OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  LXXI

  Once or twice a week Eugene went into town and had tea in the rooms of a boyhood friend whom he had known at school and who was now a Rhodes scholar at Merton College. The name of this youth was Johnny Park: he was a good-natured, industrious, and rather plodding boy, and thus far that patient, diligent and well-ordered plan of life which he had followed since his childhood had brilliantly succeeded. Formed in a native air, and followed out beneath familiar skies, that plan had never been interrupted by any doubt or strangeness, by any serious difficulty or dark confusion of the soul, or by any of the unforeseen surprises, shocks, or bewilderments of chance which break upon our lives with storm-like fury and twist our precious plans awry.

  Therefore, when he had been awarded the Rhodes scholarship a few months before, during his last year at the university, it seemed that Johnny's plan of life was marching onto its inevitable fulfilment. Everyone had known he would be appointed; it came to pass with an ordained precision, and Johnny had announced, just as he should, that he would study "International Law," and everything was right and proper as it ought to be, and now he was here to march onward toward his shining goal, as he had always done.

  But, for the first time in his life, something had gone wrong, something had gone terribly, appallingly amiss, and Johnny did not yet know what it was. Perhaps he never would, but now he was in the greatest trouble and confusion of his life, and he knew it. His voice was still slow, drawling, and good-natured, he was full of kindly warmth and friendliness as he had always been, he had responded quickly, dutifully, to all the customs and observances of the new life--had had grey baggy trousers and tweed coats made at the tailor's shop, had made arrangements for trips and walking-tours upon the Continent with his fellows in vacation time, had met his tutors, found out about the proctors and the penalties, learned the system of the college bills and battels, joined the Union and learned to go out dutifully for sports in the afternoon--he had even learned the mysterious ceremonial of tea and had it in his rooms each afternoon--all this he had learned and done with a punctilious thoroughness; but something had gone wrong.

  Everything about Johnny was just as it had always been--his smile, his slow, good-natured voice, his amiable warmth and modesty and friendliness--all was the same with him except his eyes. But the quiet, thoughtful, tranquilly assured expression of his eyes had changed: he had in them the stunned, bewildered look, full of pain and a groping confusion, of a man who has been brutally slugged at the base of the brain and is not yet certain what has happened to him.

  His was an impossible situation, a tragic ordeal of loneliness, strangeness, and bewilderment among all the complex and alien forms of a new life for which nothing in the old had prepared him. Born in a small town in the South, going to school there and at his own State University, he had all his life breathed and lived in a familiar air, heard the familiar words of well-known voices all round him, known and seen nothing but assurance, certitude and success in everything he planned.

  And now all this, even the earth beneath his feet, had melted from him like a wisp of smoke, and he was wandering blindly about in a life as strange to him as Asia, as far as the moon, and knew nowhere to turn, nothing to grasp, no door to enter. In his whole life he had never seen or visited a great city, and then had seen New York just for a day or two, and then for seven days had known for the first time the mystery of the sea and a great ship, and now was here in the green English country, in an ancient town, hurled cruelly, suddenly, naked and unprepared for it as he was, into a life more subtle, complex and confusing than his placid soul had ever dreamed a life could be.

  When Eugene asked him if he had stopped in London on his way to Oxford, the look of pain and bewilderment in his eyes had deepened, and he had answered in a slow confused voice:

  "We stopped there overnight but we never got to see much of it. We came on out here the next morning."

  The boy was silent a moment, then he laughed good-naturedly with a troubled and uncertain note.

  "It sure looked big enough from what I could see of it. I want to get down there some time to see what it is like. I guess I've got a lot to learn," he said.

  He could remember London like a man who is whirled blindly at night through a huge, limitless, smoky kaleidoscope of sound and sight and moving objects, and this memory of that enormous terrifying age-encrusted web of life--that web without end or measure, which seems blackened, soaked, and saturated not only in the grey light that falls upon it with its weight of eight million lives, but also by the grey light of compacted centuries and all the countless men who lived there and have died--that great grey web appropriately known to seafaring men as "The Smoke" had added measurably to the sense of bewilderment, terror, and naked desolation in him.

  And it was pitifully the same with all the rest of them--the little group of Rhodes scholars that gathered together in Johnny's rooms every afternoon, and who seemed to huddle and cling together desperately as if they would try to shape, to resurrect, or to create some little pattern of familiar life, some small oasis of warmth and friendliness and familiar things to which they turned with desperate relief from all the alien and hostile loneliness of a life which they had never entered, which they could never make their own, which stood against them like a wall they could not pass, closed against them like a door they could not open.

  Curiously, among this group of five or six Rhodes scholars, which formed the nucleus of the group which met in Johnny's rooms, only two--Johnny and his room-mate, a youth named Price--were first-year men. The others were either in the second or the final year of their appointments, but they seemed to have made no friendships with anyone save with a few of the other Rhodes men, to have no other place to go, and to welcome the hospitality of these two boys with a desperate unspoken gratefulness.

  There were, besides Johnny and his room-mate Price, three others who came there every day. One was a chunky, red-faced fellow, with coarse undistinguished features, who parted his short crinkly hair in the middle and had come there from Brown University, where he had been a member of the football team. He was in his second year abroad, and no longer wore his little golden football, but a good deal of his self-satisfied complacency was intact: he was thicker of hide and sense than any of the others, and evidently felt that his three years at Oxford were going to give him a kind of pick-and-choose freedom with any kind of employment when he got back home.

  He asked Eugene how much he had been paid by the university in New York City where he had been employed as an instructor, and when Eugene told him, smiled tolerantly, saying that he wouldn't mind "trying it for a year after I get back until I have a chance to look round." He then informed Eugene graciously that he was open to an offer, and would even be willing to work for no more than they paid him, while he "looked round." He added with a little smile:

  "I don't imagine that I'll have much trouble: a man with an Oxford degree gets snapped up pretty quick over there, doesn't he? Still," he went on magnanimously, "I wouldn't mind living in New York a year or two until I settle down--so you can give my name to them, if you don't mind."

  The other two in the group that came to Johnny's rooms were both third-year men. One was a frail, sensitive, and æsthetic-looking youth named Sterling. Although he came from one of the Western states--Arizona or New Mexico--there was nothing in him to suggest the wildness, openness, and grandeur of his native scenery. Rather, he was a most precious, a most subtle, elegantly sad, quietly bitter and disdainful fellow: he was quietly, fervently, subtly a devoted follower of Mr. T. S. Eliot, and although he revealed his theories sparely, cautiously, and by evasive indirectness, there was in all he said a quiet air of more-in-this-than-meets-the-eye, as if he were saying: "If you want to follow me you've got to learn to read between the lines and get my meaning by what is implied rather than by what is said--since there's no language that can say exactly what my meaning--which is too subtle and exact for any language--is."

  He wore about him always th
is air of elegant, cold, and slightly disdainful restraint, and he had a habit of looking across his thin arched hands with a faint disdainful smile, and listening coldly, saying nothing, while the others talked, as if the waste-land chatter of their tongues, the waste-land vacancy of their lost waste-land souls was something that he knew he must endure, but would endure with his cold faint disdainful smile, his soul steeped in cold and patient weariness till death should mercifully release him.

  The other man was a Jew named Fried, and that man Eugene could never forget. Eugene didn't know where he came from, how he got there, who made him a Rhodes scholar, but he knew that of them all, save Johnny, he was the only one who had maintained his integrity, the only one who did not have a spurious, fearful, uneasily evasive quality, the only one who came out with it, the whole packed load of bitterness and hate within him, the only one who had remained himself.

  Perhaps it was a bad self to remain: it was certainly a self that was lacking in charm, that had the aggressive, abusive, curiously unrighteous quality of his race--but there he was, terrifically himself and unashamed of it--with a naked formidable integrity of self that blazed with a hard and naked light of a cut jewel, and that Eugene could never forget even when the characters of the rest of them had grown blurred and shapeless and obscure.

  Eugene didn't know where he came from, but he was sure it was from one of the great cities of the Atlantic seaboard--from New York, Boston, Baltimore or Philadelphia. He had seen his face, his figure, and his kind a million times upon the pavements of those cities and incredibly now, that dark unhappy face which never before had seemed to him to be a face at all, nothing but a tidal flood of nameless faces, that strident and abusive tongue which had never before seemed to him to be a single tongue, but just a common, nameless, and unnumbered ugliness of rasping voices, an anathema of bitter cries and harsh derisions--a constant phrase, a dissonance, a weather of the city's life--all that had been nameless, faceless, characterless and obscure--the look, the sound, the smell of the man-swarm ciphers of the city as dark-eyed, dark-faced, and bitter-tongued they swarmed along the pavements of the cities--all this, in that strange place, was suddenly, weirdly, resumed into a single character--a character that was hard, bitter, unforgettably itself, and that no change of sky or land or custom, nor the huge impact of all the alien and formidable pageantry of the earth, could ever alter by a jot.

  Theirs was a wretched, hopeless, lonely life, a futile, feeble, barren life, an impossible, groping, wretched insecure life--and Fried was the only one of them to meet it, to admit it, to denounce it with all the bitterness of his bitter soul, and to remain himself against it. The rest were frightened, bitter, lonely, homesick, and afraid--afraid of everything, afraid of their own loneliness and their own dismal unsuccess, afraid to confess the desolation of their souls, the bitter disappointment of their hopes, afraid to laugh too loud, to show too much exuberance or enthusiasm for anything, lest someone should consider them a "hearty," and pin that feared and hated label on them.

  They were afraid to express any native extravagance in dress, speech or manner lest they be branded as "bounders," afraid to talk their natural speech in their own manner lest they seem too crudely, raucously and offensively American, and afraid to imitate too studiously the language of the nation for fear that their own fellows would sneer at them for servile snobbishness, for "speaking with an English accent." Thus, caught in the web of a thousand fears, the meshes of a thousand impossible restraints, trying to maintain their lives, their characters, their native dignities even while they tried to subdue them by a thousand small half-mimicries, to be themselves even while they tried to shape themselves to something else, their characters finally, strained through the impossible weavings of this mad design, teetering frantically to maintain a crazy balance on a thousand wires, were reduced at last to the consistency of blubber--and trying to be everything, they succeeded finally in being nothing.

  Oh, it was a wretched, futile, hopeless kind of life, and in their hearts they knew it, but could only speak casually, smile feebly, speak falsely, yet never lay their hearts bare boldly and admit the truth. None of them liked Fried; they were ashamed of him, they turned on him at times in force, argued with him, denounced him, jeered at him, but at the bottom of their hearts they had a strange, secret, and unwilling respect for him, and finally grew silent and listened when he talked.

  It was astonishing to watch the effect of that man's bitter tirades on that forlorn group. For where at first they would protest, remonstrate, sharply caution him, laugh uneasily and look fearfully toward the door as his harsh rasping voice mounted and grew high and snarling with its packed anathema of bitterness and hate, they would at length grow silent and look at him with fascinated eyes, and listen to that snarling and savage indictment with a kind of feeding gluttony of satisfaction, as if into that single naked and abusive tongue had been packed the whole huge weight of misery that had sweltered in their hearts, but to which they had never dared, themselves, to give utterance.

  Eugene had asked Sterling how much longer he would remain abroad and he had answered:

  "Just ten months more. This is my last year. I am going home next August." He was silent for a moment, then he added with a faint, regretful smile: "In another year I suppose, I'll be wondering if all this has ever happened. It will seem strange and beautiful," he said softly, "like some impossible dream!"

  "Yeah!" snarled Fried, with a harsh interruption at this point. "An impossible dream! Jesus! An impossible nightmare!--that's what you'd better say!"

  Sterling looked at him silently for a moment over his thin arched hands. He smiled faintly, disdainfully, and made no answer. In a moment he turned quietly to Eugene again, and dismissing the other man with the cold contempt of silence, continued:

  "Sometimes it's hard for me to realize I ever lived there. Can there be such a place as America, I wonder?" he said with a sad faint smile. "After all this," he gestured slightly, pausing, "it will seem so strange to be a part of"--he paused carefully "--that again. . . . Skyscrapers, subways, elevated trains--" he paused again, with a faint smile--"Tell me," he said, turning toward Eugene, "do such things really exist?"

  "Do they really exist!" Fried now snarled with a jeering laugh. "Do they really exist! I'll tell the cock-eyed world that they exist!" he rasped. "You can bet your ----- that they exist! . . . Do they exist!" he snorted to himself derisively. "Jesus!"

  Sterling stared coldly at him and said nothing. For a moment Fried's hard, dark, embittered face, the feverish eyes, stared balefully at the fragile and sensitive face of the other youth, set disdainfully against him over his arched hands.

  "Where do you get that stuff?" Fried said at length with harsh contempt. "You may kid these guys who never saw the place until a week ago, but you don't kid me, Sterling. Christ! I know what kind of a dream it's been--and so do you!"

  Sterling did not deign to answer, but continued to look at him with cold faint disdain, and after another baleful and disgusted stare, Fried rasped out bitterly again:

  "I suppose it was a dream your first term here when you tried to suck around those English guys and you thought they were going to take you right into the family, didn't you?" he sneered. "You thought you were sittin' pretty, didn't you? You were goin' to pal around with the Duke of What's-His-Name and get invited home wit' him for the Christmas holidays and make a big play for his sister, weren't you? Yes, you were!" He jeered, "You saw how far it got you, didn't you? Those guys took you for a ride and played you for a sucker, an' when they'd had all the fun wit' you they could, they dropped you like a ton of bricks! You thought that you were pretty wise, didn't you?" he snarled bitterly. "You thought that you were goin' places, didn't you? You were goin' to do something big, you were! Well, I'll tell you what you did! You handed them a laugh--see? You handed those guys a great big laugh--yes! a laugh!" he shouted violently. "And, I'll tell you something else! They're still laughin' at you! I saw you, Sterling. I know what you did. Bu
t you didn't see me, did you? Couldn't see me in those days, could you?"

  "I can't see you now," said Sterling coldly. "I never could see you!"

  "Is that so?" the Jew said bitterly. "Now, isn't that too bad! . . . Well, I'll tell you one time that you saw me, Sterling. . . . That's when those guys had left you flat. . . . You could see me then, couldn't you? You don't remember, do you?" he jeered. "Well, I'll tell you when it was. . . . It was when you came back here that year for the spring term and you found they didn't know you when you went around. It was when your tail was dragging the ground and you didn't have a friend in the world--you could see me then, all right. Couldn't you? . . . I wasn't good enough before when you were trying to break into High Society--but I was good enough to see after they gave you the big go-by, wasn't I? . . . Sure! Sure!" he said with an air of derision, addressing himself more quietly now to the rest of the group. "I usta go by this guy when he was running around wit' his English friends--and did he see me?" he jibed savagely. "Not so you could notice it! . . . 'Who is that common person who just spoke to you, Mr. Sterling?' 'O, that! O, I cannot say, old chap--some low fellow that was on the boat wit' me when I came ovah! . . . Really cawn't recall his name! A beastly boundah, I believe!' . . . Sure! Sure!" he nodded. "That was it! High-hattin' me, you know! I wasn't good enough! And all the time these English guys were laughin' up their sleeve at him!"

  They had been stunned by the snarling fury of his assault, silenced by the hypnotic compulsion of his dark, hard face, his feverish eyes, the rasping bitterness of his voice that at the end grew strident, high, and gasping from his effort to release in one explosive tirade the whole packed weight of misery, disappointment, and defeat that sweltered poisonously in his heart. Now, however, as he paused there, dark and hard and full of bitterness, surveying them balefully with toxic eyes, silenced by lack of breath rather than by lack of further curses, they gathered themselves together and went for him in a mass.