A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

II

Boston and Albany — Boston and Albany — Boston and Albany — Boston — Springfield — Westfield — Pittsfield—

Everything had dissolved in time and sound, everything was dissolving and in solution, the only remaining reality was the train. The earth was a dream, the past was a dream — that they had met, the three of them, on the platform of the South Station, Noni in blue, with a blue-winged Viking hat, and the shiny black hatbox, and gladstone bag, laughing, and Gil in a shabby brown tweed suit with a broken suitcase, looking a little solemn and strained through the thick spectacles, and Gil’s flat-chested little sister bringing a book, and himself standing tall and a little embarrassed among them, — Blomberg the crane, Blom the steam shovel — all this was nothing but a kind of vision, a fragment of ether-dream, a little picture seen in a picture book, brightly colored but unreal. It was gone, and Boston was gone, and the Berkshire hills, with the spring buds barely showing, where only a few weeks before he had seen snow under the trees, ice in the ponds, on the Indian-haunted road to Deerfield, these, too, had fled soundlessly away into a past which had now neither meaning nor existence. Those people might still be there, the Berkshires might still be there, and the Puritans who had conquered the Indians, and the wilderness which had conquered the Puritans; but the train, hollowing a golden and evanescent tunnel through the darkness, fleeting and impermanent as a falling star, denied all things but itself. “Good-by, Gil; good-by, Noni,” the flushed little face had cried, with open mouth, and Noni had stooped and kissed her, the black hatbox bumping against her knee, and the book had almost been forgotten, thrust at the last moment under Gil’s arm, it had all been flurried and confused, as with all partings; as if the reality, in its contrapuntal hurry to take shape at all, had somehow not taken, or been able to take, its proper shape, or had even fallen short of reality. “And good-by, Mr. Blomberg,” she had murmured hurriedly, half-averting her face — ah, these Jews, if they’ve got to be Jews, and have Jewish names, they might at least look like Jews — and so on to the train and into motion, and out of time, too, in the sense that they had now become time. All day, all night, the landscape whirling and unfolding and again folding, rising and falling, swooping and melting, opening and shutting, Blomberg gliding evenly among the haunted birches and junipers of the Berkshires, a puritan among puritans — and weren’t the Jews, after all, the oldest puritans in the world? — Blomberg defending the stockade at Deerfield in deep snow, Blomberg bowling at ninepins with the Dutch trolls of the Catskills, Blomberg gazing down from the railway bridge at Hendrik Hudson’s little ship, the Half Moon, which vanished away down the broad river like a rose petal into the sunset. And what was it the Negro porter had said, there on the platform at Albany, while they waited to change trains — said to the fat lady, who insisted that this was the train to Chicago? The train now gave him the rhythm, embodied the burred voices, brought them back alive and eerie out of the past — Okay, lady, you can take it, but if you do you got to change, this ain’t no through train, this train goin’ to Cincinnati, yes, ma’am!

The train to Cincinnati, the train to the west, the south, the train into darkness and nothing—

Unreal, but also uncannily real, the business of settling into the empty car, the car filled with smoke, the forward door open and swallowing smoke, scooping smoke, like a hungry mouth, while they climbed swiftly, and then less swiftly, and at last laboringly, and with delayed rhythms, into the Berkshires, along ledges of rock, above brawling little mountain streams, past deserted farms and stations, tilting slowly round an embanked curve to stare intimately, for a lost moment, into an old apple orchard — settling into this motion, this principle of placelessness, Gil flushing and smiling, self-conscious and awkward, as he lifted Noni’s black hatbox up to the rack, and hung the raincoats. And all the idle chatter, in the empty car, with only half a dozen salesmen for company, and a woman with a child, and the Italian foreman, and the Mexican. “Air-conditioned!” Noni had cried. “Air-conditioned — I like that! But it is, in a way!”—as a particularly thick cloud of smoke whipped downward in a defile and swept over and past them. She had put her handkerchief to her mouth, coughing; it was then that he first thought she was already showing signs of fatigue, signs of strain, signs of the struggle to keep up appearances. And all for Gil, the bewildered but good-natured Gil, Gil peering a little anxiously at them both, perhaps already suspecting a secret, some sort of league against him, but too decent to ask questions, as yet. As yet! But the time would come. The time was sure to come. It was all absurd, wild, mad, meaningless — what good could it do — what good could it do anyone, Gil least of all! What good can it do, Noni? What good can it do? He said it half aloud, staring out into the shapeless speed of night, through the black lustered window, for he had said it to her so often — on the swan boat, in Boston, as they plied solemnly round and round the little pond in the Public Garden: “No, Blom; you will see,” was all she had said — and in the bar of the Ritz, and in the upstairs cocktail room of the Lincolnshire, eating potato chips and peanuts, “No, Blom, you will see”—and as they walked across the Common towards the golden dome of the State House, showing bright through the fledgling leaves of the beech trees, the elms: “What good can it do, Noni? What good can it possibly do?” And then the blue-winged head turning towards him, almost merrily, with the patient, “No, Blom, you will see!”

Christ, it couldn’t be true, none of it was true! Only the train was true, with its prolonged quadruple cry into the night, its banshee wail across the darkened counties of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois — only this was true, and himself sitting with the guidebook on his knee, vibrant as himself — and the blue coat swaying by the window, and the black bag above him in the woven brass rack, the label dangling, too, and swaying, turning now the leather side and now the celluloid. And his long hands, with the dark hairs on the backs of the fingers, and the headache, and the strained eyes.…

But he turned abruptly, and looked back, and there they were: it was true: Noni with her knees drawn up on the seat, lying on her side, her head pillowed in a folded coat against the window sill, the small white hand half-folded beneath her chin, the eyes closed but conscious: and opposite her, across the aisle, the top of Gil’s head, tipped at an angle, the thin tawny hair disarrayed in sleep, showing above the next chair back. Noni was pale, and the eyes, behind the closed eyelids, were thinking. The hand, too, was conscious. She knew the train, she knew the night, in its half-sleep her whole body was aware of the violent magic of time and place which was affronting them, and in its own subtle rhythmical oscillation, half submissive and half reluctant, it made its awareness manifest. With her eyes closed, she was living time, feeling it and taking it, this minute and the next and the next, this hour, this transit, this speed, and all the complications of texture with which they were woven. Her knees, under Gil’s raincoat, the green plush chair back, the two punched ticket vouchers which the conductor had ingeniously wedged in the parallel thumbholds of the window shade, the dimmed lights in a row along the bronze ceiling of the hurrying car, the ever varying sound of the wheels, singing and throbbing beneath them, the weight now thrown to one side now to the other, sudden staccatos of rattles as they clattered over a crossing, and the hard resonant rails now seeming to groove musically upwards almost into one’s body, then to withdraw again, until one felt effortless and ethereal, swung in a circle on the lightest of cords, out into space itself — all this he could see her knowing, even now, almost as if she were saying it aloud to him. All this, and how much more! Noni on the great circle to Mexico, taking her heart as an offering to the bloodstained altar of the plumed serpent, alive now between Gil and himself, and looking with closed face at both of them — her face, closed like a flower, but ready to open as soon as the sun shone — and this, too, she knew and waited for, the sun that was already pursuing them westward across the dark rondure of the turning world. Presently the first ray would leap up over the curve of the earth’s surface, leap after and overtake them, shoot beyond them into the waiting west. St. Louis, the unknown Mississippi River, magnificent red aorta of a rank continent, the Bayous, Missouri, Texas.…

He turned away from the defenseless face, with the firm little mouth and fringed eyes, and closed his own eyes only to open them again. Lucky unconscious Gil, the poor lamb! But let him sleep. Let the poor devil sleep. For him, even more perhaps than for himself and Noni, a bad time was coming, all the misery of awakening that comes to the unconscious. Suspicious he might be, just a little — surely, however, no more than that — and everything had been so gay, so good — the reading of the absurd guidebook, with its atrocious style, which Gil had found so amusing, and the names, and Noni’s mad description of the floods in the Connecticut valley — and then, suddenly, Albany and the long platform, and the attempt to buy a drinking cup for the whisky. Of the whisky Gil had seemed a little disapproving. A little stiff. Maybe just the idea of drinking it so unashamedly in public, out of paper cups — handing the bottle over the chair back — he had given Noni a quick and queer look when she first took it out of the hatbox — but afterwards, in the diner, as they sped in the gathering darkness along the Erie Canal—Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Rome—how magical the time change had been, with its bizarre marriage of present and past! Red and green lights of barges on the dark water, the dim towpath, a woman hanging washing on the stern deck in the twilight, a cat beside her, Noni telling about the cry of “Low Bridge!” with which in the old days the helmsman warned his crew, and everywhere the wonderfully fertile country with its fantastic baroque suburban houses, huge filigreed and porticoed façades, like the County Street houses of the Victorian period in New Bedford. He closed his eyes again, and all the voices rose in a chorus, rose all at once — here’s to the bride, here’s to the groom — here’s to the best man — there’s nothing like getting divorced and married in the same place — when you do that, it takes—but who said we had to change at Galion, there’s nothing about it — well, we’re off to Clixl Claxl, Ixl Oxl, and Popocatepetl — that’s where Hart Crane went, just before he drowned himself in the Caribbean — they say it’s a death country, a murder country, and the buzzards—

He opened his eyes to see the tall conductor leaning over him, one hand on the corner of the seat, looking for the voucher — it was the conductor for the new section, different, but generically the same. The dried leather face, pallid and ascetic, tall and stooped.

“Change at Galion.”

“How long do we have to wait there.”

“The St. Louis train will be waiting for you. Through train to St. Louis.”

“Thanks. Will somebody let us know, or wake us—”

“You don’t need to worry. The brakeman will put you off.”

“Thank you.”

Galion, at four-forty. A head had turned, a bland face, the figure was rising, approaching.

“Did I hear you say you were going to Galion?”

“No — we change there, for St. Louis—”

“Because I used to be a citizen of Galion—”

“Is that so — no, we only change there—”

“In fact I was born there, but I haven’t been there for a long time and I thought maybe I might have found a fellow citizen—”

“No, I’m sorry—”

“Well, not at all—”

The heavy figure lurched along the aisle to the ice-water tap, swayed as it bent to extract a cup, filled the cup and drank. A citizen of Galion. But what was Galion? Galion, Galion, Galion. The whistle cried mournfully into the night, cried again; far ahead on the long train, with all its Pullman cars full of sleeping people, the lost voice could be heard, as the engine sped blindly, cometlike, through the night. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois—even now the pioneers were crossing these in their covered wagons, building their homesteads, their snake fences against the snow, laying the broadax to the foot of the tree, felling the savage forests. But what home now was here, what home for Noni? A spiritual drought only, an unconquered and savage land, a bloodsucking land, which had slowly but surely taken the souls from the people who lived upon it. The wilderness was coming back, here as in the Berkshires the melancholy waste would return, the towns would be invaded by marching trees, grass would grow over the doorsill. There was no home here, could never be, it was as well that Noni would only pause here, in the dark, to change from one motion to another, touch the alien earth only in transit.

The book had slid from his knee to the floor, slid from darkness into light, and with it himself from sleep to waking. Rising with it, he turned and saw that Noni’s eyes were open, that she was smiling. Smiling sleepily and peacefully. He got up, went to her softly, leaned over her. She put her fingers to her lips, motioning towards Gil.

“Asleep!” she whispered.

“Yes, and why aren’t you!”

“How much time.”

Her eyes fluttered, didn’t quite focus on his own, the pupils were wide and dark, near but unseeing, she was barely conscious.

“Lots. Hours, Noni. The brakeman’s going to call us.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want anything. A drink of water.”

“No.”

“All right, then; go to sleep!”

The blue eyes fluttered and closed, opened, then closed again. Perhaps now she would really sleep, really let go and be taken downward — he straightened up, giving the raincoat on her knee a pat, looked along the aisle of the deserted car, turned and saw Gil’s open mouth, his hand crumpled against his cheek, the loose head nodding with the motion of the train, the spectacles folded on the window sill. Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleeve — but not this sleep, not this, by God, nor any such sleeve as this! For what was at work even now in Noni’s golden head—?

He pressed his hands hard to his forehead as he sat down, leaned into the corner by the window, willed himself to sleep. Sleep, Blom; sleep. You must sleep. And what better than a train, a day coach, with that nostalgic whistle, far ahead, for a lullaby. And these square wheels, these octagonal wheels. And Noni lying there, looking so extraordinarily well, so young and pretty, as if nothing in the world was the matter!

Footsteps passing, and a change of light through the closed eyelids.

“Can’t help it if she did.”

“By no means.”

Steps, voices, wheels, and in no time at all to an accompaniment of wind sound, a prolonged wind sound, he crossed the Texas desert on foot, up and down the sand hills, through ravines of rock and sage, and then more precipitately into Mexico, but repeatedly lost. No road, no path, no guide. But at last a single sign post, a finger of wood, woebegone in the wilderness, and on it in almost obliterated letters the one word Mexico. Southward, timelessly southward once more, through the wilderness of rock and sand, day after day and night after night; and over the bronze mountains, the eagle-haunted sierras, sawtoothed and jagged against the sky, and then at last the long descent into the fertile valley. Now before him, far down, he could see the city itself, the strange city; light flashed from the bright roofs and domes; light flashed too from something else — was it water? He could not be sure, but already now he was in a house of his own in the old city, he had been a citizen in this strange place for a long time, he knew it well. And nevertheless, it was with surprise — although also with familiarity — that he found the house to be built in water, for lifting a trap door in the floor he stared straight down through a water so marvelously pure and clear, and so deep, that it seemed to him he was looking into the very center of the earth. Like a crystal it was, and as he gazed into its wonderful depths, lucid and sunlit, and yet somehow also dark, he had the feeling that here below him was a profound meaning, something that he had come a long way to find. This was Mexico, this underworld sea, it was this he had come to live in, this was his soul’s dwelling place, and Noni’s too — he was holding a candle up now, and looking down in the less light, wondering what creatures inhabited this dark water, when abruptly the walls of the house began to shake, everything shook violently as if in an earthquake, the breath suddenly left his body—

Angry and dismayed, he saw the brakeman’s hand just leaving his shoulder; the brakeman’s hand had been shaking his shoulder; the brakeman was still standing before him, lantern in hand. He blinked at the white-gloved hand, felt as if he were still being shaken. And the brakeman was still saying — or saying again:

“Galion in five minutes; change for St. Louis.”

“Galion—”

He jumped up, turned, saw Gil just rising also, with his spectacles in his hand. Noni, on the other side of the aisle, lay exactly as she had before, but now her eyes were open, she looked from one to the other of them with a sleepy half-smile.

“Five minutes, my lambs; we’ve got to hustle! We’ve got to get a move on! This is no less than Galion, believe it or not; Galion: and God help us if we don’t find that train to St. Louis. Come on, shake a leg, Noni! Wake up!”

“I am awake!”

“Gil, you’d better spank the gal.”

“Of all the unearthly hours to make poor long-suffering travelers change — it’s peonage, that’s what it is, Blom, to push the coach passengers off — you notice the Pullmans go right through!”

Gil reached up to the rack for his suitcase, Noni for her hat. The engine’s quadruple cry, far ahead, came softly and unevenly back to them; all three looked out into the starless and lightless night, the unbroken dark. One after the other, the six salesmen, their coats neatly folded over their arms, their smart bags in their hands, passed them, going forward into the vestibule. A feeling of departure was in the air, a severance, a feeling of hurry — the future was reaching back to them with secret and powerful hands, they must bend their wills to it. Out into the unknown, bag in hand — but Gil, characteristically, had quite forgotten Noni’s hatbox and gladstone, Noni was climbing up on to the seat—

“Stop that, Noni — you let me do that—”

Too late, Gil stepped forward, peering and smiling, apologetic; Noni half fell, half jumped, the train swaying suddenly, and flung her arms round him laughing, while Blomberg reached over their heads for the shiny hatbox.

“Can I have this dance, Noni?”

“I suppose we ought to make it a rhumba! or a toltec, or something.…”

The train sounds were changing, changing and slowing, the car lurched and shuddered, its speed resisting the brakes, it seemed to balloon and sway like a zeppelin. Blomberg said, looking down at Noni’s blue wings, and below them the now sobered blue eyes:

“Now have you got everything? What you fellers need to learn is organization.”

He smiled grimly and consciously straight into Noni’s eyes, looked for a moment deep down into them — for all the world as he had looked into the mysterious water in his dream — and sought there an answer to the question which he dared not ask. Far and faint, too, the signal came — like a tiny light at the very horizon’s edge, seen once, seen twice, then gone. It was both reassurance and reproach, a “yes, I’m all right,” but also a “now you must stop looking at me like that, or Gil will guess.” The eyes wavered aside then, shyly, the lips were half parted, as if she had thought to say something but had changed her mind. She turned quickly then to Gil, behind her, touched the tweed sleeve.

“My book,” she said.

“Gosh, yes! Where is it?”

“Can you put it in your pocket. I forgot to pack it.”

The sound of time grew louder, a bell rang with two-voiced melancholy across a roar of steam, the forward door was slammed open, and in it stood the brakeman with his lantern. Galion, he was singing; Galion! They had come to Galion; this point in chaos and eternal night was Galion. To get off. To go out into the night and look for another train, or wait for it, or miss it! To hurry! And with sleep still blinding one’s eyes—

“Come on,” he said.

He took Noni’s gladstone, and his own bag; Gil had his broken suitcase and an armload of coats; Noni had the hatbox. The train shuddered and slowed, gave a final prolonged squeal, and stopped. In the unnatural silence, they stepped down the steep lamplit stairs into the featureless black of night, found themselves walking stiffly on gravel. The six salesmen had vanished into the profound gloom, only their footsteps could be heard dying away somewhere ahead. The brakeman was saying:

“Straight on, St. Louis train on the other side, you’ll have to walk round both trains, and cross the tracks up ahead — straight ahead—”

“Good heavens,” Gil said, “there’s nothing here—!”

Noni lifted her face to the starless sky — he could just see her.

“It’s the Black Hole of Calcutta,” she said.

They walked quickly into the night, past the lighted car which they had just left, and another, and, reaching the end of the train, crossed the track to the mysterious new train which stood beyond. Somber and unlit, save for a faint glow from the vestibules, the interminable row of dark sleeping cars stretched ahead of them, apparently for miles. The salesmen had disappeared entirely, not a sound was to be heard save their own quick footsteps on the dry gravel. Suppose they took too long in getting round — suppose the train started — how could anyone possibly tell whether all the passengers had found their way from one train to the other? A feeling of panic hurried his heart’s beating, he thought he heard Noni give a little gasp, peered sidelong toward her but could see nothing of her expression. He said:

“I guess we’d better step on it. If those travelers get there without us, they might just think—”

“Damndest thing I ever saw,” said Gil. “Not even a light. And as for porters—”

Another sleeper, and another, and another; the green curtains drawn, the sleeping humans lying there in unconscious tiers under the sky, men, women and children; while outside, unknown to them, Blomberg and Gil and Noni walked anxiously past them on the gravel, staring ahead for a glimpse of the engine. The express car, the mail car, and at last — the great monster breathed softly above them, gleamed, vibrated. The cab seemed to be empty. The driver would of course be at the other side. Suppose he got the signal to start just as they were crossing—

Without a word they crossed, close to the hot headlight and the blunt angry-looking cowcatcher, found themselves squeezed between a wooden level-crossing guard arm and the engine, so close that they could touch it, and began the long journey back to the day coach, which of course would be at the very end of the train. Now there was a row of dim lights, each showing a little are of dirty wooden pillar; they hurried up the worn wooden ramp to a low platform, and it was here that Noni suddenly stopped, stood still, let the hatbox fall from her hand.

“Ohhhh,” she wailed, “I can’t! Someone please—”

She blew out a long breath, clapped her hands against her breast, looked comically from one to the other of them. She seemed to be swaying slightly, she was out of breath. Was it possible that her heart—

“Here, Gil,” he said quickly, “throw those coats over my left arm and take Noni’s hatbox. And hurry, my lad! And Noni, you take it easy, follow us, don’t worry, we’ll keep a piece of the train for you!”

“Thanks, Blom dear!”

She was still standing motionless, as they hurried off ahead, standing there with her hands lightly crossed on her breast, looking amusedly after them — he could see the smile on the half-averted and half-lamplit face — but then he heard her steps slowly begin, heard them follow more firmly, and he listened to them as he might have listened to the beating of his own heart. She was coming; she was all right. To Gil he said:

“I’m afraid she’s tired. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Yes. Guess she’ll be all right. She worries too much!”

The thick spectacles flashed, the mouth looked somewhat prim. Before them the conductor waited by the train, his hand on the handhold, the lantern on the splintered platform.

“Is this the coach for St. Louis?”

“Yes, sir; through car to St. Louis.”

“Good. There’s a lady coming, just behind us.… Guess we’d better get the bags aboard, Gil—”

“Okay.”

Brown seats instead of green, and pale green metal walls, and an almost empty car, except for the six salesmen who were already composing themselves for what was left of the night. Time with a hundred hands, time with a thousand mouths! A man drinking water, a man in his shirt-sleeves, a man taking his shoes off. Poised for departure in the extraordinary stillness of the night, poised in a wilderness without shape or sound, placeless and nameless — (but no, Galion!) — they waited for Noni. And now Noni’s light steps came up the echoing stairs, and along the littered aisle, and she walked towards them, taking off the blue-winged hat and brushing the fair hair back from her forehead with a white ringless hand. She came towards them gravely, said simply, “I’m tired”—and sank into the seat beneath the rack with the hatbox. Gil, his battered felt hat still on, took her hand in his, sat down beside her, said something to her; she was staring out of the window, her shoulder against his. What did she see there? And what was Gil saying? They sat very still together; and then, subtly, softly, the train had begun to move, the murmur of time had resumed its everlasting monotone.

Galion — Marion — Sidney — Muncie—:

Ohio — Indiana — Illinois—:

“Ommernous,” he muttered; “it’s all ommernous; every bit of it is ommernous! Waking and sleeping we lay waste our powers.…”

The cry of the whistle punctuated his sleep; and then the glaring ball of the sun above the low rich land, blazing straight into his eyes over the cindered window sill; the rich land reeling fanlike in ribs and volutes of green, a file of cattle, a dog, haystacks by a clump of trees, a house dark against the brightened east. Blades of yellow light, too, from beneath the lowered curtain, light and sound mixing confusedly as if positively they might interchange: the rails beating at his cheeks and eyes like light, the sun’s rays assailing his ears in an overbearing intricacy of endless rhythm. And then the early morning passengers, the new arrivals, the intruders—

“—well, I always think—”

“—yes, isn’t that strange—?”

“—rather annoyed at a reaction a child gave, several years ago—”

“—and so long, and then we flop—”

“—yes — and he met her that night!—”

“—worldly, mundane sort of a girl—”

“—place where you stay is very comfortable, single room with bath—”

“—association. No, I don’t keep up—”

“—well, what I don’t know about T.B.—”

“—expose the whole pleural cavity — right middle left lower lobe — lot of lymph—”

“—and use a cautery along that line—”

“—no, just a—”

“—capillary?”

“—just an ordinary—”

“—Christian Scientist, with a tumor of the lung — back five weeks afterward — yes, sir, five weeks—”

“—hope you’ll give my regards to the good wife—”

“—I surely will—!”

“—and my regrets that she doesn’t turn up at Atlantic City any more—”

Blah — blah — blah — blah. — Comfort. Safety. Scenic Interest. A great fleet of fast trains at convenient hours between the East and Midwest. Centrally located terminals. The ever beautiful and historic Hudson River and Mohawk Valley. Majestic and inspiring Niagara Falls. Electric automatic signals and automatic train stop.…

Swaying and cursing in the tiny lavatory he had shaved the sleep-blanched face, noting the hollows under the dark eyes, steadying himself with one hand on the metal basinrim, his legs braced apart. Blom the lighthouse, Blom looking not quite so well. The floor had been flooded by someone’s indiscretion, he tried to keep his feet in the drier places. Paper towels only; he was glad they had thought of pinching towels out of the Pullman on their way back from the diner the night before — that had been Gil’s idea. Clever. The night before? Already it seemed centuries ago. The clamor of the train was louder and more immediate in the lavatory, came up rounded and echoing, drafty, almost musical, through the w.c. A good thing to shave today and tomorrow, because after that, when they got into Mexico, God alone knew—

And then Gil was saying, as they waited for Noni, wiping his hands a little nervously with a handkerchief, just the tips of the fingers, then tucking it back in his breastpocket:

“Look here, Blom. I haven’t wanted to ask you before, in fact there hasn’t really been any chance, and I don’t quite know how to say it, but don’t you think all this is a little queer?”

“What do you mean, Gil?”

“Well, the suddenness of it. The abruptness.”

Gil swayed his head and shoulders forward and back, very slightly, very quickly, a habit he had when he was nervous: the pointed lean face, ascetic and Bostonian, but kindly, and the gray eyes, peering through the thick glasses, were frankly puzzled.

“To be candid, Gil,” and he tapped on the tablecloth with the prongs of his fork, “I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ve been too damned busy just getting it arranged!”

“Just the same, doesn’t it strike you as odd—?”

“I don’t know — Noni’s of course sometimes impulsive.”

“Yeah, Blom, but not like this, it’s not really like her, in a thing so important — she’s usually, if anything, rather deliberate.”

“Well, maybe you’re right. What were you thinking about it.”

“That’s what I thought you might know.”

“Me? No.”

He shook his head slowly, smiling at the slightly swaying tweed figure, the earnest eyes. Gil looked back at him rather fixedly for a moment, then said:

“When was it exactly that Noni first talked to you about it?”

“Sunday afternoon. Just after she had called up you. And then I saw her later that evening of course.”

“I thought maybe she might have told you earlier.”

“No. That was the first I knew of it. She told me she’d already talked with you and the lawyer.”

“Well, it’s really very funny. It’s not a bit like Noni — after all these years, so suddenly like this—”

He stared out at the sliding landscape — a farmhouse surrounded by tall trees, two red silos, a car speeding levelly along the flat road parallel with the train, a vast plowed field with the plow lines telescoping in swift perspective — then added:

“Not, of course, that I’m not frightfully glad. As you know.”

“You bet. I think it’s simply grand, Gil. My own only real regret is that you fellers haven’t got together years ago.”

“Yes. It’s just a little bewildering. But I suppose she must have had her reasons. For the sudden decision, I mean.”

“Possibly. Just possibly! But my guess is that she just up and did it on the spur of the moment. Because if she had any special reasons, it’s not like Noni to conceal them. You know as well as I do, Gil, that the one thing Noni cannot do is keep a secret!..”

Smiling broadly for the exchange of this shared knowledge, he elicited deliberately an answering smile from Gil; Gil’s face relaxed, lost the slight sadness which had clouded it; for the first time he seemed to feel a little at ease. With just a hint of some reservation, nevertheless? Gil had perceptions, Gil was no fool. In a way it was a dirty trick — the mere deception, quite apart from the nature of the deception — to keep anyone so lucid, so lucid by nature, thus helplessly in the dark. It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t fair even to himself. An accessory after the artifact! He smiled at the thought, whistling the little Bach tune. For a moment he felt almost gay; smoke sprawled in sinuous shapelessness past the window, the swift shadows forming and vanishing beneath it, the sun shone, the hurrying train drew him powerfully into its deep-rhythmed nostalgic hypnosis. Again and again the engine, far ahead, cried for the innumerable crossings of this dull rich flatland, its voice now half stifled, now clear, as the wind shifted. Whooooo — whooooo — whoo-whoo—a somber and deep-timbred voice, whose tone he likened, as he listened, to the color of bronze, the color of winter sunlight on black ice. Everything was so beautiful — everything — but then the cold metallic pang shut round his heart once more, for all this beauty was nothing at all but the backdrop, the décor, for Noni’s dream, Noni’s ballet, of which the end might so easily be tragic. The reason for all this beauty, this wonder — the train, the new and strange landscape, the incredible adventure, this hurrying breakfast table with Gil and himself sitting at it, and all the unshaped but already so powerfully creative future beginning even now to tower in vaguely predictable color and form above them — the reason for this was the possibility that Noni might die. It ran through the landscape, ran through the whole world, like a shadow. It grew in a dark corner of the picture like the deadly nightshade. It was the first note, offstage, tentative and tender, of the tragedian’s song, the goat song. Goat song in Mexico.…

The thought was almost intolerable, it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from jumping to his feet, muttering some sort of excuse, and fleeing to the smoker. But Gil was saying:

“Careful, Blom! Here’s Noni now.”

Not like the deadly nightshade, no, beautiful as that was — but the narcissus!

“Noni, you’re late!”

“Don’t you envy me? I overslept! Positively.”

“I don’t believe it. I suppose you and Gil know the one, speaking of all the train stories we know, about the fellow who was too tall for a sleeping car berth, and had to open the window and put his feet out?”

Noni’s blue eyes were naughty with delight, she was already beginning to laugh.

“No,” she said, fascinated. “No, you can tell us!”

“Well, when he took his feet in, in the morning, he found he had two red lanterns and a mailbag …”

“Fie! I don’t call that a story at all! Did it happen to you, Blom?”

The bland Negro waiter interrupted her glee; they sat back while with swift legerdemain he moved water bottle and sugar bowl to spread the new cloth, flung down and arranged his handful of bright silver. How well she looked, despite the ever-so-slight flush, and with what perfect unselfconsciousness she managed things! She sipped her water, looked over the glass brim to inspect their fellow voyagers, looked out of the wide window, studied the breakfast menu with delight. Then, with her hand on Gil’s sleeve, she said:

“It’s a lovely book!”

“What book, darling?”

“The one Nancy brought. The Cloud Messenger, it’s called, it’s a Hindu poem, very old—”

“Ah!” Gil said; “too highbrow for me. More to Blom’s taste!”

“Blom, you would love it. You must read it! So refreshing in this wasteland — a lover separated from his sweetheart who sends a cloud to her with a message — isn’t that nice? isn’t it lovely? — and the message is the poem—”

She broke off, her own eyes clouding, clouding even as she looked at him, the glass of water held before her: it was as if she were reading the poem, the message, watching that passage of symbol-bearing cloud, in his own eyes and face, retreating magically to another time, another life, another language. Strange counterpoint; for somehow he felt that while she thus held fixed before her, embodied in himself, the past, and explored it lovingly and deeply, she was also aware of the rushing and violent present, fluid beneath and around them, and the future, toward which the train was speeding, unknown but already as fixed and marmoreal as the past. A sibyl — she was like a sibyl. Was it the prospect, the terribly real prospect, of death, which now gazed with such manifest divination out of the grave eyes and gave the fair face such a wonderful stillness? The sunlight touched her hair, to which a slight untidiness lent an additional charm; he noticed with pleasure the copper color in the little braids that crossed the top of her head, as against the slighter gold of the light wind-stirred fibrils at the temples. The cloud messenger — the Megha Duta — he had seen the title as they stood in the South Station, talking with Nancy, and had then wondered what it might be. And now there seemed to him to be something curiously and esoterically appropriate, a sort of obscure fatality, in Nancy’s choice. For Noni was herself a kind of cloud messenger, and so was the train, and so was all motion, whether it was a going-toward or a coming from: a vanishing signal, of fleetingest poignancy, like the blue shadows that flew away over these empty fields under the flying smoke. Impermanent, impermanent! she seemed to say; and then suddenly the blue eyes were laughing above the glass of water, laughing at Gil and his passion for detective magazines — and the conductor was coming down the aisle — and she said, between sips of ice water, “Now I suppose he’ll be taking another yard of ticket—”

And then the Great Divide; in no time at all, in a single flash, they had come upon it — after the interminable dull landscape, featureless as the arid and somehow so bloodless and soulless people who dwelt on its surface, but with something dreadful and eternal about them, too, a melancholy defeated persistence — after this sad land what a relief to foresee this symbol of power and magnificence, in all its rank majesty. It was odd; they had waited at the windows, all three of them, for a half-hour or more, feeling as if by some queer terrestrial empathy that it was near, and that when they at last saw it they would experience something very definite, a sort of secret baptism in the holy waters of their own land.

“It’s only then,” said Noni, half kneeling, half standing, by the window, “that we shall become really indigenous. Really belong. Don’t you feel that, Gil? Don’t you feel that, Blom? Indigenes!”

“Indigenes,” Gil said. “What words you do think up, Noni.”

“Noni reads the dictionary for fun.”

“And with profit, I assure you! Did I tell you about the worm?”

“What worm.”

“The earthworm, Blom. Just the earthworm! But according to Mr. Webster — you’d never believe it — he’s a ‘burrowing, terrestrial, megadrilic worm.’ And the megadrilic, I think you’ll admit, is something to think about. And have you noticed, you two—”

She broke off, looking more intently at the swift landscape, a flock of starlings swooping low over a cornfield, spreading out flat like a wave on a beach, then as quickly mounting again in cloudform. Her hand was against the glass.

“Have you noticed that we’ve come straight into summer, already? This year we shall have no spring. We’ve come through it, overnight.…”

Blom stared, amused.

“It’s true. Wonderful observant Noni! And a fascinating idea. We’ve dived right through it — as if the train were a swimmer, and spring a northward-breaking wave of flower and leaf, a surf of blossom, across the whole continent—”

“Yes, the corn is half-grown. And in Boston, and the Berkshires, the leaves were only beginning—”

“No spring for us, this year!”

“It’s a little sad …”

They were all silent, watching the changing land, the land which now rapidly divulged itself in long, parallel hollows, as if at some time channeled and flood-swept. Shacks, shanties, tiny Negro settlements. And then what was unmistakably a levee — and the ramshackle huts of squatters, on the foreshore — rowboats in gardens tied to shabby porches, rowboats riding the lush inland grass — and suddenly sure enough, the river—!

“Ah,” said Noni, “the Mississippi — the father of waters — now we can go home!”

“Go home—?” said Gil.

Her hands on the sill, looking downward from the bridge at the wide brown water, and as if somehow extraordinarily at peace, Noni gave a little sigh.

“Yes, Gil, go home. Go anywhere, I mean — go where we’ve got to go! Do you see what I mean?”

Gil shook his head, amused. He was himself gazing down at the river, entranced.

“She’s off again!” he said.

“Go to Mexico, for instance — or even back to Boston! I feel as if in the twinkling of an eye — or while, in fact, we were crossing that bridge — my soul had shot under water all the way down to New Orleans, even into the Gulf of Mexico, and back again. And now it belongs to me.…”

In a wide slow circle the train turned southward, bent its course parallel with the river, and the somber walls of the city came to meet them. East St. Louis, St. Louis — already the train felt empty, a little desolate and abandoned; its sounds were becoming subdued; the little cries from the trucks and wheels, as they slipped from one switch to another, one track to another, jolting slightly, were minor and musical; they had almost arrived, they were almost there. Almost there? No such thing, nothing so simple as that. They were only beginning! But if Noni could feel — or was it an incomparable piece of acting? — this astonishing sense of peace — or begin, as she seemed to be doing, to let go—

He looked ahead, as they assembled the bags and coats once more, to the days to come; allowed them to flow forward into the present, and to mingle with the immediate; and now it was Little Rock and Texarkana, Palestine and Troup and San Antonio, Laredo and Monterey and Mexico City, the mountains and the jungle, that came alongside with the bobbing and running caps of the Red Caps, the rumbling trucks, the roar of steam against the grimed glass roof of the great station. They were walking with the future. The future joined them as they checked the bags at the kiosk, as they drank cold beer out of tall glasses and ate lunch in the station restaurant, as they inquired about the train, to make sure, and as they walked through the wind and dust of the St. Louis streets toward the river. Fantastic city, down-at-heel jumble of romantic past and shoddy present; skyscrapers, Parthenons, monoliths, and then the old quarter of tumbledown but somehow dignified and beautiful red-brick and clapboard houses, somber or florid, where once the life of the city had flowed fastest. Meretricious, the whole thing — streets that were spacious, but without beauty, buildings that were massive and elaborate, but nevertheless looked as hollow and impermanent as the cream-puff fantasies of a world’s fair, something indescribably dreary and provincial and — yes, Noni found the word—temporary, about the whole place. The wilderness would come back — the wilderness had never really been defeated, here; it waited around the corner, waited for the dark.… A beauty parlor, with wide window, from which fixed doll-like faces stared at the pedestrians outside, while a bedizened beauty, with heavily enameled mouth, stood grinning at the open door and beckoned them in … “Specializing in Photos for Chauffeurs.” Shabby little shops, dreary shirts and socks, taverns and beer parlors. In one of these, on a corner, they stopped for beer and to ask their way to the river — over the radio a baseball game was coming from Shibe Park. And remember, folks, this broadcast comes to you by courtesy of — and now somebody’s down there warming up, I’ll tell you who it is in a minute — yes, just as I thought—!

“You’re sure you’re not too tired, Noni?”

“No, Blom, I want to go. I want to put my hands in it.”

“Well, you two are certainly romantic!”

Gil was peevish; Gil disliked the wind and dust, the long walk, proceeded with lowered head, his felt hat pulled down on his forehead. But the slum streets, the decrepit old buildings on the dingy slope to the river, broken windows, crumbling walls, old gray stone and brick, shutters hanging awry, cheap lodgings — ten cents a night, five cents a night — in houses which a century since had been the city’s best — this was extraordinary, deeply exciting. Here the past became vivid, became rank and real; like a conch shell held to the ear these ruins gave off an echo of the south and the sea: deep south, deep sea. And inland two thousand miles! The south had crept up the river, that was it, there was a foreign feeling here, and something mortuary too: it was like a dead seaport of the south, maritime but defunct. And sinister, also; a gangsters’ paradise, smelling of beer and brothels. The sloping streets of cobbles were almost covered with tin beer-bottle tops. Here and there, an old ruin which had once been a thriving river hotel, full of violent life, the life of the Mississippi. Here Mark Twain had walked.

And under the iron-dark structure of the elevated railroad, the very viaduct over which they had themselves slowly entered the city, they came to the wide granite-paved beach of the majestic river, walked slowly down to it. Like tide marks left by the sea, lines of gray and withered flotsam — driftwood, barrel staves, empty bottles, tin cans, slivers of wood silvered with age, peeled branches polished like horn, eggshells, orange peels — marked the many levels at which during the winter the great river had stood. An enormous beach; against which the dark water slid with sleepy power, the brown eddies moving swiftly downstream as they coiled sparkling in the sunlight. A little way upstream, two river boats rotted at a landing stage, twin-smokestacked — the smokestacks with coronetted tops. Noni dipped her hand in the water.

“It’s the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee,” she said.

“0l’ man river,” said Gil.

“Now I’m baptized, Blom, in this continent. Now I’ve got Indian blood.”

“And in the old days they used to say that some of those boats drew so little water that in a heavy dew they could sail right across the point of land between one bend of the river and the next!”

“Mark Twain. Mark two!”

“I wouldn’t mind taking a boat all the way down—”

Gil was peevish; perhaps he was tired, but indeed all three of them were tired; a curious feeling of unreality was beginning to affect them, like a mild fever. He said:

“Well, it looks just like a river to me! But I admit it’s a kind of a big one.”

“Now, Gil, you stop worrying about your affairs in Boston! I’ve told you they’ll be all right.”

“Oh yes, they’ll all run themselves.”

“Probably much better.”

“I’m not complaining, Noni—”

“I know, dear. It’s all right. Life gets very sudden, sometimes, but isn’t it fun! Isn’t it, Blom?”

“It’s a three-ringed circus, Noni, and I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. My God, Gil, look about you. You never saw anything like this in your life. It’s crazy.”

“Crazy?”

“Sure, crazy. Look at these people, with their withered faces and scrawny necks, their dead eyes and dead souls—”

“Oh come, Blom dear. It’s not as bad as all that!”

“Damn near. They’ve gone to seed. There’s nothing left. No juice in them, not a particle: this infernal vampire continent has sucked them dry. They’ll blow away like tumbleweed. I’ve never been so impressed — and depressed — in my life: it’s given me a new and not so very attractive, I’m bound to say, picture of America. Think of those pathetic Hoosiers on the train — those bleached and weather-worn countryfolk, animated scraps of skin and leather — good God, their eyes were a quarter of an inch apart, they’d never felt anything or seen anything in their lives. Why, you could as soon expect understanding—understanding, illumination, awareness, call it what you want — of an ox or goat. No mind, no spirit, not a spark …”

Gil was amused. He said slowly:

“Blom, you sometimes become really biblical. By the waters of Mississippi we sat down and wept; yea, we wept, when we remembered Boston!”

“Oh no, we laughed!”

The profound river, the strange sad city — what a pair these made, with their so casual conjunction of the magnificent and the trivial, the fecund and the sterile! A whole continent pouring itself out lavishly to the sea, in superb everlasting waste, an immense creative giving, power that could afford to be careless both of means and end — and mankind beside it become as spiritually empty as the locust, and as parasitic. Surely the Indians had been better than this, and the Frenchmen, too, who had first explored these savage waters: in either had been a dignity, a virtue, now lost. And the Mexican Indians, to whom they were going — what of those? Lawrence said — and all the psychoanalysts said — and the guidebooks said—

It was as if he had heard a bell, suddenly, from a deep valley, a jungle valley, inviting to the sacrifice, whether pagan or Christian: there, there were still gods. But here, in this melancholy wreckage of a meager past, in this sloven street, spangled with tin beer caps, which they were climbing slowly again, past stinking cellars and boarded windows, here there was no longer even a true love of earth. This people was lost.…

“It’s ommernous,” he said aloud, grimly; “every bit of it is ommernous.”

“Blom’s saying it’s ommernous again, Noni!”

“I guess we all need another drink. Is it Friday or Tuesday? And after that, Gil dear, I’m going back to the station for a good wash.”

The Opera House, closed and boarded up, ancient home of burlesque, the silver gilt peeling from its baroque façade of garlands and bosomy nymphs and cracked cornucopias, and a little farther on a café. Gil led the way in, past the bar, at which one man and four waitresses lolled, to a small table at the back. Beyond this a large room, or rather a Cimmerian gloom, unlighted, in which gilded columns were barely visible. Into this, and out of it, mysterious figures went and came, some male, some female. One of the waitresses half lay across a table, in a dark corner, at which a man was sitting. Another led a newcomer into the back, somewhere, and disappeared entirely. Noni said:

“If I weren’t tired, I would say we had picked out a very peculiar place!”

“See no evil, speak no evil, drink your beer!”

Palm trees and silver spittoons. A radio, muted, crooned from a corner of the front window. Noni was looking really tired: she ought to lie down. He could tell by the way she tried, without attracting attention, to rest first one shoulder, then the other, and without success, against the uncomfortably small chairback; crossed her knees and then uncrossed them; leaned her elbows on the table, her fists against her cheekbones, the blue eyes bright with sleepiness. He said:

“Guess I’ll stay here and write a letter. You fellers go on back to the station when you want to, and I’ll meet you there.”

Gil seemed pleased. He excused himself, for a moment, wandered off into the gloom at the back. Noni turned the blue wings, turned the sleepy eyes, and said:

“How is it, Blom?”

“It’s all right, Noni.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite. He asked some questions this morning, fishing a little to find out if I knew more than he did—”

“Do you think he really thinks so?”

“I think he did, a little. But now I think it’s all right. You’re doing wonders, Noni — keep it up.”

“Thank you, Blom, dear. So are you.”

“But now be sensible and take it easy; and try to get some sleep. It’s going to be worse before it’s better! The trains might be crowded, you never know. And maybe hot.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything special I can do.”

“Do you think he’s jealous?”

“No. No more than Gil ever is; no.”

She sighed, relaxed, looked at him gratefully.

“That’s good. He’s been a little silent.”

“Just upset by the whole thing, that’s all.”

“I guess so.”

“Here he is.”

“Okay. Suppose I meet you at five, then. Or ten to? At the station bookshop.”

“Right!”

She rose to join Gil, took his arm; and he sat still, watching them go out into the bright street and turn to the left. Then he took out the folded sheets of paper and began to write, half listening to the voices at the bar.