dance. Something Italian perhaps, he thought, and began to sing la donna e mobile, intentionally mispronouncing the words in order to amuse himself. He tried a Brahms lullaby, but the music had no effect on the snake. It was tired. It was frightened. It wanted to get away.

  He was amazed at himself suddenly; it had occurred to him to let the snake flee, to let it glide away and be lost in the lowly worlds of its kind. Why should he allow it to escape?

  He lifted a heavy boulder from the ground and thought: Now I shall bash your head with this rock and see you die.

  To destroy that evil grace, to mangle that sinful loveliness.

  But it was very strange. He could not let the rock fall on the snake’s head, and he began suddenly to feel very sorry for it. I am sorry, he said, dropping the boulder. I beg your pardon. I see now that I have only love for you.

  And he wanted to touch the snake with his hands, to hold it and understand the truth of its touch. But it was difficult. The
snake was frightened and each time he extended his hands to touch it, the snake turned on him and charged. I have only love for you, he said. Do not be afraid. I am not going to hurt you.

  Then, swiftly, he lifted the snake from the earth, learned the true feel of it, and dropped it. There, he said. Now I know the truth. A snake is cold, but it is clean. It is not slimy, as I thought.

  He smiled upon the little brown snake. You may go now, he said. The inquisition is over. You are yet alive. You have been in the presence of man, and you are yet alive. You may go now.

  But the snake would not go away. It was exhausted with fear.

  He felt deeply ashamed of what he had done, and angry with himself. Jesus, he thought, I have scared the little snake. It will never get over this. It will always remember me squatting over it.

  For God’s sake, he said to the snake, go away. Return to your kind. Tell them what you saw, you yourself, with your own eyes. Tell them what you felt. The sickly heat of the hand of man. Tell them of the presence you felt.

  Suddenly the snake turned from him and spilled itself forward, away from him. Thank you, he said. And it made him laugh with joy to see the little snake throwing itself into the grass and leaves, thrusting itself away from man. Splendid, he said; hurry to them and say that you were in the presence of man and that you were not killed. Think of all the snakes that live and die without ever meeting man. Think of the distinction it will mean for you.

  It seemed to him that the little snake’s movements away from him were the essence of joyous laughter, and he felt greatly pleased. He found his way back to the path, and continued his walk.

  In the evening, while she sat at the piano, playing softly, he said: A funny thing happened.

  She went on playing. A funny thing? she asked.

  Yes, he said. I was walking through the park and I saw a little brown snake.

  She stopped playing and turned on the bench to look at him. A snake? she said. How ugly!

  No, he said. It was beautiful.

  What about it?

  Oh, nothing, he said. I just caught it and wouldn’t let it go for a while.

  But why?

  For no good reason at all, he said.

  She walked across the room and sat beside him, looking at him strangely.

  Tell me about the snake, she said.

  It was lovely, he said. Not ugly at all. When I touched it, I felt its cleanliness.

  I am so glad, she said. What else?

  I wanted to kill the snake, he said. But I couldn’t. It was too lovely.

  I’m so glad, she said. But tell me everything.

  That’s all, he said.

  But it isn’t, she said. I know it isn’t. Tell me everything.

  It is very funny, he said. I was going to kill the snake, and not come here again.

  Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? she said.

  Of course I am, he said.

  What else? she said. What did you think, of me, when you had the snake before you?

  You will be angry, he said.

  Oh, nonsense. It is impossible for me to be angry with you. Tell me.

  Well, he said, I thought you were lovely but evil.

  Evil?

  I told you you would be angry.

  And then?

  Then I touched the snake, he said. It wasn’t easy, but I picked it up with my hands. What do you make of this? You’ve read a lot of books about such things. What does it mean, my picking up the snake?

  She began to laugh softly, intelligently. Why, she laughed, it means, it simply means that you are an idiot. Why, it’s splendid.

  Is that according to Freud? he said.

  Yes, she laughed. According to Freud.

  Well, anyway, he said, it was very fine to let the snake go free.

  Have you ever told me you loved me? she asked.

  You ought to know, he said. I do not remember one or two things I have said to you.

  No, she said. You have never told me.

  She began to laugh again, feeling suddenly very happy about him. You have always talked of other things, she said. Irrelevant things. At the most amazing times. She laughed.

  This snake, he said, was a little brown snake.

  And that explains it, she said. You have never intruded.

  What the hell are you talking about? he said.

  I’m so glad you didn’t kill the snake, she said.

  She returned to the piano, and placed her hands softly upon the keys.

  I whistled a few songs to the snake, he said. I whistled a fragment from Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. I would like to hear that. You know, the melody that was used in a musical comedy called Blossom Time. The part that goes, you are my only love, my only love, and so on.

  She began to play softly, feeling his eyes on her hair, on her hands, her neck, her back, her arms, feeling him studying her as he had studied the snake.

  Big Valley

  Vineyard

  Jew Strawinsky, the nose and mouth in the aquarium, swimming, and Russian Diaghilev, seated with legs crossed, sending the girls up on their dancing toes. The leaves of all the vines in the valley were drying, for the fruit was gone, the red and the purple; the farmers sat and talked.

  Tender Cocteau, a dandy to the last, more nervously alive than alive, a boy with long fingers and a pallor. And Satie, bearded like a pawnshop ghost gone broke.

  French music, silent during the war, awoke with something of a start the day after the armistice, as who did not, music or man? We lived, as it were, alertly asleep before, but then, after that day, we lived alertly, but awake. Refer to the advertisements about automobiles. There is a place to go for every man. Debussy (the man himself) was dead, Ravel was ill and frightened, and everywhere it was dawn and at dawn man knows a sickness not known at night or during the day.

  Out in the vineyards we labored with the vines, speaking fraternally with peons from Mexico, admiring Villa the bandit and Orozco the maniac with the brushes and the paint.

  First of all, it was argued (by whom it does not matter) that impressionism was dead. This meant, if anything, that impressionism was also dead, along with the soldiers and along with the half dozen decent ideas about civilization. It was said we no longer had any. It was determined (somewhere, in some philosopher’s brain) that because we were soft, it did not necessarily follow that we were civilized. There was some discussion of the importance of softness, whether or not it meant what it was hoped it meant.

  Barbarians were needed. Real barbarians, things to have life explosively, the war having been waged with undue politeness, particularly in the newspapers and afterwards in the memoirs of generals. And still afterwards in the class-room history books. No victory, all nations having lost their men, the bishop still being pious and a liar, and even though the queen was vilely raped, the king quietly persisted in declaring himself potent. The truth. The truth.

  It shall be known. Facts shall be substituted.

  As for Teutonic robustness, rubbish. For robustness of any kind, of any race. Such men as are, are alone in selves and amid mobs in race. In Russia: well, God and Trotzky were exiled. Flower and seed and tremble and tumble and the mouths of all the dead, the eloquence of all the silenced mouths.

  As for the economic and political upheavals (you are invited to examine the terms) reverberating deeply through the bowels of the several continents, scattering rodents, reptiles and insects, it would be sheer folly to speak seriously of anything in this connection, other than, perhaps, the moustache of Mr. Morgan and the state of his digestion. It is, indeed, a very delicate and complex relation, since not once did any of his associates declare for a renaissance of capitalistic art and hatred for the proletariat. They sat quietly consuming the public, men, women, and children. It is not sad, not so very sad. They themselves had their children kidnapped by the monster they created in the mind of man. There was a gradual return to the laws of fairy tales.

  The melodic vein of virtuosi cannot be compared to the s
teady ripening of fruit, and when the pruning of a vine is at hand, only the dullest of farmers remains unmoved by the aesthetic impulse to dance westward to the sun which brings forth the shape of peach and pear and grape.

  And least of all could the peons refrain from singing while they worked.

  The monumental forms, so aptly titled by the towering men of books, grew first in plants anonymously, belonging to man, tutored or unlearned, and afterwards were plagiarized by small suns whose light was dim, whose fruit was horrible with rot. With sonority alone it is futile to be content, since a dry hole in the continent does not make a lake, or a torrent of rain without a path, a river.

  Lord Berners at the piano, sipping a cocktail, while Leonidine Massine, sweet with sadness, glows angularly in ballet poses at the faces lost in the crowd.

  In Venice there were festivals.

  For two years I had the honor of spending most of my life in the great fiction room of the public library, and it was there that I remembered the vines. I was asked not to read Zola, and I replied to the old lady who doubtlessly loved me as she would have loved a son had she had one, I thank you piously; I intend only to have the book on my table, for the presence; I seldom read words at all; I run my fingers over the pages for the texture; thus I have held Balzac in my hand and touched the cheek of Madame Sand.

  Living in the fiction room of the public library, I recalled that the vines stood in their places in the great warm valley of my awakening, and that although I might never return to tend them, they would stand beneath the sun forever, calmly bearing the ecstasy of producing leaf and fruit, calmly a part of my earth and my life and my death, calmly mothering my ghosts. I spoke casually of this to strangers I met in the fiction room, and we agreed that while the agricultural life could never be economically justified (on account of taxes, frost, lack of rain, new children, leaks in the roof, monopolies and intimidation), it could never be dismissed as unethical or improper, as the practice of law is unethical, and the passing of judgment in courts improper, indecent and vile.