OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  "All right," he said angrily. "Do as you like!"

  Without a word to Elinor, he picked up his valise, ran into the station and got through the gates just as the little suburban train began to move. Starwick was climbing up into a compartment, Eugene followed him, flung his valise inside, and clambered in, breathless, just as the guard with a remonstrant face slammed the door behind him.

  LXXXVIII

  During the journey back to Paris, Eugene and Starwick said little. The two young men were the sole occupants of the compartment, they sat facing each other, looking out through the windows with gloomy eyes. The grey light of the short winter's day was fading rapidly: when they entered Paris dusk had come; as the train rattled over the switchpoints in the yard-approaches to the Gare St. Lazare, they could see lights and life and sometimes faces in the windows of the high, faded buildings near the tracks. Through one window, in a moment's glimpse, Eugene saw a room with a round table with a dark cloth upon it, and with the light of a shaded chandelier falling on it, and a dark-haired boy of ten or twelve leaning on the table, reading a book, with his face propped in his hands, and a woman moving busily about the table laying it with plates and knives and forks. And as the train slackened speed, he saw, high up in the topmost floor of an old house that rose straight up from the tracks, a woman come to the window, look for a moment at a canary-bird cage which was hanging in the window, reach up and take it from its hook. She had the rough, blowsy, and somewhat old-fashioned look of a demi-monde of the Renoir period; and yet she was like someone he had known all his life.

  They passed long strings of silent, darkened railway compartments, and as they neared the station, several suburban trains steamed past them, loaded with people going home. Some of the trains were the queer little double-deckers that one sees in France: Eugene felt like laughing every time he saw them and yet, with their loads of Frenchmen going home, they too were like something he had always known. As the train came into the station, and slowed down to its halt, he could see a boat-train ready for departure on another track. Sleek as a panther, groomed, opulent, ready, purring softly as a cat, the train waited there like a luxurious projectile, evoking perfectly, and at once, the whole structure of the world of power and wealth and pleasure that had created it. Beyond it one saw the whole universe of pleasure--a world of great hotels and famed resorts, the thrilling structure of the huge, white-breasted liners, and the slanting race and drive of their terrific stacks. One saw behind it the dark coast of France, the flash of beacons, the grey, fortressed harbour walls, the bracelet of their hard, spare lights, and beyond, beyond, one saw the infinite beat and swell of stormy seas, the huge nocturnal slant and blaze of liners racing through immensity, and for ever beyond, beyond, one saw the faint, pale coasts of morning and America, and then the spires and ramparts of the enfabled isle, the legendary and aerial smoke, the stone and steel, of the terrific city.

  Now their own train had come to a full stop, and he and Starwick were walking up the quay among the buzzing crowd of people.

  Starwick turned and, flushing painfully, said in a constrained and mannered tone:

  "Look! Shall I being seeing you again?"

  Eugene answered curtly: "I don't know. If you want to find me, I suppose I shall be at the same place, for a time."

  "And after that?--Where will you go?"

  "I don't know," he answered brusquely again. "I haven't thought about it yet. I've got to wait until I get money to go away on."

  The flush in Starwick's ruddy face deepened perceptibly, and, after another pause, and with obvious embarrassment, he continued as before:

  "Look! Where are you going now?"

  "I don't know, Francis," he said curtly. "To the hotel, I suppose, to leave my suitcase and see if they've still got a room for me. If I don't see you again, I'll say good-bye to you now."

  Starwick's embarrassment had become painful to watch; he did not speak for another moment, then said:

  "Look! Do you mind if I come along with you?"

  He did mind; he wanted to be alone; to get away as soon as he could from Starwick's presence and all the hateful memories it evoked, but he said shortly:

  "You can come along if you like, of course, but I see no reason why you should. If you're going to the studio we can take a taxi and you can drop me at the hotel. But if you're meeting somebody over on this side later on, why don't you wait over here for him?"

  Starwick's face was flaming with shame and humiliation; he seemed to have difficulty in pronouncing his words and when he finally turned to speak, the other youth was shocked to see in his eyes a kind of frantic, naked desperation.

  "Then, look!" he said, and moistened his dry lips. "Could you let me have some--some money, please?"

  Something strangely like terror and entreaty looked out of his eyes:

  "I've got to have it," he said desperately.

  "How much do you want?"

  Starwick was silent, and then muttered:

  "I could get along with 500 francs."

  The other calculated swiftly: the sum amounted at the time to about thirty dollars. It was almost half his total remaining funds but--one look at the desperate humiliation and entreaty of Starwick's face, and a surge of savage, vindictive joy swept through him--it would be worth it.

  "All right," he nodded briefly, and started to walk forward again.

  "You come with me while I leave this stuff at the hotel and later on we'll see if we can't get these cheques cashed."

  Starwick consented eagerly. From that time on, Eugene played with him as a cat plays with a mouse. They got a taxi and were driven across the Seine to his little hotel, he left Starwick below while he went upstairs with his valise, promising to "be down in a minute, after I've washed up a bit," and took a full and lesiurely three-quarters of an hour. When he got downstairs, Starwick's restless manner had increased perceptibly: he was pacing up and down, smoking one cigarette after another. In the same leisurely and maddening manner they left the hotel. Starwick asked where they were going: Eugene replied cheerfully that they were going to dinner at a modest little restaurant across the Seine. By the time they had walked across the bridge, and through the enormous arches of the Louvre, Starwick was gnawing his lips with chagrin. In the restaurant Eugene ordered dinner and a bottle of wine; Starwick refused to eat, Eugene expressed regret and pursued his meal deliberately. By the time he had finished, and was cracking nuts, Starwick was almost frantic. He demanded impatiently to know where they were going, and the other answered chidingly:

  "Now, Frank, what's the hurry? You've got the whole night ahead of you: there's no rush at all. . . . Besides, why not stay here a while? It's a good place. Don't you think so? I discovered it all by myself!"

  Starwick looked about him, and said:

  "Yes, the place is all right, I suppose, the food looks good--it really does, you know--but God!" he snarled bitterly, "how dull! how dull!"

  "Dull?" Eugene said chidingly, and with an air of fine astonishment. "Frank, Frank, such language--and from you! Is this the poet and the artist, the man of feeling and of understanding, the lover of humanity? Is this grand, is this fine, is this swell?" he jeered. "Is this the lover of the French--the man who's more at home here than he is at home? Why, Frank, this is unworthy of you: I thought that every breath you drew was saturated with the love of France. I thought that every pulse-beat of your artist's soul beat in sympathy with the people of this noble country. I thought that you would love this place--find it simply swell," he sneered, "and very grand and most amusing--and here you turn your nose up at the people and call them dull--as if they were a lot of damned Americans! Dull! How can they be dull, Frank? Don't you see they're French? . . . Now this boy here, for example," he pointed to a bus-boy of eighteen years who was noisily busy piling dishes from a table on to a tray.--"Isn't he a sweet person, Frank?" he went on with an evil, jeering mimicry--"and there's something very grand and enormously moving about the way he piles those dishes on a tray," he con
tinued with a deliberate parody of Starwick's mannered accent. "--I mean, the whole thing's there--it really is, you know--it's like that painting by Cimabue in the Louvre that we both like so much--you know the one of the Madonna with the little madonnas all around her.--I mean the way he uses his hands--Look!" he crooned rapturously as the bus-boy took a thick, blunt finger and vigorously wiped his rheumy nose with it. "--Now where, where, Frank," he said ecstatically, "could you find anything like that in America? I mean, the grace, the dignity, the complete unselfconsciousness with which that boy just wiped his nose across his finger--or his finger across his nose--Hah! hah! hah!--I get all confused, Frank--really!--the movement is so beautiful and fluid--it's hard to say just which is which--which does the wiping--nose or finger--I mean, the whole thing's quite incredible--and most astonishing--the way it comes back on itself: it's like a fugue, you know," and looking at the other earnestly, he said deeply: "You see what I mean, don't you?"

  Starwick's face had flamed crimson during the course of this jeering parody: he returned the other's look with hard eyes, and said with cold succinctness:

  "Quite! . . . If you don't mind, could we go along now and,"--his flush deepened and he concluded with painful difficulty, ". . . and . . . and do what you said you would?"

  "But of course!" the other cried, with another parody of Starwick's tone and manner. "At once! Immediately! Tout de suite! . . . as we say over here! . . . Now, there you are!" he said enthusiastically. "There you are, Frank! . . . Tout de suite!" he murmured rapturously. "Tout de suite! . . . Not 'at once!' Not 'right away!' Not 'immediately!' But tout de suite! . . . Ah, Frank, how different from our own coarse tongue! Quel charme! Quelle musique! Quelle originalité! . . . I mean, the whole thing's there! . . . It really is, you know!"

  "Quite!" said Starwick as before, and looked at him with hard, embittered eyes. "Could we go now?"

  "Mais oui, mais oui, mon ami! . . . But first, I want you to meet yon noble youth who wipes his nose with such a simple unaffected dignity, and is, withal, so French about it! . . . I know him well, we artists have the common touch, n'est-ce pas? Many a time and oft have we talked together. . . . Why, Frank, you're going to love him like a brother . . . the whole, great heart of France is beating underneath that waiter's jacket . . . and, ah! such grace, such flashing rapier-work of Gallic wit, such quick intelligence and humour. . . . Ecoutez, garçon!" he called; the boy turned, startled, and then, seeing the young men, his thick lips slowly wreathed themselves in a smile of amiable stupidity. He came towards them smiling eagerly, a clumsy boy of eighteen years with the thick features, the dry, thick lips, the blunted, meaty hands and encrusted nails of the peasant. It was a face of slow, wondering intelligence, thick-witted, unperceptive, flushed with strong, dark colour, full of patient earnestness, and animal good-nature.

  "Bonsoir, monsieur," he said, as he came up. "Vous désirez quelque chose?" And he grinned at them slowly, with a puzzled, trustful stare.

  "But yes, my boy! . . . I have been telling my friend about you, and he wants to meet you. He is, like me, an American . . . but a true friend of France. And so I told him how you loved America!"

  "But yes, but yes!" the boy cried earnestly, clutching eagerly at the suggestion. "La France and l'Amérique are of the true friends, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?"

  "You have reason! It's as you say!"

  "Vashingtawn!" the boy cried suddenly, with a burst of happy inspiration.

  "But yes! But yes! . . . Lafayette!" the other yelled enthusiastically.

  "Pair-shing!" the boy cried rapturously. "La France et l'Amérique!" he passionately proclaimed, and he turned slowly to Starwick, joined his thick, blunt fingers together, and thrusting them under Starwick's nose, nodded his thick head vigorously and cried: "C'est comme ça! . . . La France et l'Amérique!"--he shook his thick joined fingers vigorously under Starwick's nose again, and said: "Mais oui! Mais oui! . . . C'est toujours comme ça!"

  "Oh, my God!" groaned Starwick, turning away, "how dull! How utterly, unspeakably dreary!"

  "Monsieur?" the boy spoke inquiringly, and turned blunt, puzzled features at Starwick's dejected back.

  Starwick's only answer was another groan: flinging a limp arm over the back of his chair, he slumped in an attitude of exhausted weariness. The boy turned a patient, troubled face to the other youth, who said, in an explanatory way:

  "He is profoundly moved. . . . What you have said has touched him deeply!"

  "Ah-h!" the boy cried, with an air of sudden, happy enlightenment, and thus inspired, began with renewed ardour, and many a vigorous wag of his thick and earnest beak, to proclaim:

  "Mais c'est vrai! C'est comme je dis! . . . La France et l'Amérique--" he intoned anew.

  "Oh, God!" groaned Starwick without turning, and waved a feeble and defeated arm. "Tell him to go away!"

  "He is deeply moved! He says he can stand no more!"

  The boy cast an earnest and immensely gratified look at Starwick's dejected back, and was on the point of pushing his triumph farther when the proprietor angrily called to him, bidding him be about his work and leave the gentlemen in peace.

  He departed with obvious reluctance, but not without vigorously nodding his thick head again, proclaiming that "La France et l'Amérique sont comme ça!" and shaking his thick, clasped fingers earnestly in a farewell gesture of racial amity.

  When he had gone, Starwick looked round wearily, and in a dispirited tone said:

  "God! What a place! How did you ever find it? . . . And how do you manage to stand it?"

  "But look at him, Frank . . . I mean, don't you just lo-o-ve it?" he jibed. "I mean, there's something so grand and so simple and so unaffected about the way he did it! It's really quite astonishing! It really is, you know!"

  The poor bus-boy, indeed, had been intoxicated by his sudden and unaccustomed success. Now, as he continued his work of clearing tables and stacking dishes on a tray, he could be seen nodding his thick head vigorously and muttering to himself: "Mais oui, mais oui, monsieur! . . . La France et l'Amérique. . . . Nous sommes de vrais amis!" and from time to time he would even pause in his work to clasp his thick fingers together illustrating this and to mutter: "C'est toujours comme ça!"

  This preoccupied elation soon proved the poor boy's undoing. For even as he lifted his loaded tray and balanced it on one thick palm he muttered "C'est comme ça," again, making a recklessly inclusive gesture with his free hand; the mountainously balanced tray was thrown off balance, he made a desperate effort to retrieve it, and as it crashed upon the floor he pawed frantically and sprawled after it, in one general ruinous smash of broken crockery.

  There was a maddened scream from the proprietor. He came running clumsily, a squat, thick figure of a bourgeois Frenchman, clothed in black and screaming imprecations. His moustaches bristled like the quills of an enraged porcupine, and his ruddy face was swollen and suffused, an apoplectic red:

  "Brute! Fool! Imbecile!" he screamed as the frightened boy clambered to his feet and stood staring at him with a face full of foolish and helpless bewilderment. ". . . Salaud! . . . Pig . . . Architect!" he screamed out this meaningless curse in a strangling voice, and rushing at the boy cuffed him clumsily on the side of the face and began to thrust and drive him before him in staggering lunges.

  "--And what grace, Frank!" Eugene now said cruelly. "How grand and simple and how unselfconscious they are in everything they do! I mean, the way they use their hands!" he said ironically, as the maddened proprietor gave the unfortunate boy another ugly, clumsy shove that sent him headlong. "I mean, it's like a fugue--like Cimabue or an early primitive--it really is, you know--"

  "Assassin! Criminal!" the proprietor screamed at this moment, and gave the weeping boy a brutal shove that sent him sprawling forward upon his hands and knees:

  "Traitor! Misérable scélérat!" he screamed, and kicked clumsily at the prostrate boy with one fat leg.

  "Now where?--where?" Eugene said maliciously, as the wretched boy clambered
to his feet, weeping bitterly, "--where, Francis, could you see anything like that in America?"

  "God!" said Starwick, getting up. "It's unspeakable!" And desperately: "Let's go!"

  They paid the bill and went out. As they went down the stairs they could still hear the hoarse, choked sobs of the bus-boy, his thick face covered with his thick, blunt fingers, crying bitterly.

  He didn't know what Starwick wanted the money for, but it was plain he wanted it for something, badly. His agitation was pitiable:--the bitter exasperation and open flare of temper he had displayed once or twice in the restaurant was so unnatural to him that it was evident his nerves were being badly rasped by the long delay. Now, he kept consulting his watch nervously: he turned, and looking at Eugene with a quiet but deep resentment in his eyes, he said:

  "Look. If you're going to let me have the money, I wish you'd let me have it now--please. Otherwise, I shall not need it."

  And Eugene, touched with a feeling of guilt at the deep and quiet resentment in his companion's face, knowing he had promised him the money and feeling that this taunting procrastination was ungenerous and mean, said roughly:

  "All right, come on. You can have it right away."

  They turned into the Rue St. Honoré, turned again, and walked to the Place Vendôme, where there was a small exchange office--or "all-night bank"--where travellers' cheques were cashed. They entered, he cashed his three remaining cheques: the amount was something over 900 francs. He counted the money, kept out 500 francs for Starwick, stuffed the rest into his pocket, and, turning, thrust the little sheaf of banknotes into Starwick's hand, saying brutally:

  "There's you money, Frank. And now, good-bye to you. I needn't detain you any longer."

  He turned to go, but the implication of his sneer had not gone unnoticed:

  "Just a minute," Starwick's quiet voice halted him. "What did you mean by that?"

  He paused, with a slow thick anger beating in his veins: