Blue Voyage

V

“It was Friday the thirteenth. I don’t like Friday the thirteenth. We were all scared — every man on the ship. Waves coming right over the old tanker — they’re low in the water you know — only about that high out of the water. You hear them going right over. Gosh, it’s a terrible sound in the middle of the night when you’re lying in your bunk. But no sleep that night. We were on our feet all night …”

“—is that so—”

“—is that so—”

“Friday the thirteenth. Who was it, Tom Lawson, wrote that book—”

“But the sound of the water on one of those iron tankers! Gee whiz, man, you think you’re going down … It was a long trip, a long long trip — all the way from Tampico to New York, wallowing along in the old Gulf Stream day after day. Playing cards all day and half the night, new partners with every change of watch. Good God I got sick of the sight of a bloody card. And no smoking either — on the American tankers they let you, but not on the British, no sir.”

“… cockfighting — Havana …”

“Hello there, little Johnny Cagny! You looking for a fight, are you? You want to fight me, do you? Now don’t you be climbing up on the back of that seat — you’ll be getting a fall … There! Now you’ve been and gone and done it!”

“In Havana, sure. And all those places. Guatemala City, too, I’ve seen them.”

“Long, you know, knives — little thin steel knives — fastened on to those what-you-call-’ems—”

“Spurs—”

“Yes, spurs … and one eye only he had, one little red burning eye.”

“Yes, but the food’s good on a tanker — better than this is, by God!”

“… then she comes into the ring with a fine strapping black son-of-a-gun of a Tom cat. And he had a cock, of course, in his corner, holding it in his hands — and a beauty it was, too! And she says, ‘I’ll fight my puss against your cock,’ she says, ‘five dollars to the winner!’”

“… ha ha ha ha …”

“What the hell’s the matter with these hands?”

“It’s the jinx.”

“Ah, it’s a great sight is a good cockfight. How they will fight! I saw one once in Mexico City. It was a fight to a finish in every sense of the word. Both of them covered with blood, getting groggier and groggier, falling down and staggering up again for more, finally one of them flopped over, dead. The other one stretched up his neck and gave a little rusty crack of a crow — and keeled over, dead too. That’s the fighting spirit for you! You can’t beat it …”

“I’ll fight you! I’ll fight you!”

“I tell your popper on you.”

“No, you won’t!”

“I will too! And the policeman, that fellow with the red face, will get you. He told me he was looking for you.”

“Ah, he was not.”

“They don’t like little boys that come into smoking rooms. Those big fishes will get you — those fishes with great big mouths. They’ve had four little boys already this morning. They’d have been up again before this, only for the rain.”

“Ah, they wouldn’t.”

“Here’s the policeman now!”

“Sure — you look out for my badge!”

“No, he isn’t either!”

“—a pair of sevens. Good little sevens! Come to mommer.”

“Did you hear about that wild Irishman in the steerage?”

“No, what?”

“He came aboard blind to the world and put away whisky all the first night and all yesterday morning till he begun seein’ things. I guess he was seein’ every color of snake there is, from what they said. Then he beat up another feller so bad they had to put him in the ship hospital, at the back. Wild as a cockoo! Then a couple o’ friends of this other chap beat him up so bad they had to put him in the hospital. And in the middle of the night he leap’ out o’ bed in a franzy and took all his clothes and tore ’em to smithereens and run out on deck and slung ’em all overboard. Well, now he’s sobered up a little, and remembers that all the money he had, and his passport, and everything, was in the clothes he flung overboard … Too bad! He’s got a wife and five kids in Brooklyn, and he had all his savin’s with him to buy a farm in Ireland.”

“—is that so!”

“Yeah. Will they let him in, I wonder. I hear they’re passin’ the hat fer ’im.”

“For Gosh sake.”

“Old Paddy over there is pretty near as bad. He’s done nothing but souse since he come on. Whisky and a beer chaser. Them was the days, boys! Pawin’ the rail with a blind foot!..”

“Was you speakin’ to me?”

“No, sir.”

“Yes you was too!.. When you get through with that damn cigarette, come over here, and I’ll fool you.”

“What’s that?”

“Come over here and I’ll fool you! Write your name on this paper! I’m the immigration inspector.”

“He’s stewed to the eyeballs.”

“You think I’m drunk?… I’ll fool you … It’s an awful thing to say — and I don’t want to insult anyone that’s present in this room — but what I’m telling you is facts and figures! There was an Irishman come to New York, and I knew him well. He went to stay with a Mrs. McCarty, who kept a boardin’-house. A widow, I think she was … And he was lookin’ for a job. So we got him a job, over on Avenue A I think it was, where they was buildin’ a buildin’. We got him a job screenin’ sand … And when he come home at night, Mrs. McCarty says to him, ‘Well Pat, what kind of a job you got?’ and Pat says, ‘Ah, I been foolin’ the public all day! I been throwin’ sand through a gate!’”

“… ha ha ha ha …”

“Who drew number nine, please, in the sweepstakes? Did any gentleman here draw the NINE please in the sweepstakes? There was an error.”

“Hell, I drew the eight.”

“I wonder — who’s kissing — her now … I wonder — who’s telling — her how—”

“Did anyone see the sunrise this morning? It had a black mark on it like an arrow.”

“If you saw any sunrise I’ll eat my hat. Black mark on it like an arrow! Like a poached egg, you mean. Put up your ante.”

“I have anted.”

(How can there be any doubt about it? She looked right at me. “Do you know that lady?” I said to Purington. “That’s Mrs. Battiloro, sister of A. B. Mandell, the novelist. She has just cut me. Walk around the deck with me again — I want to make sure that it was deliberate …” And it was. She came coolly toward me, talking with that tall fair girl — she looked at me coolly, still lightly talking — she shot me through with a blue eye. Why? It couldn’t have been because of that business this morning, when I pretended not to see Cynthia and her friend? No. I’m sure they didn’t guess that I saw them. My damned, absurd, diffidence. Of course it would have been awkward — I was so far away from them, there on the lower deck, and I would have had to shout, or wave a hand, or perform some other such horribly public action, and then go trotting, like a tractable little dog, to the foot of the companionway: to talk with them through the bars of my cage! No — it was a mistake; but I’m sure they didn’t guess it. Why, then? Why?… I am blushing angrily and hotly at the recollection, while I keep a look-out through the open smoking-room window to see if she comes round by the sun parlor. Is it barely possible that her mother doesn’t remember me, didn’t get a good look at me last night on the dark deck? No. She cut me. It was a cool and conscious cut if there ever was one. She disapproves of me, and has always disapproved of me. Scheming for a “good” marriage! Cutting the throats of such outsiders as me! “I know thee not, old man.” Was there something I did or said last night? My overexcited greeting? And does it mean that Cynthia, too, will cut me? Of course. It’s all been decided. It was talked over last night, and again this morning, with laughter — gay feminine laughter. My name looked for in vain on the passenger list — and the white-and-gold breakfast room scanned in vain. No Demarest to be seen. Where is Demarest, the laughing goldfish? He must be in the second cabin? But how odd! How funny! Now, Cynthia, take my advice, and drop him at once. He is not our sort. Those ridiculous letters he wrote to you last winter — and that awful book—)

“It isn’t what you say, it’s how you say it.”

“Sure, when you say that, smile!”

“—a club. A little club, more or less. One little club.”

“I don’t believe I’ll play, but I’ll watch you, if you don’t mind.”

“What you doin’, Susie? Where’s Johnny Cagny?”

“I’m writing my name. This isn’t as good as I can write … Say! Don’t tear my paper!”

“You shouldn’t be in the smoking room, Susie. It’s too rough for you in here. And that little Johnny Cagny, he’s too rough for you too.”

“Jesus! Listen to that screw kicking out! R-r-r-r-r-r-r!”

“—and then I got to New York too late for the boat! Though if I hadn’t stopped for a bath, and to go to the office for some money, I’d have been all right. But those damned agents told me four o’clock in the afternoon. Hell! And there’s my wife, waiting for me all this time in Liverpool … Oh well, it’s all in the day’s work.”

“That’s right … I’ve missed plenty of trains, but never a—”

“—perpendicular—’

“—sick to death of them. Sixteen days on that damned tanker, and now this bloody thing—”

“—asleep. Are ye asleep, Paddy? Rocked in the bosom of the deep, deep, deep—”

“Ha ha ha.”

“Half seas over. He’ll drink his way to Ireland. It’ll be a dry country by the time he gets there. Oh Paddy dear and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round—Who’s got anything better than a full house? Oh! SHANdygaff.”

“—told me about one trip he had, from Tampico to New Orleans, with some Mexican passengers. Indians, you know, those half-breeds. They had a hell of a time. Every time he turned his back, those damned Indians would light a fire on the decks! They’re always making little fires, you know, — just for company, and to warm up a few old coffee grounds in a can. Well, on a tanker full of oil! Gee whiz, man! she’d go up so quick you’d never know what happened. All night they had to watch them—”

“—is that so—”

“—is that so—”

“Aztecs, I suppose those were. Those Aztecs were a wonderful people. Wonderful builders — all just as straight as a die, and according to the points of the compass, and carvings all over everything. They had a high state of civilization.”

“That’s all right, but they were heathen just the same. They sacrificed human beings to the sun.”

“They thought Cortez was a reincarnated sun-god. That’s how he got control over them with so small an army. Damned dirty shame, too. Still, the world has to be civilized.”

“Why has it?… I don’t believe we’re a bit better than our so-called heathen ancestors.”

“Ah-h-h-h what you talkin’ about!”

“Well, look at Ireland, your own country, full of murders and burnings and treason and God knows what; and look at the Balkans; and look at the way we shoot down strikers, or burn niggers, or the whole bloody world going to war for nothing at all and all lying about it, every man jack of them, pretending there’s something holy about it! Look at the way in England, when they launch a battleship, they have a red-faced Bishop there, or an Archbishop, to consecrate the bloody ship in the name of God for murder! Civilized! You make me sick. The world hasn’t changed a hair for four thousand years.”

“That’s right, too!”

“Hear hear!”

“That’s all very easy to say, but just the same there is some progress. Look at the toothbrush—”

“Ha ha — make the world safe for toothbrushes!”

“Porter! Bring me the car toothbrush please!”

“Yes sir, and when she come back there was a foot sticking out of every berth—”

“Ante, mister.”

“—and when she whispered ‘Sweetheart!’ forty men answered with one voice. ‘Come in, darling! here’s your icky fing!’”

“Ha ha — that’s a good old-timer.”

“I — can sing — truly rural—”

“Then I was sent out scouting with a Dodge two-seater and a pocket full of cigars — throwing the bull, you know, you have to do it. Finding out what the other companies were up to. A sort of commercial spy, that’s really what it is. I didn’t know a thing about it, but I knew enough to bluff, and before they found me out I knew the game. Gee whiz, I had a stroke of luck once! I was up looking over some old wells — gone dry. They didn’t say anything about it, but the first thing I noticed, right beside one of these wells, was a couple of dead birds — sparrows or something. Gas! That’s what it was. Well, I kept mum, and drove over to a rival company about two miles off, pretending just to drop in for a friendly chat. The first thing I knew, I heard a chap complaining about a gas well on their place—‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said, ‘the way the pressure’s dropped on that well.’ That gave me an idea! I looked up the geological layout — and sure enough, their gas was leaking through our old oil well. And before they knew it, we had it tapped. A stroke of luck, that was! It gave me a lot of pull with the company.”

“That was pretty good! There’s luck in everything—”

“It’s an awful thing to say; and I’m not insultin’ anyone that’s present here; but what I’m tellin’ you is facts and figures … There was three Italians come to New York; and they didn’t speak no English. They went to stay at a boardin’-house — I think it was kept by a Mrs. McCarty. The first night they was there, they woke up hearin’ a great noise in the room beneath, and they was scared … So one of them went to a little knothole there was in the floor, and listened. Now there was three Irishmen playin’ cards in the room beneath, but the Italian couldn’t see nothin’, and all he heard was a voice sayin’—”

“Major Kendall! Major Kendall! Is Major Kendall here?”

“Outside! Outside!”

“Two Scotch? Yes, sir.”

“And a splash.”

“Well, they was so scared they took their bundles and run out of the house; and after a while they come to the Harlem bridge; and when they was halfway across the bridge they come to a dead man lyin’ on his back in the middle of the sidewalk with his throat cut and a knife in his hand—”

“I’ll bet you’ve got an ace. Want to bet?”

“—kiddin’—”

“—and while they was standin’ there lookin’ at the corpse a policeman came up to them—say! listen to this! Are you listenin’?”

“Sure we’re listening.”

“—and says to them, ‘Who done this?’ ‘I drew!’ says the first one, ‘I cut!’ says the second one, ‘I had a hand,’ says the third: so he pinched all the three of them.”

“Ha ha! Some story! Good boy, Paddy!”

“—at the Orpheum, in Boston, two weeks ago, dressed as a woman, with a great big brass padlock hanging down behind, and biting a little Japanese fan — saying he’d been followed right to the stage door by two sailors and a fireman—”

“Have you a little fairy in your home? Well, we had, but he joined the navy!”

“—and this guy went into a saloon in Chicago, leading a tiger on a leash! A big rattlesnake put his head out of his breast pocket, and he slapped it in again. When the tiger wouldn’t lie down, he kicked it on the snout. ‘Say!’ says the bartender. ‘The town you come from must be pretty tough!’ … ‘Tough! You said a mouthful, bo. That town’s so tough it kicked us fairies out.’”

“Ha ha ha … You know that one about the lonely fairy in Burlington, Vermont, and the alarm clock?… smothered it with kisses! I like that story.”

(“My throte is cut unto the nekke bone,”

Seyde this child; “and, as by way of kinde,

I sholde have deyed, ye, longe tyme agoon …” …

Of course it was deliberate. That cold blue light in her eye. She bore down on me like a frigate. Frigga, the goddess of fertility. Perhaps she and Cynthia had disagreed about it — and this was her way of forcing a crisis? She guesses that now I won’t be inclined to approach Cynthia? Damned clever! Damned clever. I take off my hat to her. It was done so beautifully, too — like an aseptic operation — no feelings, no display, no waste of effort; a miracle of economy. The first time, I thought — actually! — that it might have been a mistake! I had made ready to bow to her — and I was so pleased, too, to be discovered walking there, in broad daylight, like one who “belongs,” on the first cabin deck with Purington — so anxious, also, that I might be seen by Cynthia! I was positively wagging my tail, as I drew nearer — discreetly, of course, and to myself; the bow I had prepared was to be a very refined and quiet one. Alas! it will never be seen, that clearly preconceived bow on the deck of the Nordic, on the port side, at eleven o’clock in the morning, at latitude such-and-such and longitude so-and-so, with the sun x degrees above the horizon in a fleece of cirro-cumulus, and one sea gull perched on the foremast like a gilded finial! And now the question is — will Cynthia be told of that encounter? That depends on whether she is already a party to the plan. About even chances … No — more than that … After all, there was the copy of Galatea I sent her, and the two silly letters, which she never acknowledged or answered. She must, therefore, have been annoyed. In the circumstances, after so brief and casual and superficial and unguaranteed an acquaintance, I had no right to send them. Of course, I knew that. Just the same, if she had been as mature, as broad-minded, as fine as I thought—)

“No, you see, I miss boat in New York — got to take dis one, sure. I lose one week. Torino. I go Torino. How I go? Liverpool to Lond’ is four hour,’ tha’s fi’ dollar? Lond’ to Dover is t’ree hour?… Naw, I don’ care, I got plenty time, sure … Torino, I go Torino firs’. My fader liver in Ancona, ol’ man, live alone. My moder, she die six, seven year ago. Look — she give me—”

“—pretty risky, yes. I saw a man killed on a derrick once. He was climbing up near the top, when he slipped. His shoes were worn down, and the broken sole of one of them — anyway, that’s what we thought — caught on a girder … Another time I saw an oil derrick start to fall — eighty feet high — with two men on it, right at the top. They felt it beginning to go — and by gosh they jumped—first one and then the other, — eighty feet down to the slush vat — only a little thing ten feet square, you know — and both of them hit it, neither of them hurt! Gosh! The rest of us felt pretty sick. About five minutes after it, I began to shake so bad I had to sit down on a barrel. A thing like that makes you think …”

Lights of Library and Port Deck. Lights of Bar and Starboard Deck. Single Stroke. Trembling.

Sound Signals for Fog and So Forth.

In fog, mist, falling snow, or heavy rainstorms, whether by day or night, signals shall be given as follows:

A steam vessel under way, except when towing other vessels or being towed, shall sound at intervals of not more than one minute, on the whistle or siren, a prolonged blast.

“Well, Mr. Demarest, why so sad?”

“Sad, do I look sad?”

“You look as if you’d lost your last friend!”

“So I have — I’ve been crossed in love.”

“No. You don’t say so. You’re old enough to know better. Were you on your way to the Library? Do you mind if I join you till dinnertime?”

“I should be delighted. I’ve been trying to read psychology in the smoking room. But the combination of disappointment in love with the noise there — was too much for me.”

“Noise! My dear Mr. Demarest, you ought to be grateful. Up where I come from, if anyone is so careless as to drop a teaspoon, everybody else is upset for the rest of the day. I feel like screaming … What’s the psychology?”

“Well, I’m a little hazy about it. Did you ever hear of the Bororos?”

“Bororos? Any relation to the Toreadors?”

“No — I believe they’re a totemistic tribe in South America or Australia or is it Madagascar. Anyway, I know this much about them: their totem is a red caterpillar called the Arara. And they believe themselves to be red Araras. Van den Stein — of course you’ve heard of him — asked them if they meant that after death they would become Araras? But they were shocked and offended and replied, ‘Oh no, we are Araras!’”

“Is this nonsense you’re talking to me? It sounds like Alice in Wonderland.”

“Said the Arara to the Bororo—”

“You aren’t a psychologist yourself, by any chance, are you?”

“Nothing like that. I sometimes wish I were. Every man his own psychoanalyst?”

“What do you do, if you don’t mind my asking so personal a question?”

“What do I do! That’s what a good behaviorist would ask, and what I often ask myself … Accurately and dispassionately put, I’m an unsuccessful author.”

“An author!.. Well. You could knock me down with a toothpick. You don’t look like an author.”

“No?”

“No. Where’s your long hair? your flowing tie? your — pardon me — maternity trousers?”

“Yes, I do lack the secondary sexual characteristics. That’s probably why I’m unsuccessful. Or at any rate, the two things go together. If a man takes himself seriously enough to dress the part, and to look like a damned fool, he may perhaps be crazy enough to be some good!”

“Well now, that’s an interesting point!.. Wait for me five minutes, will you? I’ve left my old reekie behind.”

“Sure.”

“—well, that’s all right. You have your opinion; and other people have theirs. Which kills the most — this last war — or tubercleosis?… So!.. You would pronounce judgment on it without knowing the facts. That’s what women do … Not all the people that’s in the street is bad. And not all the people that’s in the street is good. There’s no grand rules by which you can lay down the law — if you’re a good Christian. There’s only special cases, that’s all; and what you’ve got to do is to look into each case by itself, and judge it on its own merits … Everybody is aimin’ for the same place, ain’t they? That’s the fact to be remembered, and not the fact that they go different ways to get there from what you choose. That’s the way it is with religion. We all take different routes. But we’re all aimin’ to get to the same place. So what’s the good of quarrelin’ about the routes we take, or scorning one man because he goes this way, and another because he goes that … as long as they’re honestly striving to get to the good place … But if there’s a place on this earth that’s a second Sodom, it’s New York.”

“How are you, Mrs. Simpson? Have you got hearts?”

“For fair!”

“Hearts are trumps.”

“—the dollar, that’s their god, the almighty dollar. You see what they mean by that, don’t you?”

“Yes?”

“You remember the Jews in their journey through the desert. You remember how some of them, losing faith, backsliding, went whoring after false gods, and worshiped the golden calf. That is a symbol—the golden calf. And the golden calf is today the god of America. It’s the Almighty Dollar; instead of Almighty God. Mark my words.”

“Yes, that’s true, that’s a nice illustration for it. Everybody does worship gold—”

“I made a mistake!”

“That wasn’t fair!”

“She reneged!”

“But what I say is, if they don’t want to travel the same road with me, let them go their own way.”

“That’s what I say to my son, who joined the Christian Scientists. He’s always after me—”

“—Episcopalian, they call it in America—”

“Well, that’s the reason, you see, why I didn’t want to play for anything.”

“Anything, that’ll keep you in touch with God, that’s the great thing. But they all want to go their own way, nowadays. You can’t prevent it — it’s no use is it? trying to prevent it. But so long as they keep in touch with God, that’s the great thing.”

“—Christ, I mean.”

“Well, I never played it much, I just started.”

“They don’t deny Him. But they say He’s not the Son of God.”

“—beginning—”

“They say that Christ was a good man. The only thing they deny is His Kingship. But what do we mean, I ask you, by Christ? Have you stopped to think about that? That’s a point of very great importance. Is there any reason why we should reserve the title of Christ only for the one individual that was known as Jesus? There have been many Christs since Jesus of Nazareth. There was Saint Francis. There were some of the Popes, too, good and holy men. There was Moody and Sankey. There was Spurgeon. In what way was Spurgeon not deserving of the name of Christ? He gave his life to God — look at all those wonderful words and thoughts of his. And these are only a few. There have been many Christs — some of them lowly people that were never heard of in history. How many have been put on the rack for their faith in God? No man can say. There have been many Christs; and there will be Christs again.”

“We couldn’t have made a whole lot, could we?”

“The ace of diamonds was all I had.”

“Nine of trumps—”

“You have to follow suit, you see.”

“What’ll you do?”

“One spade.”

“One spade.”

“Ha ha ha! You have to say something different from her! You don’t follow suit in the bidding!”

“Well, if you’ve got one spade you’d better hold on to it!”

“They’re playing euchre, is it?”

“Miss Kennedy? No. She wasn’t a bigot. She might see things in a different light from what you do. But that isn’t bigotry. Because you’re Church — and she’s Chapel — does that give her the right to call you a bigot? No. Miss Kennedy was a Unitarian, and a God-fearing woman. You might not agree with her, but that wouldn’t make her a bigot.”

“Well — I try to fathom all these things—”

“It’s the way they’ve been brought up, that’s it, isn’t it, Mrs. Covey? They reverence God in their own way. And it seems good to them, just like your way seems good to you. It’s all in the way you’ve been brought up when you’re a child.”

“Well — that’s true, of course — and my husband is right where he says we should all strive to be tolerant — but just the same there’s some things that’s hard to understand or be tolerant of. I’ve had a good deal of religious experience, for after being brought up as a Churchwoman, when I married I became a Wesleyan. And then, singing as I did — I used to sing a lot — I went about a good deal to different sects and societies, and saw a good many different points of view. But some of the Catholic ideas, now, I cannot think they are good. And this although my best friend, a woman I’ve known all my life, died a Catholic. To my idea, the way they use the crucifix is wrong, like a kind of idolatry. For them, their crucifix is just a kind of talisman, to protect you. Just a talisman. And then the way they worship the mother of Christ — that’s another thing that seems to me uncalled for. I used to ask Mrs. Jennings, ‘Why is it you worship the mother of Christ as if she was a god? She was only a mortal woman like you or me.’ And of course, that’s just why it appeals to them. They have her there to represent all the mothers … Lots of my friends have been Catholics.”

(I could see, watching them out of the corner of my eye, that Cynthia and the fair-haired girl were turning, hesitating, there at the top of the companionway, as if at a loss. Should they come down, approach me? Try in some way to catch my eye?… They wavered, Cynthia was biting her lip — they vacillated, waiting perhaps for some sign from me — and then, receiving none, departed slowly forward and did not return. I believe that Cynthia knew that I had seen her. Yes. She knew; knew from the stiff unseeing way in which I stood and stared, staring meaninglessly, with awkward profile, at the wholly uninteresting sea. Good God. My folly and weakness are abysmal. Why must I behave in this extraordinary fashion? Ask dad, he knows! Ask Clara, the Negro nurse! Ask Mr. Greenbaum, the Latin teacher, who watched me through the crack of the door to see if I was cribbing! Ask that slattern under the arc light, in November, 1909, who caroled at me “Does your mother know you’re out?” Ask the burly Italian in the Apennine train, who said, when I had dismally failed to shut that infernal broken window (and the smoke was pouring in) “Poco bravo!” Ask that detestable red-faced redheaded vulgar master (tuberculous, too) who superintended when I was given the water cure, aged seventeen! And the God-impersonating baseball coach who would never trust me with a chance on the first nine!.. Ask them all. And ask my dipsomaniac great-grandfather, my charming imaginative fibbing mother, my sensual analytic father, and the delirious wallpaper pattern on my nursery wall. Behavior is a function of environment. Selah! I wash my hands of it. But I don’t want to behave like this? Or do I? Is it metaphysically — or physiologically — possible to will the good and achieve the evil? to desire, and not to accomplish? and thus to become something which one had not willed? Cynthia’s conception of Demarest is not Demarest’s conception—)

“Well!”

“Well!”

“Now I should like to ask you a whole lot of questions.”

“Ask, and it shall be given unto you.”

“May I inquire what it is you write?”

“Plays. Also an unfinished novel or two. And a few poems.”

“Have any of them been produced?”

“Published, but not produced. That’s the difficulty. Or rather—”

“I dare say you’re too highbrow. Is that it?”

“No. The trouble is deeper than that. In fact, so deep that it’s hard to analyze. I’ve often made the attempt, never with much satisfaction. Not that it matters very much. Ha ha! I always say that, at this point, and of course it’s precisely that that matters … the fact that I say, and do often believe, that it doesn’t matter, I mean.”

“Not enough faith in yourself, perhaps.”

“No, not exactly that — though that’s a part of it. It’s more general — a sneaking feeling that the whole thing is a snare and a delusion.”

“I don’t get you. You mean the world in general?”

“No — though I often suspect that too; but that’s not just what I mean. No, the sneaking feeling I refer to is a feeling that the arts — and perhaps especially the literary arts — are a childish preoccupation which belongs properly to the infancy of the race, and which, although the race as a whole has not outgrown, the civilized individual ought to outgrow.”

“Hm. I see. Or I don’t see!”

“No reasonable person any longer believes in magic — but many of the ideas and words and fetishes, which we inherit from the age of magic, still survive in debased forms: mascots, lucky pennies, charms, lucky numbers, fortunetelling, and so on. Well, when we begin as children to use language, we use it as a form of magic power to produce results. We learn to say ‘more’ because when pronounced it will actually get us more. And, we never wholly lose this early conviction (though it becomes overlaid and unconscious) that some sort of virtue or power resides in language. When we like a passage in a poem or tale we refer to it as ‘magical.’ We thus indicate unconsciously the primitive origin and nature of the arts. Art is merely the least primitive form of magic … But all this relates chiefly to the linguistic side of the literary art. There is also the other side, that part of it which it has in common with the other arts — the psychological content, the affective and emotional necessity out of which it springs. You know Freud’s theory that the ordinary dream is a disguised wish-fulfilment or nexus of them? Well, the work of art performs exactly the same function. Some of these esthetic critics say that content, so to speak, doesn’t matter at all; they talk of the ideal work of art as one in which everything has become form, and of the ideal critic as one in whom there is no confusion of the emotions aroused in himself (by the work of art) with the work of art itself. That error seems to me perfectly extraordinary! And yet it is a very common one. For of course this pure form, and pure contemplation, are both chimeras; there ain’t no sich animals. What is the pure form of a potato? The minute you leave out its potatoishness you leave out everything. Form is only an aspect of matter, and cannot be discussed apart from it. You can isolate the feelings and emotions which give rise to a play, but you cannot entirely isolate its form, for its form responds to these. Can you conceive of a play which would be entirely meaningless, one which was not only unintelligible, but which also aroused no feelings? Impossible. Language is reference. And its reference is dual: it refers to facts — as the word potato refers to a tuber — but also it refers to feelings; for every individual will have, as the result of his own particular experiences, his own particular cluster of feelings about the potato. Do I make myself clear?”

“Not at all. But go on, brother. I may catch up with you at the finish.”

“I’m determined to make you suffer … Let’s assume that I like a certain poem. Why do I like it? The esthetic critic would say that I like it because it’s beautiful, because, in other words, it’s a ‘perfect expression of something’; the something you see, doesn’t matter very much, so long as it has been ‘esthetically’ experienced! But this is based on the assumption that all ‘somethings,’ or experiences, are of like value. We know this isn’t true. It would be impossible to make an Iliad out of the buttering of a potato, or a Hamlet out of the paring of one’s nails. These experiences are universal — and could involve no confusion of reference; but they are not of very great interest, or significance, or desirability, emotionally. We are all, in a sense, frustrated — we are all of us, each in his particular way, starved for love, or praise, or power, and our entire characters are molded by these thwarted longings. I won’t go into the details of that mechanism, for I don’t know too much about it, probably no more than you do; the point I’m making for is this, that art’s prime function is the gratification of these longings. We can see this, if we like, as a kind of cowardice. We don’t like to grow up; we don’t like to face the bare or ugly facts of life, its privations, its miseries, its failures, its uncertainty, its brevity; we don’t like to see ourselves as mere automata, whose behavior is ‘merely a function of environment’; we don’t like to admit our ignorance as to our origin and destiny, or our impotence in the face of the laws that control us; and so we seek refuge and consolation in that form of daydream which we call art. Reading a novel, we become the hero, and assume his importance as the center of the action—if he succeeds, then we too succeed; if he fails, then we can be sure it is against overwhelming odds, against the backdrop of the colossal and unpitying infinite, so that in failure he seems to us a figure of grandeur; and we can see ourselves thus with a profound narcissistic compassion, ourselves godlike in stature and power, going down to a defeat which lends us an added glory … Art is therefore functionally exaggerative. When we find our response to things becoming jaded, when the bare bones of reality begin to show, then we clutch at the cobweb of the fairy tale. Think only of the world of love which literature opens to us! Solomon in all his glory of a thousand wives cannot rival us. We can range from Helen of Troy, or Lesbia, to Imogen with the cinque-spotted mole on her breast; from Isolde to tuberculous Milly Theale; from Cleopatra to Emma Bovary or Raskolnikov’s Sonia; or even to the bawdy ballad of sister Mary, who was bilious!”

“Ah—there I begin to follow you!”

“Of course!.. Well now, we jump from that to another psychological aspect of this process of wish-fulfillment. And that is this. A work of art is good if it is successful: that is, if it succeeds in giving the auditor or reader an illusion, however momentary; if it convinces him, and, in convincing him, adds something to his experience both in range and coherence, both in command of feeling and command of expression. And here we come to the idea which is terribly disquieting to the purely esthetic critic, who likes to believe that there are absolute standards of excellence in art. For if we take a functional view of art, as we must, then everything becomes relative; and the shilling shocker or smutty story, which captivates Bill the sailor, is giving him exactly the escape and aggrandizement, and therefore beauty, that Hamlet gives to you or me. The equation is the same. What right have you got, then, to assume that Hamlet is ‘better’ than Deadeye Dick? On absolute grounds, none whatever. They are intended for different audiences, and each succeeds. Of course, Hamlet is infinitely more complex than the other. And we can and should record that fact and study it carefully, seeing in art, as we see in our so-called civilization, an apparent evolution from simple to complex. Well, all this being true, why be an artist? Or for which audience?… That’s the horrible problem.”

“I can see you’re in a bad fix. But if you feel that way about it, why not give it up? And do something really useless like me — selling chewing-gum or lace petticoats to people who don’t want them? Why not?”

“Yes, why not? The answer is, that though I’m an unsuccessful artist — pleasing practically nobody but myself — and though, as a good psychologist, I scorn or at any rate see through the whole bloody business, nevertheless I have that particular sort of neurosis, verbal in its outward expression, which will probably keep me an artist till I die or go mad.… Suppose I’m a sort of forerunner, a new type. And what then?”

“A new type? Tell it to the marines! You don’t look it. You’re no more a new type than I am.”

“Yes, sir! A type in which there is an artist’s neurosis, but also a penetrating intelligence which will not permit, or permit only with contempt, the neurosis to work itself out! If you want a parallel which will make the predicament clear, conceive a Christ, for example, who understood the nature of his psychological affliction, foresaw its fatal consequences for himself, foresaw also that to yield to his neurosis would perhaps retard the development of mankind for four thousand years, and nevertheless had to yield to it. As a matter of fact, that illustration occurs to me because it is the theme of a play that I’ve had in mind for some time. The Man Who Was Greater Than God.”

“It’s a damned good title, I’ll say that much for it! But if you ever got it on the stage, you’d be mobbed.”

“Oh, it would be impossible at present. At any rate, it probably would be, if my hero was too palpably modeled on Christ. I could, however, and probably would, represent him as a modern man, an intelligent man, who nevertheless had religious delusions of grandeur. Perhaps an illegitimate child, who compensated for that flaw in his descent by believing himself to be the son of God … Or, I’ve also considered dropping the Messiah idea altogether, and having for my hero an artist, or a writer, or perhaps a social reformer. In that case, I betray myself—it’s really myself I should be portraying in either character. The Strindberg and Nietzsche and von Kleist type, but with the addition of intellectual poise, or insight! However, what good would it do? What’s the use of doing it? The predicament of the hero would be too exceptional to be widely interesting — no audience could possibly sympathize with him. The Messiah, on the other hand, would be a figure universally appealing … Yes, it would have to be the Messiah, much as I prefer the artist … But — why not act that play, in my own life, instead of thus taking flight from the problem in one more surrender to my neurosis?”

“Act it? I don’t get you. How do you mean act it?”

“Well, in the play the hero would finally decide (perhaps he is pushed, somewhat, to this conclusion by his friend, a psychoanalyst) to abjure his art, entirely and forever. To anyone who is an artist, that scene would be positively plangent with invitations to narcissistic anguish — every artist, beholding, would weep for himself. Imagine it. A Shakespeare, for instance, deciding for the good of humanity, not to write plays! Seeing them all there — his Hamlet, his Othello, his Lear, his Cleopatra, his magnificent Coriolanus — and dismissing them unborn! Very touching. And to make it worse, he perhaps pays for this in a complete mental breakdown, or death … That’s the play: in which, as you see, I have all the luxury of this suicidal decision, but also the luxury of having again, and thus intimately, adored myself. Now the question is — why not do it, instead of writing it? Why not give up, in advance, that play and all my other ambitions? I think very seriously of it; at the same time suspecting that my whole life would be deranged by it … It’s a nice little problem. To write, or to commit suicide.”

“Don’t do either! but have a cocktail!”

“That’s not a bad idea, either! a dry Martini would go nicely.”

“Steward! Can we have two dry Martinis, please?”

“Two dry Martinis, yes, sir.”

“Yes, it’s very sad and complicated. If you look at the problem from a purely humanitarian point of view, and try to solve it solely in the interests of mankind — even then, it’s not too simple. In the first place, there is always the possibility that the whole Freudian idea, as thus applied to art, is wrong. It may be that art will be a permanent necessity for man, a penalty that he pays for having become a social and civilized animal. How can we be sure? If I go on writing plays and novels, may I not at any rate give aid and comfort to a few verbalistic lunatics like myself, and help them to keep their spiritual balance in this melancholy world? And isn’t that a good deed?… But no, I’m not sure. The intellectual side of me declines to believe in that — or balks at it. I have what my friend Tompkins, the psychoanalyst, calls a Samson complex.”

“This gets deeper and darker. Have a drink. Here’s to the Samson complex!”

“Your bloody good health!”

“Not bad at all.”

“Shall we repeat?”

“We might!”

“Two more please, steward?”

“Two dry Martinis? Yes, sir.”

“Well, now, Socrates, tell me about the Samson complex. I hope you don’t mind if I just seem to listen, like a sponge.”

“I don’t mind, if you don’t. But I don’t want to bore you.”

“Bore me! Great Godfry. I’ve been dying for something highbrow like this. But don’t be surprised if I fall asleep.”

“Well, the name for it was partly a joke, and refers to a dream I had two weeks ago, when I was visiting Tompkins. Tompkins has always been keen to have me drop all this literary folderol and become a psychologist, or at any rate a psychological critic of literature. When I was staying with Tompkins, two weeks ago, he renewed his attack on me and once more brought this schism painfully to the surface. Lately, I had been backsliding a little. After a year and a half of potboiling, which took the form of book reviewing, I suddenly developed a tremendous resistance to criticism — my destructive speculations, you see, were coming too close to a destruction of myself, not only by taking up all my time, but also by undermining my amour propre … How much, please?”

“Two shillings — or fifty cents. Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

“Here’s to your ectoplasm.”

“And yours. May it never grow less. Don’t forget the dream in your excitement.”

“I was just getting to it. It reflects, you see, this conflict in me between the critic and the artist … The times, I should think, were those of Euripides: though I’m not positive the place was Greece. I was a runner, a messenger, and I had been running since daybreak, bearing some portentous message. What was this great message, this revelation? I don’t know — it was never clearly formulated in the dream. But at dusk I came to a great stone-built temple, and entered it. I was exhausted: I could hardly stand. The temple chamber, within, was immense, high-roofed, and ceilinged with blue and gold; and at the far end of it, before a grim stone altar, a hieratic procession of tall priests was forming. It seemed, however, that they were expecting me, and that whatever it was that they were about to perform must wait till they had heard what it was that I had to say. I approached them, spoke, and then, my message delivered, realized that I was going to die, that the long run had killed me. Stumbling, therefore, to a table-shaped tomb of stone, I stretched myself upon it like the effigy of a crusader, my throbbing eyes turned upward toward the ceiling … How high it was, how gorgeously azured and gilded, and how massive the masonry of its arch! If it should fall — if it were only to fall — would it not destroy — not only myself, already dying — but also these hateful priests and their mysteries? the temple? And suddenly, then, with a last spastic effort of body and soul, I cried out in terrific command to the ceiling ‘FALL! FALL!..’ And it fell.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“Good gracious Peter … I see, yes, where the Samson idea comes in … I never dreamt anything like that in my life. All my dreams are in pieces — I’m walking in one place, and then I’m in another. I look into a room and see a lovely girl undressing, kiss her — oh boy! notice that she has put too much rouge on her mouth, and looks consumptive — and the next thing I know I’m watching a crazy play, with that girl, or another one something like her, acting the heroine in Why Girls Leave Home. No good at all. Do you always dream dreams like that?”

“Usually.”

“No wonder you’ve got things to write about … Tell me — when you write a novel, for instance, how do you go about it? Do you make up a plot out of whole cloth — so to speak — or do you see something in life, simply, and put it down?”

“I don’t think it’s either method, but a sort of combination. Personally, I find it hard to draw from life. I couldn’t, for example, transfer you to a novel, or Hay-Lawrence, and make you real: you would only become real, for my purpose, if I had invented you” …

“Gosh! Now, suppose we were all of us just—”

“Characters in a novel? Yes! Every now and then one experiences that sense of a complete dissociation of personality, when one seems to evaporate under the glare of one’s own eye. Exactly the way that when you’ve been lying in bed in one position too long you lose all sense of your body … You know, it’s something like this, some analagous feeling of unreality and absurdity, a destructive sense of the profound relativity of my existence, that makes me a failure. It seems to me — I don’t know whether this is idiotic, but thanks to the cocktails I don’t hesitate to say it — it seems to me that I can foresee everything, exactly the feeling that one has in a hashish or mescal trance. Have you ever tried hashish?”

“No. Something like opium, isn’t it?”

“Something … You lose the power to distinguish in time and place. For instance, you remember, as you sit there absorbed in sensory meditation, that you have forgotten to let in the dog. In the course of thinking this, you so sharply visualize the action of descending the stairs, passing the bust of Clytie in the wall niche, slipping back the cold brass bolt, feeling the injured screw under the doorknob, hearing the whimper of the hinge and the threefold scrape of the dog’s nails on the worn door panel, and then (the door opened) seeing the mad swarm of stars above the Baptist church — you experience all this so profoundly, and the return upstairs, that you become convinced that you have actually done it … Am I losing my thread, or are these cocktails making me drunk?”

“I suspect you’re drunk!”

“Yes, I have at all times, drunk or sober, a crippling sense of having foreseen every possible action or feeling or thought, not only of my own, but also of everyone else. All the alternatives, too. The whole blooming buzzing cosmic telephone exchange — every connection. This is so appallingly vivid that in its wake any real action performed by me, or any thought formulated, or any feeling observed in its progress from belly to thorax, and from thorax to — possibly — horripilation—”

“Pause there! That word again, please, if you don’t mind, professor.”

“Horripilation — when your hair walks backward on cold feet. Any such reality seems to me in consequence a rather stupid and meaningless repetition, not worth troubling about. Why write a book, which one can conceive so much more sublimely than anyone could possibly write? Why bother even to conceive a new unity in a chosen gamut of heterogeneity, when one also foresees disastrously the hour when that unity will have become merely one item in a larger heterogeneity, each new system absorbed by a larger system? Why bother to foresee that fatality of decay and change, of clicking and mechanical and inevitable death, when one remembers that even oneself, the foreseer, was foreseen in the act of foreseeing, and that even one’s newness is old?… This is a poisonous sophistry from which I find it hard to escape. I only escape it when the attention of my senses has been sharply drawn. And even then the willingness to act or feel is only intermittent. As in love, for instance.”

“Ah! Thank God! I was beginning to lose all hope for you. But if you can still fall in love, it’s not so bad.”

“But my God, think how terrible it is to be in love, and not to be able to believe in it or act on it!”

“Oh, come come, Mr. Demarest! Do you mean to ask me to believe that? No … No, no!”

“It’s true, s’welp me Bob!”

“Well, if you weren’t drunk, I’d think you were crazy.”

“My dear Silberstein, I’m no crazier than you are.”

“No, sir, you can’t tar me with that brush. Believe me, when I’m in love — using that as a very broad term—there’s plenty of action. I’m no Hamlet, by God! I either get ’em, or I don’t. And if I don’t, I don’t cry about it. I look for another: the woods are full of them. It’s as easy as tripping a cripple.”

“Well, of course, I’m exaggerating slightly—”

“Ah! That’s better. You were exaggerating slightly—”

“—but there’s something in it. I don’t mean so much as applied to — well, the more fleeting sort of sexual adventure. Though it’s apt to be true even of those. But when one’s really in love — it’s a miserable business. All out of focus. No reasonable center to one’s behavior. Or my behavior, anyway. I’m always a damned fool when I’m in love.”

“If you’re talking about Romeo and Juliet stuff, all I can say is that at your age you ought to know better. The female doesn’t exist that can get me in love with her.”

“But I wonder if there’s any escaping one’s temperament in that regard? Here I am, aged thirty-five, and more horribly in love than I ever was before — in love, mind you, in the most sublimated and sentimental sense imaginable. I actually don’t feel the slightest conscious sensual attraction to the girl. Not the slightest. Oh, I don’t mean that I don’t think she’s beautiful — I do. But her beauty affects me in a very peculiar way — it seems to me merely a clue to something else, some mental or spiritual quality (though I distrust the word spiritual) which is infinitely more exciting and more worth discovery. Of course, I admit frankly that I’ve had other affairs in which there was little or nothing of this. Usually, even when I’m mildly ‘in love,’ the desire for physical contact is at once uppermost — all my tentacles and palpacles begin to quiver. Why this difference? How can we be sure that one way is any better than the other? You simply take your choice. Both of them have something of value to offer. Perhaps it’s the difference between poetry and prose. I always liked Donne’s remark on that subject—”

“Donne? Never heard of him. But spring it, if you must.”

“‘For they are ours as fruits are ours.

He that but tastes, he that devours,

And he that leaves all, doth as well.’”

“Well, God deliver me from poetry. You can have it. Take all the lyrics you want, but leave me the legs.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got to leave you. That was my dinner horn — quarter of an hour ago. I’m late.”

“Was it! And I haven’t changed yet … We’ll resume this drunken discussion later … So long!”

“Yes, so long.”

Lights of Library and Port Deck. Lights of Bar and Starboard Deck. Single Stroke. Trembling.

“Oh! Aren’t you ashamed, Mr. Demarest!”

“Ashamed, Mrs. Faubion? What of?”

“Why being so late — we’re almost finished!.. Oh, we know all about you.”

“Help, I’m discovered … No soup, thanks, steward — hors d’oeuvres, and then — let’s see.”

“Calf’s head in torture is good — I had it. Very good. Good food on this boat.”

“No — roast duckling à l’Anglaise, and vegetables. And ice cream and coffee … So you know all about me. Father’s been telling on me.”

“He has. He told us all about your swell friend in the first cabin. When are you going to announce the engagement?”

“Engagement! My God. The family jewels.”

“Is it true, what Mr. Smith told Mrs. Faubion and me, that you first met her on another ship?”

“True as the gospel, Miss Dacey. Believe everything that father tells you and you won’t go wrong. But didn’t he tell you that we were secretly married this morning — at seven bells?”

“Ha ha! Wouldn’t you like to, though! Merry laughter.”

“Married, does he say. No, siree Bob. When Demarest marries they won’t ring bells, they’ll fire cannon and blow up the ship!”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“Does he look like a marrying man? Not him. Not much! He’s one of these ice-bound bachelors.”

“All right for you, Mr. Demarest — you can’t pretend any more that you’re a woman hater. Now we know the real reason why you avoid us all the time!”

“Avoid you! My dear Mrs. Faubion! What a scandalous and outrageous falsehood! Here I’ve been pursuing you from morning till night—”

“Pursuing!”

“—and I never can get any nearer to you than tenth in the waiting line. And you accuse me of avoiding you! Father, you can testify.”

“Testify nothing! We’ll never see you again on this ship. No, sir. You’re a lost man. Sunk without a bubble.”

“You hear that? And after Miss Dacey and I have been saying such nice things about you, too. Haven’t we? Your ears ought to have been burning last night.”

“Last night?”

“Last night after we went to bed.”

“Do tell me! I’m dying to know what it was.”

“Why, did you ever hear of such conceit? Actually!”

“That’s right, darling, don’t tell him a thing. Tantalize him. That’s what gets ’em every time.”

“Don’t darling me! I’m not your darling, nor anybody’s darling.”

“She’s getting mad again. All pink and mad … But didn’t you say you had a husband? Ah ha! Look at her blushing!”

“I’m not blushing.”

“Oh no, she’s not blushing. Not blushing at all. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Faubion.”

“Mr. Barnes! I wish you would teach your passengers better manners!”

“Is Mr. Smith behaving badly to you? I must caution you, Mr. Smith. You must remember that these young ladies are traveling under my protection.”

“I think he’s had a cocktail too many, Mr. Barnes.”

“COCKTAILS! I like your nerve, Mr. Demarest! And you breathing brimstone all over the table. It’s a wonder the flowers don’t wilt.”

“Where were you at the mock wedding, Mr. Demarest! didn’t you see it? I thought you were going to be the wedding guest.”

“So I was. But I forgot all about it till it was too late. How did the bride look, the pianist?”

“Oh, he was a scream.”

“And you should have heard Mr. Ashcroft doing the marriage service! Oh! I thought I should die!”

“Oh, wasn’t he a scream?”

“Yes, he certainly was a scream! What was it all about, all that about the man trying to catch the pigeon in the field, and getting it by the tail?”

“What, madam! didn’t you understand that? That was the best part of it. Don’t you try to let on you’re as innocent as all that! What was all that about the pigeon! You were the one that was laughing the loudest.”

“Careful, Mr. Smith! Careful!”

“Well, I ask you, Mr. Purser, as man to man—”

“That will do, father!”

“Don’t call me father. A man is as young as he feels … Ha ha!”

“Well … what’s funny in that?”

“Oh, nothing funny — it’s damned serious. Yes indeedy.”

“My little gray home in the west. Don’t you love that song? I just couldn’t live without that song. Are we ready to go, Pauline?”

“Yes, are we ready to go, Pauline?”

“Pauline!.. Mr. Smith, your manners are simply terrible. Good night, Mr. Barnes — oh are you coming too? Good night, Mr. Demarest!”

“Good night, Mrs. Faubion!”

“Gosh, that girl gets my goat. Yes, siree, she sure gets my goat.”

“She’s damned attractive.”

“Attractive! She’s a dynamo.”

“Dynamo — dynamas — I loved a lass—”

“Yes, siree. And you know, I’ve got a damned good idea.”

“What is it?”

“Just between you and me and the bedpost—”

“I must caution you, Mr. Smith. You must remember that these young ladies—”

“No, sir, I’m not swallowing any bunk about those girls. If they aren’t — I’ll bet they’ve been in half the staterooms on this boat.”

“I don’t believe it. Not Faubion.”

“Oh? You don’t think so? Well, maybe not, maybe not. Just the same, I’ve got a damned good idea.”

“Well?”

“It’s simple, and I don’t see how it can get me into any trouble … It’s this. I’ve got a purse full of gold sovereigns — look! you don’t see gold sovereigns every day! Not since the war you don’t. They look pretty good, don’t they?”

“Very nice.”

“Yes, sir! They look pretty good. And I’ve got an idea that if I just take them out and kind of flash them at Mrs. Faubion — without saying anything, you know — anything that would give me away too much — what do you think?”

“Gosh, father! You’re getting reckless.”

“No! I don’t see any harm in it. I’ll bet these sovereigns would look pretty good to her. Don’t you think so?”

“Suppose not?”

“Well, suppose not. Where’s the danger? That’s the beauty of it. If she’s as innocent as you say she is, she won’t know what I mean by it. Will she?”

“True.”

“Well, I think I’ll try it. If I can get up the nerve. That’s where the trouble is! Guess I’ll take a few Guinnesses first … And then do it the last thing before I turn in. I’ll bet she’ll know what I mean, all right! Yes, sir, if that girl doesn’t know more than you and me put together, I miss my guess.”

“Well, I’ll put a flower on your grave. A syringa.”

“You just wait! The old man’ll show you something … The trouble is with you, you’re too slow. How’s your dollar princess?”

“She’s dropped me.”

“Dropped you! What do you mean?”

“Her mother cut me this morning. It’s all over.”

“You mean to say you’re going to let them drop you?”

“Good God, man, you don’t suppose I can run up into the first cabin forty times a day — where I don’t belong, and where all the officers know me by sight — in pursuit of people who won’t speak to me when I meet them? Nothing like that. I tried it twice this afternoon, but the only one I saw was her uncle, writing letters in the smoking room. And he doesn’t know me.”

“Well, why didn’t you put it up to him?”

“Ask him why they were cutting me? Nothing doing!”

“Well, I guess the trouble is you don’t care very much. Not like me!.. Coming up? Take a turn on the deck?”

“As far as the smoking room. I think I’ll get drunk tonight.”

“Well, I may pop in later … What’s the singing?”

Single Stroke. Trembling.

Sound Signals for Fog and So Forth.

“And the next time I met her, she was all dressed in pink.

The next time I met her, she was all dressed in pink.

All in pink — all in pink — what will her mother think?

Down in the alley where She followed Me …”

“That’s a new one on me. Well, see you later. Gosh, look at the smoke in there!”

“—pure as the snow, but she drifted.”

“She was pure as the snow, but she drifted.”

“And the next time I met her, she was all dressed in gray.

The next time I met her, she was all dressed in gray.

All in gray — all in gray — what will her father say?

Down in the alley where She followed Me …”

“—two for a nickel poker player like you! Are you coming in or are you staying out?”

“I’ll come in—I ain’t no piker!”

“He’s no poker piker!”

“And the next time I met her, she was all dressed in green.

The next time I met her, she was all dressed in green.

All in green — all in green — my, how she did scream, scream!..

Down in the alley where She followed Me …”

“The man said to the girl—‘You know what your personality reminds me of? a handful of wet sawdust!’ Flap, flap. And he shook his hand, as if he was shakin’ sawdust off it. And the girl said—‘Ah, your face would make a false tooth ache!” … ‘Is that so,’ the man said. ‘Do you know what your face is like? It’s like an exposed nerve.’ And the girl said, ‘Why, you’re so narrow-minded you could button your ears at the back! Ha ha!’ … And then the man took a long hard look at her and said, ‘You want to know what you remind me of?… You remind me of a neglected grave … Where’s your lily?’”

“Ha ha ha!”

“And the next time I met her, she was all dressed in red.

The next time I met her, she was all dressed in red.

All in red — all in red — I stole her maidenhead—

Down in the alley where She followed Me …”

“Yes, you hear some funny things there. Another time—”

“Ukulele, sure. I was lying right here, behind the back, and she didn’t see me. She was inside the bar there with the door shut for half an hour. When she came out and saw me she turned red as a beet. She tried to laugh it off … Well, she’s got a fine pair of shafts, by God!”

“Who can open it. Can you open it?”

“Who—? the guy with the long hair—? If he so much as puts a finger on me I’ll knock his block off.”

“And the last time I met her, she was all dressed in blue.

The last time I met her, she was all dressed in blue.

All in blue, baby blue — what will the poor kid do? —

Down in the alley where She followed Me …”

“Hooray! Here’s old Paddy again.”

“One — more — drink!”

“I didn’t see you eatin’ much, Paddy.”

“Let me tell you somethin’ … It’s an awful thing to say — and I’m not insultin’ anyone that’s present here — but what I’m telling you is facts and figures. There was an Irishman once and his name, I think, was Mike. And he was living in N’York, at a boardin’-house that was kept by a Mrs. McCarty.”

“She was pure as the snow, but she drifted.”

“PURE as the snow, but she drifted.”

“Prohibition — that’s what drove me out of the country. As nice a little saloon as you could want! forty and one-tenth miles from New York. And everything as orderly and nice as it could be. And now look at it! High-school girls goin’ out to dances, takin’ their own old man’s hooch with them, and gettin’ so drunk they can’t walk! Paralyzed, that’s what they get. High-school girls!”

“—and the parrot she had—ahip! — he hated it, see?… And so one mornin’ when he was shavin’ he took his razor and cut the back of its neck, and dropped it into the—”

“ANTE, God damn you! You can’t slip anything like that over on me!”

“You shut your face! You can’t talk like that to me!”

“I can’t eh? Well, tellin’ me won’t stop me!”

“Sure he anted. It was me that didn’t ante.”

“All right, all right, my mistake. No hard feelin’s, pardner.”

“—and the parrot said, ‘By God, if she had that cut, and lived, there’s hope for me!’”

“Ha ha ha!”

“I’ll ask you a question you can’t answer, Paddy … Who was it drove the Danes out of Ireland? Eh?”

“St. Patrick.”

“Ah-h-h-h-h! G’wan with you. It was Brian Boru … And do you know who it was used to make wine out of the whorts? I’ll bet you don’t know that either.”

“I don’t know, and I don’t give a damn … Who was it?”

“Ah, you don’t know nothin’. It was the Danes.”

(“My throte is cut into the nekke bone!” seyde this child … Bored Silberstein. Deliberately, in that particular way. Coming the highbrow. Why did I do it? Some sort of relief — catharsis. Too bad we had to stop when we did. A good thing we had to stop when we did. I’d have told him everything. I’d have told him about — Why did I lie to him about her physical attraction? But I only recognized the lie as I told it. So did he. She was pure as the snow, but she drifted. PURE as the snow, but she drifted. And the next time I met her she was all dressed in black. Back. Smack. Crack. Clack. Attack. Golden engine and silver track. The golden engine on the silver track. I am wounded with a deep wound. ὄτατοι ποποὶ δα. He prescribed whisky — hemostatic and astringent. Whisky; and a modest prayer.)

“—Mexico, if a girl is married, and her husban’ find out she is not — what you call? verges? — he take her back to her father and mother. And so, everybody know; and she have no more chances. No, sir.”

“Is that so.”

“Is that so.”

“—plough mus’ plough

And the bull mus’ bull …”

The cow mus’ cow,

And the bull mus’ bull …”

“—and if I was to tell you the Soo Canal flows uphill—ahip! — you wouldn’t believe it, would you, and you’d think you was smart!.. but what I’m tellin’ you is facts and figures … I was workin’ there for three—”

“And he put his head out and yelled, ‘Hey! How do you expect me to find my ring when there’s a guy in here lookin’ for his motor bike!’”

“Ha ha ha ha!”

“Such is the life of the Queen of Spain.”

“Three months of leisure, then—”

“A triple whisky, steward.”

“Triple? yes, sir.”

“—and the girl, she said, ‘But, mama! how you can be sure this trick will work? How you can be sure it will fool my fiancé?’ … And mama, she say, ‘Well, I ought to know! It’s the same way I fooled your old man!’ Ha ha! And the old man, he was under the girl’s bed all the time, listening! Ha ha!.. That was a good one, eh?”

“Another jackpot. Who can open it?”

“Nobody can open it.”

“Sweeten the pot, then, boys!”

“Triple whisky, sir. Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“—and all the time she went on scrubbin’ the floor, scrubbin’ the floor. And then she said, without turnin’ round her head to see who it was, ‘Niggerman, Ah ain’t seen yo’ face — and Ah don’ know yo’ name; but lemme tell you, Ah’s here every Friday afternoon—’”

“Hello! is that the foghorn?”

“Somebody said there was a—”

“Good evening, Major.”

“Good evening, Mr. Demarest.”

“You’ve been very inconspicuous all day? We’re suspicious of you. How’s the Welsh Rarebit?”

“I feared there might be suspicions! He he! That’s the worst of attaching oneself to anything so flagrant. Everyone knows, unfortunately, that the attachment can only be—”

“Naturally!”

“Well, believe me, she’s a hot one. And she’s all there, too.”

“You aren’t suggesting that she’s intelligent?”

“Dear me, no! She hasn’t the intelligence of a — barn door. But she’s all there physically.”

“Oh, physically. So Ashcroft said.”

“Ashcroft? What does he know about it?”

“She went up to his room last night. He told Hay-Lawrence about it.”

“Did she! Well, I’ll be damned. Went to his room!”

“Yes, twelve o’clock last night. He told her how to get there — up in the first cabin, you know — and she carried a book, so as to pretend she was just returning it, in case any question arose. But it all went off quite successfully. She’s got plenty of nerve, all right.”

“Well, I’ll be — hoodooed! That’s why she’s been—”

“—what?”

“—stalling.”

“She stalled with Ashcroft. He was mad as a wet hen. All she would do was fool about with him. He finally booted her out.”

“Oh!.. Well, that’s just the conclusion I had come to — that she’s a teaser. What they call a ‘mugger.’”

“You ought to be thankful.”

“Oh, anything to pass the time!.. Did I tell you she wants me to take her out to Mespot with me?… Yes, she’s begging me to take her, as a housekeeper. I can see the face of the General’s wife if I turned up with Peggy Davis in tow! Great Heavens … She dropped a pretty broad hint that there would be more to it than housekeeping.”

“I don’t doubt there would.”

“You know, there’s something fascinating about a woman like that — I suppose there must be something wrong with her. Some sort of twist. I wish I could make out that husband business. She showed me pictures of him, all right — but the whole thing seems a little wanky. She reminds me of a girl that picked me up in a theater in Cincinnati.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. The same type … It was a funny thing. I had an overcoat on my lap, and all of a sudden I felt something tickling me. At first I thought it was accidental. I waited a little and it began again. It was quite dark, you know — some scene with a spotlight on the stage, and the rest of the lights turned out. And this girl was, very timidly, exploring under my coat with her hand — trying to find my hand … He he! She approached and retreated several times before she succeeded, and when she did succeed she gave a jump, and withdrew her hand again. Only for a minute, though — back it came. First, just our little fingers kept foolishly tapping each other. It was ridiculous. Then she suddenly became bolder, and slid her hand right over on top of mine — and after that, things became really riotous. And then came the joke. Do you know what she was?”

“No — what?”

“A social service investigator!”

“What! No.”

“Yes, sir, a social service investigator. She was connected with a college hospital out there. Someone told her there was lots of ‘picking up’ in the vaudeville theaters, so she thought she’d investigate. Anyway, that’s what she said. So she investigated me!.. It was quite apparent, however, that the investigation wasn’t disinterested. She was out for adventure, in her half-scared little way.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged.”

“Rum, what? as the English say … Well, it’s early, but I’m off. Have a nightcap?”

“No, thanks, I’m half tight already. I guess I’ll turn in myself. I was just on the point when you came in … Good night.”

“Good night.”

Single Stroke. Trembling.

Follow Red Arrow To Boat Station No. 2.

Gentlemen.

142–156.

Boddy-Finch Lifejacket.

— Is that you, Demarest?

— Yes, this is Demarest. Who is that speaking, please?

— This is Demarest Two-prime. How do you do.

— Same to you, and many of them.

— As doctor to patient, I would suggest — ahem — a little sublimation.

— Kindly take the first turn to the left and go straight on till you get to hell.

— Yes. A little sublimation. A nice little pair of wings, now? All God’s chilluns’ got wings? A pair of gospel shoes?

— Take them back to the pawnshop. No sublimation! Inter feces et urinas nascimur. So let me live until I die.

— You must be careful not to slip back. Onward and upward forever. To higher things, and more complex: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus. This love of yours must be kept pure, precious, and uncontaminated. A guiding star. Dante and Beatrice. Art, too. Ma tu, perchè ritorni a tanta noia? Perchè non sali il dilettoso monte Ch’è principio e cagion di titta gioia?… Up, my lad! Up Helicon once more! Once more into the breach!

— Thank you kindly, sir, she said. It isn’t sublimation I want, it’s a bath of blood.

— Civilization is sublimation … Simple to complex. Animalcule to synapse. Synapse to holdover. Holdover to art. Selah.

— It isn’t sublimation I want, it’s drowning.

— That play, now — the very moment to begin it. There they are — you see them? On a darkened stage. The hero is lying in bed. He is unconscious, result of mental and spiritual exhaustion. Poor devil. And then, from the shadowy background, the Chorus comes forward! The tyrant father! The incestuous mother! Narcissus with a hand glass!

— It isn’t sublimation I want, it’s a bath of blood.

— Terror, with the dull brow of the idiot! and the Dark Self Who Wants To Die! You see them? And they have begun quarreling! They are quarreling for the possession of your poor body that lies on the bed! The Messiah! You!

— It’s a bath of blood. Not evolution: revolution. Red riot. I’m tired. Tired of clutching the inviolable shade.

— Nonsense. This is momentary. Or else, enduring — leads you, by devious ways, through mists and poisons — you know it perfectly well … The very moment for the play. All this agony can be projected, and being projected will be healed. Fixed in immortal shape: turned to stars like Cassiopeia. Look! Look! How she shines already!

— Fleshpots!

— You deceive yourself. Granted the fleshly origin, — but it’s too late to turn back. Know your fate, Demarest! You ARE complex! To return to the simple is for you impossible! Misery! You must follow out your neurosis!

— To its bloody roots. Enough, Two-prime! Pay attention to your collar button and leave this affair to me. Cursed are they thay enjoy their suffering: for they shall never be healed.

— You may bury his body in the Egyp’ garden,

You may bury his body in the Egyp’ garden,

You may bury his body in the Egyp’ garden,

O his little soul’s goin’ to shine.