OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  Now, with the full rich accents of this unseen Frenchman, at once so strange and so familiar, all of the ancient life of France--her wars and histories, the great chronicles of her battles, and the brilliant and indestructible fabric of her life and energy through so many hundred years of victory and defeat, triumph and catastrophe--began to pulse with such a living and familiar warmth that it seemed to him as if the whole thing from the beginning had been compacted and resumed into the rich and sanguinary energies of this one Frenchman's voice.

  The man's speech, a kind of furious and high-spirited repartee, carried on against all comers with an instant's readiness, an animal vigour, that was almost like a national intoxication, was penetrated constantly by the exclamation "Parbleu!"

  And more than anything else, it seemed to the youth, it was the tone and quality of that ancient exclamation, delivered with such a buoyant and animal vitality, that united the Frenchman to the distant past of his nation's history, to millions of buried and forgotten lives, and through him, made that distant past blaze instantly with all the warmth and radiance of life again.

  The Frenchman's speech was lewd and ribald with the open and robust vulgarity of healthy country people; his broad jests were published without affectation in a tone loud enough for all the world to hear, and it was evident from the roars of hearty, sensual laughter with which his remarks were received by the soldiers, provincials, and strapping peasant women who were with him, that his audience was not a squeamish one.

  The chief target for this robust fellow's humour, to which he loudly returned with unwearied pertinacity, was that unfortunate man, the station-master, whose calling, for some reason, is provocative of unlimited mirth in France. Now, at every station, the Frenchman would publish to the world, amid roars of laughter, his narration of the station-master's unhappy lot. In particular, he sang snatches of a ribald song entitled "Il est cocu le chef de gare"--which described movingly the trials of a station-master's life, the cuckoldries to which the nature of the work exposes him, the conduct of his wife when he is away from home dispatching trains. And the Frenchman would garnish this ditty with certain pointed speculations of his own, directed at the station-master of each town, concerning the probable whereabouts, at that moment, of the station-master's wife.

  Sometimes the answer to this ribald banter would be curses, oaths and maddened imprecations from the station-master; sometimes the answer would be a good-natured one, as rough and ready in its coarse spontaneity as the Frenchman's own, but whatever the result, the Frenchman was always ready with a reply.

  "Are you speaking from your own experience?" one of the station-masters yelled ironically. "Is that the way your old woman behaves when you leave home?"

  "Parbleu! Oui!" the Frenchman roared back cheerfully. "Why not? The meat is all the sweeter for a little extra seasoning."

  This sally was rewarded by a scream of delighted laughter from the peasant women, and the jester, thus encouraged, continued:

  "Parbleu! Do you think I'd play the miser with the old girl, when I've had so much myself? But, no, my friend! What the devil! My old girl's no rare canary who'll fade away the first time that you look at her. The devil, no! There's good stuff there, sound and solid as an ox, old boy, and lots more where the last batch came from!"

  At this delicate sally there were roars and screams of delighted laughter from the peasant women in the train, and when the commotion had somewhat subsided, one could hear the voice of the station-master from the platform, yelling back ironically:

  "Good! Since there's enough for everyone, I'll come round to get my share!"

  "Parbleu! Why not?" the high, sanguinary voice responded instantly. "Turn about's fair play, as the saying goes--I've played the cock to many a station-master's hen--"

  Roars of laughter.

  "And I'd be the last fellow in the world to begrudge him now--" he would conclude triumphantly, and the train would move off to the accompaniment of roars of laughter, ribaldry, and lusty and derisive banter, above which the high, rich energy of the Frenchman's voice, crying out,--"Parbleu! Oui! Why not?" was always dominant.

  He left the train at one of the little stations near Orléans, departing amid a rough but good-natured chorus of jeers, jibes, and derisive yells which followed him as he walked away along the platform, and to all of which he instantly responded with his ribald vitality of coarse humour, that in its lusty ebullience was somehow like the intoxication of a sound, rich wine.

  The boy saw him for an instant as he passed by the window of the compartment. He was a strong, stocky figure of a man, wearing leggings, with blue eyes, a brown moustache, and a solid face full of dark, rich colour. But even after he had disappeared from sight, the boy could hear him shouting to the other people, the sanguinary vitality of his instant, ribald--"Parbleu! Why not?"--a tone, a voice, a word that had evoked the past of France, in all the living textures of her earth and blood, and that, in future years, would bring this scene to life again--all of the faces, voices, lives of these people--as no other single thing could do.

  At one of the little stations near Orléans a girl opened the door and climbed up into the compartment, which was already crowded. The country people, however, made room for her, crowding a little closer together on the wooden bench, and telling her to wedge herself in, with the rough but good-natured familiarity that characterized their conduct towards one another.

  The girl sat down opposite the boy, beside the window, and put the market basket which she was carrying on her knees. She was cleanly but plainly dressed, a very lovely and seductive girl with a slender figure which seemed, however, already to have attained a languorous and sensual maturity. She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat of blue that shaded her face, from which her eyes looked out with a luminous, troubling, and enigmatic clarity. She said nothing, but sat silently listening to the rude jovialities of the peasant people around her and to the ribald shouts and yells and roars of laughter that came from the nearby compartment.

  All the time, the girl gazed directly at the young man, her lovely face traced faintly with a tender, enigmatic smile. It seemed certain to him that if he spoke to her she would not rebuff him. The sensation of an impossible good fortune, of some vague and unutterable happiness that was impending for him in this strange and unknown town, returned. Desire, slow, sultry, began to beat, throbbing in his pulses and through the conduits of his blood. He felt certain that the girl would not rebuff him if he spoke to her. And yet he did not speak.

  And presently the little train came puffing in to Orléans, all of the people got out and streamed away towards the station along the platform. He took the girl's basket and helped her down out of the train, and with the old bewildered indecision in his heart stood there looking after her as she walked away from him with a graceful, slow, and sensual stride in which every movement that she made seemed to imply reluctance to depart, an invitation to follow. And he looked after her numbly, with hot desire pounding slow and thick in pulse and blood. And he told himself, as he had told himself so many times before, that he would certainly find her again, knowing in his heart he never would.

  Already the girl had been lost among the crowds of people streaming through the station, engulfed again in the everlasting web and weaving of this great earth, to leave him with a memory of another of those brief and final meetings, so poignant with their wordless ache of loss and of regret, in which, perhaps more than in the grander, longer meetings of our life, man's bitter destiny of days, his fatal brevity, are apparent.

  And again the boy found himself walking along the platform towards the station after the departing people, whom he had met so briefly and now lost for ever. Again he had sought the mysterious promises of a new land, new earth, and a shining city. Again he had come to a strange place, not knowing why he had come.

  Why here?

  XCII

  The Grand Hôtel du Monde et d'Orléans, which was situated opposite the railway station on one of the corners of the station squ
are, was, despite its sounding title, a modest establishment of forty or fifty rooms, constructed in that style at once grandiose and solid which is peculiar to French hotel architecture. When he entered he found two women seated in the bureau carrying on an animated conversation in fluent English, of which the startling substance ran somewhat as follows:

  "But yes, madame. I assure you--you need have no--kalms?--kalms?"--the younger and larger of the two women said in a doubtful tone, lifting puzzled eyebrows at her older companion--"kalms, Comtesse, je ne comprends pas kalms. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire?"

  "Mais non, cherie," the other answered patiently. "Pas kalms--qualms--qualms." She pronounced the word slowly and carefully several times, until the other woman succeeded in saying it after her, at which the little woman nodded her meagre little head emphatically with a movement of bird-like satisfaction, and said:

  "Oui! Oui! Bon! C'est ça! Qualms?

  "Mais ça veut dire?" the other said inquiringly in a puzzled tone.

  "Ça veut dire, chérie--you need have no qualms, madame--" the little wren-like woman considered carefully before she spoke--"Vous n'avez pas besoin de perturbation--n'est-ce pas?" she cried, with an eager look of triumph.

  "Ah-h!" the other cried, with an air of great enlightenment. "Oui! Je comprends. . . . I assure you, madame, that you need have no qualms about the plumbing arrangements."

  "Bon! Bon!" the little woman nodded her head approvingly. "Plumbing, chérie. Plumbing," she added gently as an afterthought.

  "You will find everyt'ing t'oroughly modairne--"

  "Thoroughly--" the other said, slowly and carefully. "Thoroughly--you pronounce it this way, my dear--th--th--" She leaned forward, inserting her tongue illustratively between her false teeth.

  "Thoroughly," the other said, with evident difficulty, and repeated--"thoroughly modairne--"

  "Modern, dear! Modern!" the little wren-like woman said slowly and carefully again, but then, nodding her head with a movement of swift decision, she went on sharply: "Mais non! Ça va! Ça va bien!" She nodded her head vigorously. "Laissez comme ça! Les Américains aiment mieux comme ça--un peu d'accent, n'est-ce pas?" she said craftily. "Pour les Américains."

  "Ah, oui!" the other woman responded at once, nodding seriously. "Vous avez raison. Ce n'est pas bon de parler trop correctement. Un peu d'accent est mieux. Ils aiment ça--les Américains."

  They nodded wisely at each other, their faces comically eloquent with that strange union of avarice, hard worldliness, and provincial naïveté which qualifies a Frenchman's picture of the earth. Then, looking up at the young man, who was standing awkwardly before the bureau, the younger of the two women said coldly:

  "Monsieur?--"

  The young woman was perhaps twenty-eight years old, but her cold, dark face, which was lean and sallow and cleft powerfully by a large strong nose, had the maturity of cold mistrustfulness and unyielding avarice which was incalculable. It was as if from birth her spirit had been steeped in the hard and bitter dyes of man's iniquity, as if she had sucked the acid nutriment of mistrust and worldly wisdom out of her mother's breast--as if her hard heart and her cold, dark eyes had never known youth, remembered innocence, or been blinded by romantic fantasies--as if, in short, she had sprung full-armoured from her cradle, versed in all grim arts of seeking for one's self, clutching her first sous in a sweating palm, learning to add by numbers before she could prattle a child's prayer.

  Seen so, the woman's face had a cold and stern authority of mistrust that was impregnable. The face, indeed, might have been the very image of a hotel-keeper's soul, impeccable in its perfection of bought courtesy, but hard, cold, lifeless, cruel as hell, obdurate as a block of granite, to any warming ray of mercy, pardon, or concession where another's loss and its own gain might be concerned.

  And yet, for all its cold and worldly inhumanity, the face was a passionate one as well. Her strong, black brows grew straight and thick in an unbroken line above her eyes, her upper lip was dark with a sparse but unmistakable moustache of a few black hairs, her face, at once cold and hard in its mistrust, and smouldering with a dark and sinister desire, was stamped with that strange fellowship of avarice and passion he had seen in the faces of women such as this all over France.

  He had seen these women everywhere--behind the cashier's desk in restaurants, shops, and stores, behind the desks in cafés, theatres, and brothels, or in the bureau of a hotel such as this. Sometimes they were alone, sometimes they were seated together behind one of those enormous tall twin desks, enthroned there like the very magistrates of gain, totting up the interminable figures in their ledgers with the slow care and minute painfulness of greed. They sat there, singly or two abreast, behind their tall desks near the door, casting their hard eyes in a glance of cold mistrust upon the customers and at each other, conspiring broodingly together as they checked and compared each other's ledgers--seeming to be set there, in fact, not only as a watch upon the cheats and treasons of the world, but as a watch upon their own as well.

  And yet, haired darkly on their upper lips, cold, hard, mistrustful in their grasping avarice as they might be, he had always felt in them the complement of a sinister passion. He felt that when all the day's countings were over, the last entry made in the enormous ledger, the last figure added up, and the last drops of sweat wrung from the leaden visage of the final sous--then, then, he felt, they would pull down the shutters, bare their teeth in smiles of savage joy, and go to their appointed meeting with their lover, Jack the Ripper. Upon faces such as these, even during their daylight impassivity of cold mistrust, the ardour of their nocturnal secrecies was almost obscenely articulate; it required little effort of the imagination to see these women quilted in a vile, close darkness, a union of evil chemistries, locked in the grip of a criminal love, with teeth bared in the bite and shine of a profane and lawless ecstasy, and making savage moan.

  Such, in fact, was the face of the young woman in the bureau of the hotel, who now looked up at him with the cold inquiry of mistrust and said:

  "Monsieur?--"

  "I--I'd like to get a room," he stammered awkwardly, faltering before her hard, impassive stare, and speaking to her in her own language.

  "Comment?" she said sharply, a little startled at being addressed so immediately in the language wherein she had just been holding--studious practice. "Vous désirez?--"

  "Une chambre," he mumbled--"pas trop chère."

  "Ah-h--a room! He says he wants a room, my dear," the little woman now put in, quickly and eagerly. She hopped up briskly and came towards him with an eager gleam in her sharp old eyes, an anticipating hope in her meagre face.

  "You are a stranger?" she inquired, peering sharply at him. "An American?"--with a look of eager hope.

  "Yes," he said.

  "Ah-h!" her breath went in with a little intake of greedy satisfaction. "I thought so! . . . Yvonne! Yvonne!" she cried sharply, turning to the other woman in a state of great excitement. "He's an American--he wants a room--he must have something good--an American," she babbled, "the best you've got--"

  "But yes!" cried Yvonne rising. "To be sure. At vunce!" she cried, and struck a bell, calling: "Jean! Jean!"

  "But not--not," the youth stuttered, "not the best--it's just for me--I'm all alone," he appealed to the smaller woman--"something not very expensive," he said desperately.

  "Ah--hah--hah!" she said, emitting a little chuckling laugh of gloating satisfaction and continuing to peer craftily up at him. "An American! And young, too.--How old are you, my boy?"

  "T-t-twenty-four," he stuttered, staring at her helplessly.

  "Ah--hah--hah!" Again the little gloating laugh. "I thought so--and why are you here? . . . What are you doing here in Orléans, eh?" she said imperatively, yet coaxingly. "What brings you here, my boy?"

  "Why--why--" he stammered confusedly, and then finding no adequate reason (since there was none) for being there, he blurted out--"I'm--a writer--a--a--journalist," he stammered, feeling this made hi
s lie the less.

  "Ah--hah--hah," she chuckled softly again with a kind of abstracted gluttony of satisfaction--"a journalist, eh, my boy?" In her ravenous eagerness she had begun to pat and stroke his arm with a claw-like hand, as a cook might stroke a fat turkey before killing it. "A journalist, eh? . . . Yvonne! Yvonne!" suddenly she turned to the other woman again, speaking rapidly in a burst of high excitement. "The young man is a journalist . . . an American journalist . . . he writes for The New York Times, Yvonne . . . the greatest newspaper in America."

  "Well, not exactly that," he blundered, red in the face from confusion and embarrassment. "I never said--"

  "Ah--hah--hah," the little old woman said again with her little gloating laugh, peering up at him with a crafty gleam in her sharp old eyes, and stroking his arm in her unconscious eagerness. ". . . And you've come to write about us, eh? . . . Joan of Arc, eh?" she said seducingly, with a little crafty laugh of triumph. "--The Cathedral . . . the Maid of Orléans . . . ah, my boy, you have come to the right place. . . . I will show you everything. . . . I will take care of you. . . . You are in good hands now. . . . Ah-h, we love the Americans here. . . . Yvonne! Yvonne!" she cried again, her excitement growing all the time. "He says he is here to write about Orléans for The New York Times . . . he will put it all in . . . the Cathedral . . . Joan of Arc . . . the hotel here . . . the greatest paper in America . . . millions of people will come here when they read it--"

  "Well, now, I never said--" he began again.

  "Ah--hah--hah," again she was peering up at him craftily, with old eyes of eager greed, chortling her little laugh of gloating triumph, as she stroked his arm. "Twenty-four, eh? . . . And where are you from, my boy? . . . Where is your home?"

  "Why--New York, I suppose," he said hesitantly.