OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  Yes, this was the thing--blindly, desperately, unutterably though he felt it--this was the thing that had put this look--the "new look"--the horrible, indefinable, and abominably desolate and anonymous look into the face of people. This was the thing that had taken all the play and flash of passion, joy, and instant, lovely and mercurial life out of their living faces, and that gave their faces the look of something blunted, deadened, stunned, and calloused.

  This was the thing that had given people "the new look"--that had made man what he had become--that had made all these people waiting on the platform for the train what they were--and now that he had to face this thing again, now that he had to be thrust back in it, now that, after these three days of magic and enchantment, he must leave this glorious world that he had just discovered--and be thrust brutally back again into the blind and brutal stupefaction, the nameless agony and swelter of that life from which he came--it seemed to him he could not face it, he could not go back to it again, it was too hard, too full of pain and sweat and agony and terror, too ugly, cruel, futile, and horrible, to be endured.

  No more! No more! And not to be endured! To discover for three days--three magic swift-winged days--that enchanted life that had held all his visions as a child in fee--to be for just three brief and magic days a lord of life, the valued friend, the respected and well-loved companion of great men and glorious women, to discover and to possess for three haunting and intolerable lovely days the magic domain of his boyhood's "America"--the most fortunate, good and happy life that men had ever known--the most true and beautiful, the most right--and now to have it torn from him at the very instant of possession--and to come to this:--a nameless cipher hurtled citywards in the huge projectile of a train, with all his fellow-ciphers, towards this blind and brutal stupefaction. A voice sounded far off, thundering in his ears through the battle-roar and rock of that stunned universe, as he cried:

  "Joel! Joel! It was good to be here with you--Joel--"

  And suddenly he saw his friend's tall form recoil, shrink back, the look of something instant, startled, closed and final in his face and eye, and heard the swift incisive whisper saying quickly--

  "Yes! . . . It was good that you could come! . . . And now, good-bye! . . . I shall see you--"

  And so heard no more, and knew that that good-bye was final and irrevocable and could not be altered, no matter now how much or how often they should "see" each other in the future.

  And at the same moment, as that door swung shut between them, and he saw that it never could be opened any more, he felt, with the knowledge of that irrevocable loss, a moment's swift and rending pity for his friend. For he saw somehow that he was lost--that there was nothing for him now but shadows on the wall--Circean make-believe--that world of moonlight, magic and painted smoke that "the river people" knew. For three days he himself had breathed the poppied fumes of all its glorious unreality, and in those three short days the world from which he came--his father's earth of blood and sweat and stinking day and bitter agony--this world of violence and toil and strife and cruelty and terror, this swarming world of nameless lives and mongrel faces, with all its ugliness--had become phantasmal as an evil dream, until now he could scarcely endure the hot and savage swelter, the savage fury, of the unceasing city. To grope and sweat and thrust and curse his way again among the unceasing flood-tides of the grimy swarming pavements; to be buffeted, stunned, bewildered, deadened, and exhausted by the blind turmoil, the quenchless thirst and searching, the insatiate hunger and the black despair of all that bleak and fruitless struggle, that futile and unceasing strife--and to come to this! To come to this!

  It was too hard, too painful, too much to be endured, he could not go!--and even as his life shrank back in all the shuddering revulsion and loathing of his desolate discovery--he heard the great train thunder on the rails--and he knew that he must go!

  For a moment, as the train pulled out, he stood looking out of the window, waved good-bye to Joel standing on the platform, and for a moment watched his tall retreating form. Then the train gained speed, was running swiftly now along the river's edge, swept round a bend, the station and the town were left behind him, and presently, just for a few brief moments as it swept along below the magic and familiar hill, he caught a vision of the great white house set proudly far away up on the hill and screened with noble trees. Then this was gone: he looked about him, up and down the grimy coach, which was dense with smoke and pungent with the smell of cheap cigars and strong tobacco.

  They were all there, and instantly he knew that he had seen each one of them a million times, and had known all of them for ever; the Greek from Cleveland with his cheap tan suit, his loud tan shoes, his striped tan socks, his cheap cardboard suitcase with its tan shirts and collars and its extra pair of pants, and with his hairy, seamed and pitted nighttime face, his swarthy eyes, his lowering finger-breadth of forehead bent with painful, patient, furrowed rumination into the sensational mysteries of tabloid print. They were all there--two deaf-mutes talking on their fingers; a young Harlem negro and his saffron wench, togged to the nines in tan and lavender; two young Brooklyn Jews and their two girl friends grouped on turned seats; a little chorus girl from the burlesque with dyed hair of straw-blade falseness, a false, meagre, empty, painted little prostitute's face, and a costume of ratty finery false as all the rest of her; a young Italian with grease-black hair sleeked back in faultless patent-leather pompadour, who talked to her, eyes leering and half-lidded, with thick pale lips fixed in a slow thick smile of sensual assurance, the jaws slow-working on a wad of gum; a man with the strong, common, gaunt-jawed and anonymous visage of the working man, wearing neat, cheap, nameless clothing, and with a brown-paper parcel on the rack above him; and a young dark Irishman, his tough face fierce with drink and truculence, his eyes glittering with red points of fire, his tongue snarling curses, threats, and invitations to the fight that rasped and cut with naked menace through the smoke-blue air.

  The young Jews slouched with laughter, filled the car with noisy clamour, sparred glibly, swiftly, with quick, eager, and praise-asking repartee, with knowing smirk and cynic jest, with acrid cynic wit that did not hit the mark. The little blondined prostitute listened to the hypnotic, slit-eyed, thick-lipped seductions of the young Italian with a small coy-bawdy smirk upon her painted face: she did not know what he meant, she had no idea what he was talking about, and with coy-bawdy smirk she rose, edged past his slow withdrawn knees and minced down the corridor towards the little cupboard at the end that housed the women's toilet, while with lidded sly eyes and thick, slow-chewing and slow-smiling lips his calculating glance pursued her. The lady entered, closed the door upon a stale reek, and was gone some time. When she emerged she arranged her clothing daintily, smoothed out her rumpled dress across her hips and came mincing down the corridor again with faint coy-bawdy smirk, and was greeted again by her gallant suitor, who welcomed her in the same manner, with lidded eyes, thick, pallid and slow-chewing lips and slow withdrawn knees. The two deaf-mutes surveyed the scene with loathing: one was large and heavy, with the powerful shoulders of the cripple, a brutal face, a wide and cruel mouth; the other small and dark and ferret-faced--but both surveyed the scene with loathing. They looked at each and all the passengers and they dismissed each in turn upon their fingers. As they did so their faces writhed in vicious snarls, in sneering smiles, in convulsions of disgust and hatred; they looked upon the objects of their hate and jerked cruel thumbs towards earth in gestures eloquent of annihilation and destructive sudden death, and they drew swift fingers meaningly across their gullets with the deadly move of men who slit a throat--and all was as he had known it would be.

  The working man with the strong and common face, the cheap, neat clothes, sat quietly, and looked quietly out of the window, with seamed face and quiet worn eyes, and the young Irishman sweltered in strong drink and murder; the taste of blood was thick in him, his little eyes glittered with red points of fire, and ever as the train rushed on he
sowed that smoke-blue air with rasping curse and snarling threat, with all the idiotic stupefaction of a foul and idiotic profanity, an obscene but limited complaint:--

  "Yuh ----- Kikes! . . . Yuh ----- Jews! . . . I'll kick duh ----- s--t outa duh ----- lot of yuh, yuh ----- bastards, you. . . . Hey-y! You! . . . Yuh ----- dummies up deh talkin' on yer ----- fingers all duh time. . . . Hey-y! You! Inches! You ----- bastard, I don't give a s--t for duh whole ----- lot of yuh."

  It was all as it had always been, as he had known it would be, as he never could have foreseen it: the young dark Irishman sowed the air with threats and foulness, he finished up his bottle, and the foulness and the old red light of murder grew. And the mongrel compost laughed and snickered as they always did, and at length grew silent when he lurched with drunken measure towards them, and the old guard with the sour, seamed face then stopped the Irishman, and he cursed him.

  And the slant light steepened in the skies, the old red light of waning day made magic fire upon the river, and the train made on for ever its tremendous monotone that was like silence and for ever--and now there was nothing but that tremendous monotone of time and silence and the river, the haunted river, the enchanted river that drank for ever its great soundless tides from out the inland slowly, and that moved through all man's lives the magic thread of its huge haunting spell, and that linked his life to magic kingdoms and to lotus-land and to all the vision of the magic earth that he had dreamed of as a child, and that bore him on for ever out of magic to all the grime and sweat and violence of the city, the unceasing city, the million-footed city, and into America.

  The great river burned there in his vision in that light of fading day and it was hung there in that spell of silence and for ever, and it was flowing on for ever, and it was stranger than a legend, and as dark as time.

  BOOK V

  JASON'S VOYAGE

  LXVIII

  Smoke-gold by day, the numb exultant secrecies of fog, a fog-numb air filled with the solemn joy of nameless and impending prophecy, an ancient yellow light, the old smoke-ochre of the morning, never coming to an open brightness--such was October in England that year. Sometimes by night in stormy skies there was the wild, the driven moon, sometimes the naked time-far loneliness, the most-oh!-most familiar blazing of the stars that shine on men for ever, their nameless, passionate dilemma of strong joy and empty desolation, hope and terror, home and hunger, the huge twin tyranny of their bitter governance--wandering for ever and the earth again.

  They are still-burning, homely particles of night, that light the huge tent of the dark with their remembered fire, recalling the familiar hill, the native earth from which we came, from which we could have laid our finger on them, and making the great earth and home seem near, most near, to wanderers; and filling them with naked desolations of doorless, houseless, timeless, and unmeasured vacancy.

  And everywhere that year there was something secret, lonely, and immense that waited, that impended, that was still. Something that promised numbly, hugely, in the fog-numb air, and that never broke to any open sharpness, and that was almost keen and frosty October in remembered hills--oh, there was something there incredibly near and most familiar, only a word, a stride, a room, a door away--only a door away and never opened, only a door away and never found.

  At night, in the lounging rooms of the old inn, crackling fires were blazing cheerfully, and people sat together drinking small cups of the black bitter liquid mud that they called coffee.

  The people were mostly family groups who had come to visit their son or brother in the university. They were the most extraordinary, ugly, and distinguished-looking people Eugene had ever seen. There was the father, often the best-looking of the lot: a man with a ruddy weathered face, a cropped white moustache, iron-grey hair--an open, driving, bull-dog look of the country carried with tremendous style. The mother was very ugly with a long horse-face and grimly weathered cheek-flanks that seemed to have the tough consistency of well-tanned leather. Her grim bare smile shone in her weathered face and was nailed for ever round the gauntness of her grinning teeth. She had a neighing voice, a shapeless figure, distinguished by the bony and angular width of the hip structure, clothed with fantastic dowdiness--fantastic because the men were dressed so well, and because everything they wore, no matter how old and used it might be, seemed beautiful and right.

  The daughter had the mother's look: a tall gawky girl with a bony, weathered face and a toothy mouth; she wore an ill-fitting evening or party dress of a light unpleasant blue, with a big meaningless rosette of ruffles at the waist. She had big feet, bony legs and arms, and she was wearing pumps of dreary grey and grey silk stockings.

  The son was a little fellow with ruddy apple-cheeks, crisp, fair, curly hair, and baggy grey trousers; and there was another youth, one of his college friends, of the same cut and quality, who paid a dutiful but cold attention to the daughter, which she repaid in kind, and with which everyone was completely satisfied.

  They had to be seen to be believed, but even then, one could only say, like the man who saw the giraffe: "I don't believe it." The young men sat stiffly on the edges of their chairs, holding their little cups of coffee in their hands, bent forward in an attitude of cold but respectful attentiveness, and the conversation that went on among them was incredible. For their manner was impregnable; they were cold, remote, and formal almost to the point of military curtness, and yet Eugene felt among them constantly an utter familiarity of affection, a strange secret warmth, past words or spoken vows, that burned in them like glacial fire.

  When you got ten or fifteen feet away from them their language could not have been more indecipherable if they had spoken in Chinese; but it was fascinating just to listen to the sounds. For there would be long mounting horse-like neighs, and then there would be reedy flute-like notes, and incisive cold finalities and clipped ejaculations and sometimes a lovely and most musical speech. But the horse-like neighs and clipped ejaculations would predominate; and suddenly Eugene understood how strange these people seemed to other races, and why Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians would sometimes stare at them with gape-mouthed stupefaction when they heard them talking.

  Once when he passed by them they had the family vicar or some clergyman of their acquaintance with them. He was a mountain of a man, and he too, was hardly credible: the huge creature was at least six and a half feet tall, and he must have weighed three hundred pounds. He had a flaming moon of face and jowl, at once most animal and delicate, and he peered out keenly with luminous smoke-grey eyes beneath a bushy hedge-growth of grey brows. He was dressed in the clerical garb and his bulging grossly sensual calves were encased in buttoned gaiters. As Eugene went by, he was leaning forward with his little cup of muddy coffee held delicately in the huge mutton of his hand, peering keenly out beneath his beetling bush of brow. And what he said was this:

  "Did you ever read--that is, in recent yöhs--the concluding chaptahs in 'The Vicah of Wakefield'?" Carefully he set the little cup down in its saucer. "I was reading it just the other day. It's an extraordinary thing!" he said.

  It is impossible to reproduce the sound of these simple words, or the effect they wrought upon Eugene's senses.

  For, first, the words "Did you ever" were delivered in a delicate rising-and-falling neigh, the word "read" really came out with a long reedy sound, the words "that is, in recent yöhs," in a parenthesis of sweetly gentle benevolence, the phrase "the concluding chaptahs in 'The Vicah of Wakefield'" in full, deliberate, satisfied tones of titular respect, the phrase "I was reading it just the other day," thoughtfully, reedily, with a subdued, gentle, and mellow reminiscence, and the final decisive phrase, "It's an extraordinary thing," with passionate conviction and sincerity that passed at the end into such an unction of worshipful admiration that the words "extraordinary thing" were not spoken but breathed out passionately, and had the sound "'strawd'n'ry thing!"

  "Ow!" the young man answered distantly, and in a rather surprised tone, with an air of col
dly startled interest, "Now! I can't say that I have--not since my nursery days, at any rate!" He laughed metallically.

  "You should read it again," the mountainous creature breathed unctuously. "A 'strawd'n'ry thing! A 'strawd'n'ry thing." Delicately he lifted the little cup of muddy black in his huge hand again and put it to his lips.

  "But frightfully sentimental, down't you think?" the girl neighed sharply at this point. "I mean all the lovely-woman-stoops-to-folly sawt of thing, you know. After all, it is a bit thick to expect people to swallow that nowadays," she neighed, "particularly after all that's happened in the last twenty yöhs. I suppose it mattuhed in the eighteenth centureh, but after all," she neighed with an impatient scorn, "who cares today? Who cares," she went on recklessly, "what lovely woman stoops to? I cawn't see that it makes the slightest difference. It's not as if it mattuhed any longah! No one cares!"

  "Ow!" the young man said with his air of coldly startled interest. "Yes, I think I follow you, but I don't entirely agree. How can we be certain what is sentimental and what's not?"

  "But it seems to me that he misses the whole point!" the girl exclaimed with one full, mouth-like rush. "After all," she went on scornfully, "no one is interested in woman's folly any longah--the ruined-maiden broken-vows sawt of thing. If that was what she got she should have jolly well known what she wanted to begin with! I'll not waste any pity on her," she said grimly. "The greatest folly is not knowin' what you want to do! The whole point today is to live as cleveleh as possible! That's the only thing that mattahs! If you know what you want and go about it cleveleh, the rest of it will take care of itself."