Great Circle

I

Why be in such a hurry, old fool? What good is hurry going to do you? Wrap yourself in a thick gauze of delay and confusion, like the spider; hang there, like the spider, aware of time only as the rock is aware of time; let your days be as leisurely and profound as months, serene as the blue spaces of sky between clouds; your flies will come to you in due season. Must you always be running desperately from minute to minute? Have you such an appetite for action? Have you such a passion for decisions? Must you always be snatching your hat from its peg in Shepard Hall, Shepard Street, Cambridge, Mass., and rushing out to an encounter with some one, with any one, with every one? Must you forever be listening for the telephone to ring, or the doorbell; hoping that it will be Floyd, with news of a wild party; or Celia, who wants you to dance with her at the Brunswick; or Bert, drunk, with a new poem which he is frantic to read to you; or a total stranger with the keys to hell? By all means accept the invitation to hell, should it come. It will not take you far — from Cambridge to hell is only a step; or at most a hop, skip, and jump. But now you are evading — you are dodging the issue. You do not really desire to drink with Floyd at a wild party, nor to hear Bert’s poem, nor to dance hieratically with Celia in the Egyptian room; you do not even desire to go to hell with a total stranger, for, after all, Cambridge is hell enough. What you really desire is the simple finality of action, or of decision; you have yet to learn the most elementary facts about life. And what, my dear Andrew Cather, are the elementary facts of life?… Why, you poor idiot, you know them perfectly well, or you ought to, at thirty-eight. Permit yourself to be sifted by time, slowly, — be passive — wait. Learn to rot gently, like the earth: it is only a natural rot that is creative. The least violence, the least hurry, the least eagerness for action or decision, the least forcing of the issue—!

Damn — blast — putrefaction.

The tendency of his thought becoming unbearable, he jumped up, snatched his ticket from the window sill beside the Pullman chair, and bolted toward the smoking car. A pale girl reading a magazine listlessly, her knees crossed under green satin: she looked up at him with wan evocation. She was bored, she wanted to talk to some one, her reading of the magazine was only a pretense. Too bad, darling — but I’m afraid it can’t be easily enough managed. The conductor, in a chair at the end of the car, counting tickets and making notes with a pencil. The green curtains over the men’s room awry, and a fleeting vision of a sad salesman, cigar in hand, who stared uncomprehendingly at the sliding Rhode Island landscape. His suitcase, cracked at one seam, stood on the black-leather settee. Poor devil — on his way back to Boston, from Bridgeport, defeated; the other salesmen had been before him. He was cursing the trees, the hills, the wind, the infrequent drops of rain that grazed the windows, leaving chains of fine beads; he was cursing them without seeing them.… Then the corridor between cars, swaying violently, knocking and bumping, with the little iron stepping-stone which was always to be avoided by the wary foot: it creaked and sidled. He stepped over it, smiling, and entered the smoking car. The familiar smell of soot and tobacco smoke, of stuffy plush and foul spittoons — garboons! — arched his nostrils: he felt more masculine, and more at home, as he chose a chair in which was a newspaper.

The Premier of France was ill. The boxing commission of New York had disqualified Zylenski. Prices were lower on the big board, owing to the usual week-end profit-taking. The President had received a committee of boy scouts: photograph of a weary handshake. Miss Dolores Vargas, new star of the talkies, was said by her friends to be engaged to a prominent Chicago banker: photograph of Dolores waving a handkerchief from the rear platform of a train. The Maroons had beaten the Bruins in overtime. The boll-weevil was moving north, a drought in the east Sierras was causing serious alarm about the water-supply in Nevada, Oswald Morphy, well-known author, was dead, Klenkor would remove corns and bunions quickly and painlessly in two or three applications.… And the murderer of Jennie Despard, Providence schoolteacher, had not yet been apprehended. An automobile salesman was missing from his home in Putnam, and while the police authorities declined to state that they connected this in any way with the murder, they admitted that they were anxious to ascertain his whereabouts. Mark Friedman. A married man with two children: his wife was prostrated. Best of luck to you, Mark: you’ll need it. And she probably deserved it, too — though was it entirely necessary to do it with a hammer? Still, there is no accounting for tastes. The poor man might have been in a hurry.

Hurry — hurry — hurry — everything was hurrying. The train was hurrying. The world was hurrying. The landscape was hurrying. The wheels rushed blindly over the rails, over the joints, over the switches: rat-te-tat-te-tattle-te-tat-te-tump-te-tattle-te-tee. The locomotive driver, or the fireman (it was probably the fireman), was obsessed with the panic of speed, and blew prolongedly and repeatedly on the whistle. Scarcely a minute was left unpunctuated by the moan of the whistle. Horses in twilight-brown pastures threw up their tails and galloped away for a moment, turning alarmed heads. Birds darted in clouds, zigzag, off wires, swooped, circled, glided to rest again. The whole world, it seemed, was to be made conscious of the important hurry of the train. For wasn’t this train, this Knickerbocker Limited, like everything else a consummation of eons of evolution? Wasn’t it the categorical imperative? It was achieving its terrific destiny. Like the daisy in the field, or the honeysuckle, or the hummingbird, or the fungus, it was pushing its way blindly and terribly to its end. Nothing could stop it. Nothing?… And here was himself also, Andrew Cather, hurrying from point to point on the earth’s surface, describing his swift little arc: and all these things were a part of him, a symbol for him. Here was this eternal rush, of which the external speed was merely an index, a portent, of the internal panic. Panic! God forbid. Was it anything so bad as panic? Must one always be taking things so seriously? Must this fever in his brain be forever urging him to a passion for consummations?

Calm yourself, old fool. Survey this row of dead faces opposite you: these hard business men, these watchers of ticker tape, these casters of balances, these signers of important letters and foreclosers of mortgages. Do they allow themselves to be rushed into decisions? Do they walk at midnight, hatless, in a rain, plopping through puddles, because of a secret anguish in the heart? When their offices are closed for the day, and the stenographers are gone, and everything is quiet, do they stretch themselves on the floor in paroxysms of weeping? Absurd. They have no hearts. Or if they have, they have learned the secret of the granite: they are silent, they wait, they fall instinctively into the slow rhythm of the stars, everything at last comes to them. But you, you poor idiot, you simulacrum of a soul — good God, what a fool you are. Here you go, outstripping with speed of mind the speed of this train. You are already in Cambridge, you are already noiselessly letting yourself into your flat in Shepard Street, you are already standing, just inside the door, and listening to hear if your excellent wife Bertha is at home. Not a sound — not a whisper — not the creak of a board. You cast a furtive look at the chairs in the hall: what is it that you are expecting, or even almost hoping, to see? A hat? A man’s hat? No, you avert your eyes from the thought. You had not really expected this. But you are curious, just the same, and that is why you are here, three days before she had expected you. It is like a melodrama. But that has nothing to do with it. If life chooses to imitate a cheap melodrama, why then it is obvious enough that you have to behave like a character in a melodrama — a ridiculous hero with a permanent expression of long-suffering, or a villain with violent mustaches. And so you are acting the part: you are stealthy, you walk swiftly and softly on the balls of your feet, you half hold your breath as you approach the sitting room, you crane your neck at an unnatural angle in your endeavor to reassure yourself that there is indeed no one there.… But supposing there should be some one? Ah. This is what you really want. You really want to find some one there. Do not deny it — do not pretend. You are deliberately seeking a catastrophe — you are yourself in the act of creating a disaster. You want to see your life violated, broken in two, your precious secrecy exposed in a yellow light of pure horror. Could you not have avoided this? Could you not have ignored Fred’s letter? My dear Andy: it’s none of my business, perhaps, and probably you’ll be the last to thank me; that’s always what happens, but I wouldn’t be doing my duty to you as a friend if I didn’t write to tell you — Oh, Christ. Why read it again? Why remember it? Why act upon it? Why not get off at Providence and return to New York, precisely as if it were a return to sanity? It was growing dark, they were crossing a river, a row of lights sped across rain-sodden ice, a lamp was lifted in a farmhouse window. Whoooo — whooooo—the demon fireman blew his whistle again, prolongedly, nostalgically, into the gathering gloom, rain began pattering again on the train roof and grazingly along the windows, came and went in flaws of needles. My dear Andy, it’s none of my business. My dear Andy, it’s none of my business. But whose business was it, then? Was it Tom’s? Was it Bertha’s? Was it God’s? Perhaps it was nothing at all. Perhaps they were merely playing duets. Side by side on the long mahogany bench, leaning together, leaning apart, Tom the bass and Bertha the treble, the Haydn Surprise, the Drum-roll Symphony, his foot on the pedal, her hand on the page. Shall we take that again? We’ll start at G in the second bar. Haydn duet, hide and do it. The clock was ticking, the curtains were drawn. Shepard Street was outside in the rain, everything was cosy, everything was peaceful, New York was far away, merest of whispers in the southwest, and Andy — what was Andy? A ghost behind the music, a shadow beside the hearth, an echo in the corridor. He was an old raincoat in the cupboard, a towel in the bathroom, a napkin ring in the sideboard, a name on the letter box. He was a handful of bills on the hall table, a catalogue of second-hand books, a pair of rusty skates in an old trunk. And the cocktail shaker on the Japanese tray, the shaker that leaked, Tom holding it muffled in a handkerchief, shaking it over the hearth while he laughed — come on, Andy, let’s have another round — the night is young — let’s get well oiled and go and see Dynamite Gus — come on, Bertha; come on, Andy — I’ll pay for the taxi — we’ll have some arak at the Greek’s, and ringside seats at the Garden. Have you read the Childermass? Let’s experiment with the Kieseritzky gambit, or the fianchetto. The new record of the “Love of the Three Oranges.” Let’s walk to Fresh Pond in the rain, visit the pumping-station, or drop a tear on the tomb of Henry James. Plymouth for the week end. Chocorua. A game of poker at the new bookshop. Come on, Bertha, come on, Andy, I’m back from a faculty meeting and I want to raise hell. Tea at 3.30. Meeting at 4. The committee appointed to prepare a minute on the life and services of the late John Jacob Morrison, Professor of English, Emeritus, will present the minutes to the faculty. Recommendations from the administrative board for changes in the Regulations for Students in Harvard College, of which the most important is that section 14 be amended as follows. Let’s discuss methods of suicide. Potassium cyanide. Tell Bertha you’re spending the night with me, and we’ll take Louise and Molly to Concord. Treason! Treason! The treason spoke innocently through the Haydn, rose softly and guilelessly under the fingers of Tom, under the onyx signet ring, under his long brown hands, the wrists held high and arched, under the wedding ring on Bertha’s fourth finger, on whose inner surface was a fine incised inscription. Treason chimed with the chiming clock, a present from Tom, wreathed itself in a water color of nasturtiums, shone softly on the opened score from a shaded lamp. Where is Andy? Andy’s in New York, said the bass. Come on, Bertha—

This must stop, this turmoil must stop. The Maroons had beaten the Bruins in overtime. The Prince of Wales had been thrown by his horse Beautiful Blonde Sues Millionaire Scion for Heart Balm. American Womanhood Purest in World, says Bishop. Tax Scandal Shocks Senate. Rain will be followed by snow. Unseasonable warmth soon to end. Blizzards in far West, Denver under three feet of snow, villages in Rockies cut off from the world. Krazy Kat Is On His Way. Says you? Says me. Utilities Lower on Curb. Love Baron Leaves Hollywood. Oh, yeah?

— You can’t teach ’em a thing.

— You can teach ’em, but they won’t learn.

— They don’t want to learn.

— Believe me, I’m through.

— God! and those hotels.

— Never again for me, no sir.

— Say, porter, what about a cigar.

Pack of cards, informative bid, clubs, diamonds, pass. Amherst Quintet Invades Crimson Territory Tonight. Lapp Life Studied in Racial Investigation. The Lapps are a nervous class of people and would be termed neurasthenics … where a stick was whacked against the side of a tent, the inhabitants fainted from fright …

God’s Providence is our inheritance. One hour to Boston. Once more the train gathered speed, fled through dwindling suburbs into the night, whistled for crossings, devoured immense spaces of darkness, clattered past interminable strings of freight cars on a siding, swooped over bridges, lurched, steadied, whistled again and again. Small stations whirled past, dimly lighted, their wooden platforms glistening with rain, their names telescoped with speed. Hurry — hurry — hurry — everything was hurrying, the world was hurrying, the night was hurrying. The bells for a crossing chattered madly ahead, rose to a higher note, fell away behind to a sad minor murmur, were lost. He closed his eyes. The back of his hand rested against the cold glass of the window, vibrating; smoke stung his nostrils; long lights flew beside him in bright parallels; this was Andrew Cather. Calm yourself, you idiot — pull yourself together — you must regain control. Think of New York, the stars in the Grand Central Station, the girl who dropped her ticket at the gate, blushing as she stooped to pick it up, looking over her shoulder. Think of the fern-fringed fountain in the lunchroom at the hotel, old Rodman scratching his beard with a pencil while he figured the cost of the textbook, the marble clock, the rows of brass keys behind the desk. Mr. Cather, please — Number 218—Mr. Cather, please. Fred’s letter. My dear Andy, it’s none of my business. It’s none of my business. Think of the blocks of ice in the urinals, the disinfected sweetness of the telephone booths, the silent corridors of plush, the stealthy chambermaids with jingling key rings. Drive down Broadway at night, as if flying into the heart of a vast fiery opal. Take the express and change to a local at 14th Street. Climb the dirty stairs to the elevated, reading all the enameled advertisements, clacking through the heavy turnstile with a nickel.

— What I mean is—

— Oh, sure—

— … kind of a turbine principle—

— … on the level, yes—

Wah-wah-wah-wah—the voices all rose at once against the clamor of the train through a deep cutting. It’s none of my business — Oh, of course not. But it was a mere disinterested love of music, that was all. Companionship. Years and years of it. Just like a brother. Come on, Andy — come on, Bertha — we’re going to Revere Beach, we’ll have a drunken battle with marshmallows on the boardwalk, we’ll find the monkey in the cage, we’ll raise a little polite hell. He waved the gin bottle over his head, gave a whoop, clutched Bertha, and began dancing along the hall. Bertha screeched, slapped her hands against his chest, pulled his ears. A harmless lark, they had so many tastes in common, like brother and sister. Why, for years Tom and Bertha hadn’t missed a night at the Sanders Theater concerts. No indeed. How they loved Haydn! How they adored Bach! What about a little Brandenburg tonight? and a little ravioli to begin with? what about the North End? what about the fortuneteller? Bertha’s eyes were on Tom while the dark lady studied her palm. What was the look in her eyes which had so struck him at the time? Nothing. Sense of change, sense of time, the flowing away of all things, cloud shadows on falling leaves. Who was Bertha? Bertha, to begin with, then Bertha plus one, Bertha plus two, Bertha plus three: never the same again. The sudden kiss in Craigie Street, the laugh, the shock, the readjustment to terrific wonder, the wedding, the honeymoon, and then the amazing flight of years and places, the dance of rooms, the dance of apartments, the dance of houses, the chorus of changing voices and faces. And now, after ten years, it was Bertha plus four, Bertha with Tom, Bertha with music, her arms grown heavier at the shoulders, her clothes more careless, fond of cocktail parties and dances, golf at Belmont, lunch with the Sewing Circle. Well, by God, if it was true—! Treason. Horror. He jumped to his feet, flung down the paper on the seat, and hurried forward. Pocahontas. The passengers were beginning to be restless, old ladies were waking up, the porter was gathering the bags from their reluctant owners and carrying them to the vestibule. Swaying, he touched the green velvet back of a chair, then another, then a third. A long row of lights fled past the windows, illuminated houses rushed at them and rushed away again, a cement wall converged on them perilously, whipped a series of swift column shadows at them, and was gone. Cordaville? One of the Newtons? Auburndale? The houses closed in on them, their path was being narrowed, one deserted station succeeded another. He sat down, put his feet on his suitcase, closed his eyes, and listened to the delicate sound of the rain on the roof and windows, which could be heard as a secret accompaniment to the train’s violent storming of suburb after suburb. The Harvard Club, first — cocktails and dinner at the Harvard Club, a little leisure, a little peace, time to pull himself together, to muster the phrases, the attitudes. What attitudes? A genial bursting in, gay homecoming, followed by instant surprise? Bewilderment? An entrance quiet and suspicious? Announced beforehand by the bell from below? Unannounced? Suppose they were at the piano. Ah yes. Then the easy comradely smile. But why are you home so soon? Why, indeed. But suppose, on the other hand—! And the phrases. Hello, darling — are you there, darling? Or perhaps it had better be in the plural. Idiot! What you need is a few drinks at the club — that will put you right, don’t worry, wait. Relax. Believe in God and the sanctity of marriage, not to mention the holiness of friendship. Have faith in Massachusetts and the Pilgrim Fathers. How do you do, Tom; hello, Bertha — what a fortunate coincidence to find you together — did Gieseking play on Thursday? Is there any ice in the icebox? Wonderfully mild weather for the time of year, isn’t it? But the papers say the rain will turn to snow before morning. Don’t stop playing — do go on — shall I turn the pages for you — or the sheets? Have I come to the right place? Is this Shepard Hall, Shepard Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts? Or was it two other fellows? Excuse me for intruding. I must have made a mistake. Haven’t we met before somewhere? — your face is very familiar — too damned familiar, if you ask me — and now let’s all join hands and have a good laugh together. But on the other hand—? No, no, no, no, no. Not. Never. Couldn’t. Not that! This is no place for old-fashioned melodrama, we don’t do such things in Cambridge, no indeed. There are no beds in Cambridge — how could we be so vulgar? My dear Tom, it’s none of my business, I’ll be going, just dropped in to see how you two lovebirds were getting on; hope everything is going swimmingly, that’s fine, O. K., see you in hell one of these days, good-by, good luck, God bless you, send in the bill. We aim to please. By the great love I bore you — Christ. Bores me, the sum.

With long thrusts, with smooth and powerful lunges of speed, they overtook another train, measured bright window against bright window, drew abreast of statuesque lethargic passenger after passenger, newspapers, hats, hands lifted or falling, swaying coats, listless inquiring eyes, men, women, girls, a final clack, and gone. The porter bent deprecatingly with his whisk, he rose and followed him, fishing in his pocket for a quarter, feeling for the right size, the milled edge.

— You all gettin’ off Back Bay, boss?

— Yes, I’ll take my bag myself.

— All right, boss.

The pale girl in green satin passed him, humming, holding her thin arms away from her thin swaying body for balance, the white hands a little lifted, self-conscious. Too bad, darling — where have you been all my life? If only you had introduced yourself more efficiently, perhaps at the ticket gate, or last night, or last year, things might have been very different. We’d now be like an old married couple. What secrets left? None. Do you perspire freely? Snore? Chew gum? Sing in your bath? Do you scratch the mole on your left clavicle every night till it bleeds? Cascara or castor oil? And exactly how good a liar are you? Liars need good memories. Yes, indeed. Don’t forget how you were caught in that little fib about Mehitabel Mockingbird and the dead pansy, or that other one about Methuselah and his sponge bag. Ah ha! We know all about it. And my God, the quarrels, the late night wrangles, the three-day silences, the weepings in dark rooms face downward on disheveled beds, the blows struck in sudden fury, the livid eyes of hate over the morning grapefruit! And lying beside each other for sleepless hours at night, the hands clenched, the eyes wide open but unseeing, eyeless at Gaza, while the digestion of each in turn interrupts the dramatic silence with obscene squeals and snickers. Love? after all that? My dear woman, pull yourself together. Go your way, take your little smells and snoops to another station, send your laundry to the North Pole, order a sandalwood coffin at Woolworth’s.… Marriage. In Cambridge there shall be neither giving nor taking in marriage, but all shall be as one sex, and that shall be without which is without, only the dead moon will dare to maculate the red macula. My dear Andy—

He put on his hat, his heart was beating, he felt a curious constriction in his throat, as if speaking would be difficult, his voice somehow misplaced. Think, you idiot! Think — don’t feel. Be calm. Cast a sure and slow balance of the figures in the situation, weigh the years one with another, measure each room, each wall, against the last. Why, to be sure, the sitting-room in the Shepard Hall apartment was smaller, much smaller, than the lounge at the Harvard Club, and there was no bar beneath it, nor was there a bison’s head above the fireplace, nor a pair of brass shells from the Somme. There were no palm trees in it, as in the lobby of the Touraine, not even a newsstand behind which one could take shelter: and as for the natatorium, why, the poor fool of an architect had left that out entirely. Just the same, they were getting on swimmingly. Come on, Andy, come on, Bertha, come on in, the water’s fine. Let’s walk down to the Square and get a cup of coffee; let’s go down and skate on the Common; let’s see what there is at the movies and make loud remarks about the hero. But it was all so innocent, so natural and boylike, so good-natured, so ringed about with brassy and wholesome laughter, how could one suspect anything wrong?… Patience. Run the eye slowly along the edge of the chair back, note the reflected lamp in the dark lustrousness of the windowpane, and another station passing; listen to the mournful rain-quenched cry of the whistle, cut off abruptly by a bridge, released again, silent. The train began shuddering and slowing, shuddering and slowing, lurched, glided, lurched again, and then quietly, evenly, with rhythmic soft hisses of steam which fogged the windows, no longer like a train, but like a ship on even keel in quiet waters, slid past slowing lights, and stopped with a last prolonged profound sigh.

— Back Bay … Back Bay.

— Back Bay.

— Back Bay.

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the rang’d empire fall. Here is my — station. A taxi, please. And now the solid rain-drenched antipathy of Boston, the buildings in Copley Square all aloof and black, Trinity Church withdrawn and cowled in rain like a weeping nun, the Library staring down from an immense height with Florentine hauteur — what was this change, this difference, this withdrawal of friendliness? It was a new and hostile city. The people were foreigners, the wet streets were menacing, the bare trees brooded like skeletons over Commonwealth Avenue. We knew you, Andy. We know you not. We knew you, Andy. We know you not. Was this the guy that went to New York with bells on and now returns with horns? Give him a hand, boys, give the little fellow a great big hand. Drop a twig on him or a dead leaf, or maybe a brick. That’s the guy — that little feller in the Armstrong taxi, with the text of a textbook on Spanish literature in his suitcase. Tu pupila es azul. Y quando lloras—What was that dirty crack? No more of that. Cold shoulder him, boys — it’s nothing but El Diablo Mundo. The very spittin’ image with number eight shoes, a Harvard Coop hat, and deformed toenails. Cut him dead. What he’s got he deserves. He was askin’ for it. Give him the snake’s eye, Fairfield Street, Gloucester Street, Hereford Street, Massachusetts Avenue—! He’s made his bed, let his friend lie in it. Wot’s de flower bed between friends? Begonia. Look how nervous he is. He’s sticking his finger down his collar for no good reason. Not a thought to his navel. Say, if he had to pay the taxi by the heartbeat! Call the taxicologist, and we’ll have him stuffed. To the Peabody Museum with him, quam celerrime, we’ll show him up. Give him a birthday present. Ha! For Christ and the Church.

Horror preceded him into the Harvard Club, but evaded him among these friendly walls and stained-plaster Corinthian columns. Even here the familiar, the warm, the assuring, eyed him aslant, sneered when he turned his back. My dear Andy, it’s none of our business, but—! And what should stare him in the face but a row of telephone booths, five of them numbered, the sixth a pay station. A Greek Chorus. Stationary chorus. Call her up, Andy — give the poor girl a chance. Our ears are in Shepard Street. Warn her! Tell her you’re coming home after dinner! Tell her to ask Tom in for a drink! Make it easy for her, leave it all in darkness, in subterfuge, in evasion, in the hell of the forever unknown. Hello, darling! Is that you, Chuck? This is Andy. Yes, Andy — your premature Andy, back from the bright lights, back from the unearthly paradise, wizened little Tithonus returned from false heaven. But we won’t go into that, no, we’ll talk of something else. I meant nothing by it. Just my foolish little joke, that was all. Make the bed up, hang clean towels in the bathroom, run to the corner fruit store for another can of grapefruit juice, and start the cocktails.… No, impossible. This must not be evaded — whatever the issue, the situation must first of all be faced. No warnings, no signal, not even an inquiry at Tom’s apartment to find out if he were absent — in a melodrama one must above all be melodramatic. If later one prefers to turn it into a farce—

And who should be standing at the bar, eating little-neck clams as usual, but Jitter Peabody, that ruined scion of a noble race, half-shot too as always, leaning with supercilious languor against the bar, his long horse-face flushed with gin, his drooping mustache dripping clam juice on to his weak chin.

— Hello, One-eye!

— Mr. Peabody, I presume?

— You do presume.

— I suppose you wouldn’t join me in a little mild elbow lifting? The better the deed, the better the day.

— No, I’ve sworn off till I finish these sea fruits.

— Tom, you might take this flask, and empty it, and make as much old-fashioned out of it as it’ll make. And you might get me a dozen of these little pink little-necks. And two glasses.

— Good evening, Mr. Cather — yes, sir. That’ll go quite a little ways.

— What’ve you been doing, Jitter?

— None of your damned business.

— That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. Only the other fellow was politer.

— That must have been in New York — couldn’t have been in Boston.

— How did you guess it?

— I was in the train with you.

— The hell you say! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?

— I saw you, but I was asleep at the time. Only just waked up.

— Ah, I see. So you were in New York on business.

— Shhhhhh. Very private. I went down on the midnight and came back this afternoon.

— Alone?

— Legally speaking. I’d have stayed, but my fiancée expects me to dinner.

— Thanks, Tom. Come on, Jitter. I’m thirsty and heartbroken.

— What you need—! You damned walking textbook.

— We won’t go into that.

— No, you wouldn’t.

— Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

This turmoil must stop, and Jitter would help to stop it, Time out. Time out for a little peace, a little leisure, a little cool unhurried reflection, for a calm reshuffling of the pack of marked cards which is the mind. In the presence of a person so disorganized, it was easier oneself to become righteously or recognizably organized: one felt again vividly the numbered inches between the hat and the shoe. Think, you idiot! Think, don’t feel! Your brain depends upon it, the brief roman candle’s parabola of your sanity. Follow green arrow for shuttle train to Grand Central. Follow red arrow for trail to bottom of Grand Canyon. If one had been cornuted, was a chiropodist the thing? Or must one be chiropracted? Kindly remove the imaginary, but all too palpable, horns. A present from my best friend. Kind of him, but so inconvenient when one wears a hat, unless one is a horse. Let us order a striped calico bonnet, with holes for the ears.

— And so, Jitter, you’ve been spying on the Vincent Club again.

— Who told you?

— I won’t have any soup — I’ll begin with the fish.

— So will I.

— But just why you should have gone to all that trouble, to see Boston’s Best Bosomless Beacon Street and Back Bay Beauties clad only in their canvas shifts, I can’t imagine.

— My dear One-eye, that’s only the half of it.

— What was the other half — the better, I hope.

— You’re vulgar. You always were.…

A telephone was ringing. Bertha? University O!O!O! Put the salt neatly on the edge of your plate, my boy. Or fling it over your shoulder. An old Spanish custom, to avert the evil eye. The glass eye was the root of all evil. Green glass eyes on a plush tray — are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Tu pupila es azul. And when you cry, you cry with two eye sockets, but one eye. How much had this affected Bertha? And that heartless nickname! Jesus. It was no wonder. She had probably heard of him as One-eye Cather long before she had met him. With sympathy? Pathos? Horror? Or more likely a mixture of pity and disgust. Poor fellow — he can’t judge distances. Have you heard how he lost it? Such a shame.

— Drink up, Jitter — there’s another round.

— Say, what’s come over you?… anyway.

— Well, what do you mean by that?

Fool. You will now be accused of unnecessary sobriety.

— Aren’t you drinking a little too much for one of your habits?

— Don’t make me laugh.

Jitter pulled his mustaches mournfully, slouched back in his chair, narrowed his long low-lidded eyes.

— You always were a failure.

— Says you?

— Even your talk is a fake.

— One puts the fake in one’s windows.

— Make it singular.

— Window.

— Well, to hell with you anyway.

— Keep the change.

But there was no clock in this room. Time, in this room, was not recognized, was excluded, relegated to the more conscious upper floors, where there was no bar. Singular foresight, for which perhaps one ought to be grateful. Where were they now? Dining at the Commander? At the Greek’s? Oysters, followed by broiled live lobster, or chicken pilaf, or chicken livers en brochette? Sitting opposite each other, with their feet together on the table rung, or side by side in the leather seat in a booth? And where were his hands in that case? The little hard nodule of her garter clasp, felt through the skirt. Unprotesting.… Or in the kitchen at Shepard Hall, side by side beside the stove, a dishcloth hung over his arm, Tom the waiter and Bertha the cook — scrambled eggs or shrimp soufflé.

— What’s wrong with you, anyway? Jitter was saying. I don’t think I ever quite made you out. I don’t think I ever really liked you, even at school. Something fishy about you. Too damned secretive. God knows you can talk the hair off a dog’s back; you can talk all right, but Christ, what a life you lead. Now look at me, you think I’m a drunken rotter, and so I am, and I don’t give a damn, I’ve done everything from digging ditches to laying rails or busting bronchos, I can’t keep a job, every one thinks I’m just a good-for-nothing shite. That’s all right, the point is I’m intelligent and I live my life the way I want to live it, family and conventions can go to hell. I’m honest. But you, One-eye, I think you’re yellow—you’re even afraid of a whore! Good God, I’ll never forget that night when you spent the night at my place and sat there shivering in a blanket when I brought that bitch in at two in the morning to talk to you. Anybody’d have thought you were trying to talk to some God-damned duchess. And that wife of yours — where in the name of God did you ever pick her up! Just the sort of damned Brattle Street lemon you would pick out …

— Thanks for the battalion of compliments. No defense. I’m both yellow and secretive — that’s the fate, my boy, of the self-conscious. Also manic depressive. Advance one day, retreat the next.

Jitter’s drunken gaze, slit-eyed, roved about the room indifferently, as if delighting in nothing it saw, least of all in his vis-à-vis. His collar was dirty, his necktie was skewed to one side, his skeleton fingers were yellow with cigarette smoke. When he talked, it was as if to himself — his diction beautiful, clear, caressing, but the voice monotonous and whining, low-pitched, as if the effort, for one so picturesquely exhausted, were almost insupportable.

— Oh don’t talk to me about psychology. I know all that stuff — I’ve lived it all — what do you know about it? You read books and think you know a lot, but I’d like to see you break a horse, or a woman, for that matter. I know you can sling words better than I can, but where the hell has it ever got you? Here you are writing rotten little textbooks and tutoring for a living and going to your damned little teas — what kind of a life is that.

But there was no clock in this room, this room which had once been the billiard room, this room where so many evenings had been spent in playing cowboy pool with Tom, and which now, decorated with Paris-green Audubon prints of precise birds in fantastic landscapes, had become grillroom and bar. There was no clock, the time seemed as vague as Jitter’s wandering melancholy monologue, full of changes and pauses, ticking and then resting, but with this difference, that after every rest, every pause, it resumed its course more heavily, more menacingly, more swiftly, the tick becoming louder and more insistent, the bloodstream in the artery threatening with every beat of the pulse to breach its walls. It was as if, also, this stream more and more persistently and meanly were choosing and following an inimical direction, like a snake with its eyes on the heart, which nothing could deflect or dissuade. Pressingly and insinuatingly it encroached; forgotten or ignored for a moment, when next looked at it would be a little nearer, a little more vivid, a little brighter, a little more alert. To be in a hurry, but not to be able to hurry — the familiar nightmare sensation, of course, that appalling slow-motion, languid agony, with which one tries to escape the vague claw of the unknown. On the train it had been better, for there one had at least had the satisfaction of being immersed in speed, of rushing forward from one place to another; but even in the train he had felt at moments an almost overwhelming desire to get out and run, as if this more primitive effort might somehow be more effective. Hurry — hurry — hurry — the world was hurrying, the night was hurrying, and nevertheless here was this exasperating slow counterpoint of conversation, this idiotic talk, this exchange of profoundly uncandid candors, each lying laboriously and laconically to the other. And so odd to be perfectly indifferent to Jitter’s drunken and intentionally injurious remarks! What would Jitter make of that? An added yellowness, no doubt. Yes, and then no, he said, no, and then yes, finding that Jitter had reached a point at which replies were immaterial to him. He was talking about the actress to whom he was engaged, describing her, reporting fragments of her vaudeville slang, what she had done in Paris, how they managed to sleep together on the steamer. My dear Andy, it’s none of my business — but suppose it all turned out to be nothing, a delusion? No. It wasn’t a delusion. There had been that look of Bertha’s at the fortuneteller’s, that strange deep, secret look, that appeal as to the person most intimately known and liked. And the episode at the breakfast table, when, breaking a lifelong habit of Cantabrigian modesty, not to say prudishness, Bertha had come to the table in her pajamas, very self-conscious and flushed and so obviously pleased by Tom’s surprise. Was this the way all things ended? Was it inevitable? If not Tom, would it have been another? And precisely how much did it matter? Damn. Blast. Putrefaction. A deep wound opened in his heart. A gulf fell through him, dividing all things, he held hard to the edge of the oak table, trembling.

— She sounds very gay.

— What do I care what you think she sounds like?

— Oh, I don’t give a damn about her.

— She wouldn’t about you.

— That doesn’t worry me, either. I’ve got enough cancers of my own. My dear Jitter, I’m lousy with them. I’m falling to pieces …

— And I’m supposed to be dining with her.

— Good beginning.

— It will probably end like the others. What the hell.

Smiling cynically, mysteriously, he rose without reply to this obviously quite true prediction, and walked rapidly past the bar, across the hall, and into the locker room which smelt of sour male sweat. This is what we smell like. Would a woman enjoy this quintessence? He took the jug and tin funnel from his locker, refilled his silver flask, and then stood for a moment with his forehead against the reticulated ironwork. Time. Nine o’clock. If a taxi to Harvard Square, driving slowly, and then on foot across the Common — the air would clear his head, prepare him for the scene — give him the necessary poise. But would it be late enough? Would they have—? Yes, at this stage, they would. Their time was still precious.

— Harvard Square, please — and make it slow.

— Slow, yes, sir, and which way would you like to go?

— Across the Harvard Bridge, and along Memorial Drive.

— Yes, sir.

A surprise: the bridge was jammed with cars: something must have happened. From curb to curb they were packed, their black tops glistening with rain. Newcomers, joining the slowly moving mass, honked, hooted, skirled their Klaxons, yipped and snarled; but farther on, halfway across the bridge, with its double row of lights, beautifully arched into the night, a string of brilliantly lit streetcars marooned among them, the mass of sedans and taxis seemed to be motionless and silent.

The driver slid back a glass panel.

— This looks like a long job. Will I go the other way?

— No, go ahead, plenty of time.

The motor humming, the clutch engaging and disengaging, they crept forward, weaving a slow passageway among the creeping vehicles. All faces were turned forward, intent, curious, artificially bright over dashboard lights, like illuminated death masks. A hand, holding a cigar, hung out of a window, was held sparkling for a moment in the beam of a searchlight, waved lazily, and withdrew. People sitting upright in back seats, hatted and cloaked, motionless as waxwork specimens, their hands on the window ledges or crossed on their knees. And as they advanced, as they crossed the drawbridge, passed the first of the streetcars, the silence deepened, grew ominous, began to speak a meaning into which all this procession was irresistibly drawn. They were moving into the orbit of something more powerful than themselves — their own purposes, aims, directions, ideas, were suffering a fascinated change — they could no longer go at what speed they liked, or where they liked, but moved, like the lemmings, to the dark sea of their unknown desire. Ahead, to the left, the lights of Riverbank Court, high up, lightly shrouded through the fine rain, appeared to be looking downward at something, as if the dark focus of all this attention were somewhere below them.

— Smash-up, looks like, said the driver.

— It does.

And why not, in the name of God? We specialize in smash-ups. If there’s anything we dearly love, it’s a nice little smash-up. We serve them hourly. And what more appropriate than this bridge, where Longfellow had once octosyllabically sentimentalized, and he himself, Andrew Cather, One-eye Cather, had won a bet of twenty-five cents by walking from Cambridge to Boston on the outside of the railing? X marks the spot. And here, too, the driver of the ice wagon, deep in thought on a summer’s day, had suddenly been catapulted off his high perch, over this same railing, twenty feet down with his cigarette still in his mouth, and drowned. Perfect example of the inscrutability of fate. Because the driver of the car behind the ice wagon had got dust in his eye—! But now the stream of cars was moving a little more quickly — the string of bright street cars had drawn ahead and crossed Memorial Drive — the policeman in his little tower could be seen frantically waving a white-gloved hand — and as at last the taxi swung to the left he saw the dark police boat on the dark rain-stilled water, with a solitary lantern in the bow, and two dark figures leaning waterward over the stern. Ah! they were dragging. Somebody was down there, somebody who this morning had had an egg for breakfast, and a cup of coffee, was down there, aimlessly drifting, his mouth wide open and his hands clenched.

— Draw up where you can, and we’ll have a look at this.

— Yes, sir.

On foot, they dodged through the creeping parade of cars and joined the silent crowd at the water’s edge, three policemen stood on the float. The police boat, which had gone slowly upstream and turned, was now slowly coming back, and it could be seen that the two men in the stern held ropes.

— Who was it?

— An old man.

— They ain’t sure.

— Somebody saw him step off the float at six o’clock. They been dragging three hours.

— Well, he don’t have to worry about his income tax.

The crowd was hushed, all the faces stared downward at the water. The boat turned once more, moved out a little toward midstream, became invisible save for the lantern. The put-put of the exhaust came slowly and intermittently through the night.

— It’ll take them all night. Let’s get going.

— Hell of a job for a night like this.

In the taxi again, he lit a cigarette, and noticed that his hands were trembling. Good God, was this a symbol, a kind of warning? Cling to life, you poor bastard — have your eggs and coffee for breakfast — and be damned glad you’re alive. Is it you down there, with your mouth open? Have you lost your felt hat? Has your watch stopped? Are you cold? What did you do with your money, and the incriminating letter in your pocket? Did you tell the Chinese laundry that they needn’t bother to finish ironing your blue shirt? Did you write to Deirdre in Pawtucket and tell her you wouldn’t be home for the week end? Did you did you did you did you? And if not, why not? And what did you want to die for anyway? Was it love or was it money? Speculation leads to peculation. The rain quickened on the taxi roof, he reached under his raincoat for the flask, unscrewed the silver stopper, and took a drink, a burning little gush of raw juniper-tasting gin, another, a third. No use trying to be sober. The scene would require reckless hilarity, a certain amount of blindness and denseness. Cheerfulness. No good being too sensitive. Let the imagination loose, let it run, let it fly. Give it a couple of alcoholic wings. What ho, Bertha, what ho, Tom, I’m home again with a boxing glove. I had a dozen little-necks with Jitter Peabody, and a flock of cocktails, and then, only pausing for three hours on the Harvard Bridge, I drowned myself, hat in hand. I am still there, lodged in the deep water against one of the piers, bowing, hat in hand, my mouth open in the act of saying Good evening, Madam. Do you see the water that drips from my shoes? The Charles River, my dears: I am newly come from the dead. This is my bright little doppelgänger, my alter ego, who stands before you and screeches with laughter at finding you thus together. Did you both brush your teeth before you went to bed, like good little children? Papa spank. Naughty naughty. You should never, never go to bed without first brushing the teeth. There’s a new toothbrush with black bristles, I especially recommend it for smartness, particularly in cases of mourning. So tactful. Like that story of the young woman in the Paris drugstore—Ah oui, Madame, quelle delicatesse! Madame is a widow! You remember? Tom? Bertha? So run along now and do it and after that I’ll tell you both a nice little bedtime story and you can go to bed again, with visions of sugarplums dancing in your little heads, and in the morning I’ll be Santa Claus and bring you your breakfast in bed. Madam will have a nice little grapefruit? Or a pruin? A few wild oats and cream? My dear Andy—

And this was that street. Yes, that street. Where, a month ago, after the first rumor, after the first quarrel, the first quarrel about the first rumor, he had walked blindly in the snow, under that very arc lamp, along this path, past the power station, the power station where years and years ago there had been a little tank swarming with turtles and alligators and gold fish. Here was the agony in the garden, the public garden. Why must one do such things? Why must one be hurt? Why need one so helplessly surrender? Better have a drink, old fellow. A few minutes more and the taxi will have reached Harvard Square, and there’ll be no chance, unless you prefer to tilt your flask in the rain-dark Common. He lifted and tipped the silver flask, the fiery trickle sluiced his tongue, ran down under his tongue against his teeth, burned the gums, burned the uvula, streaked the throat with flame. A month ago — he had been dead, and then alive again, and was now again dying. It was here that the first forsythia bushes would light their little yellow lights a few weeks hence, here that the young couples would lie on the scented grass in the early summer, the children playing at the water’s edge, where now were broken slabs of scabby ice. Crowds after the football games. Crews practicing in the spring, the coxswains barking through megaphones, the canoes, the motor-launches. And here once with Bertha — under the birch trees beyond the Newell boat-house — at midnight, looking across the velvet darkness of the river toward the lights—“No—” she had said—“no — no — no.” And “Yes—” he had answered, “yes — yes — yes.” The bells, the pleas of water, the slow sleepy seethe of new leaves, the beginning of the world, the quiet beginning. Oh, God, that do’st with toothpicks take the world apart and gladly break the mechanism of the spring for schoolboy glee in such a thing!

— Turn right here — up Plympton Street.

— Yes, sir, I always do miss that turn.

He leaned forward, staring, watched the flight of buildings, wet poles and trees, an empty yard with a forlorn and ruined car standing in gleaming mud, broken palings of a white fence, Mount Auburn Street, the Lampoon building. Here with a snowshoe once. The polychrome marble of the basement floor. The green lampshade full of Mib’s homemade punch. Dooley, with a roller towel around his neck, “pully-hauling down the bay.” And the midnight operas, with Tom at the piano, the screams of bumwad, bumwad, Heeney’s Palace of Pleasure, falling down the thickly carpeted stairs, out of the shower bath, with a cake of soap in his hand—

Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad, bumwad. The first step toward Haydn, and a more refined appreciation of music. Oh, yes! Oh, yes, indeed.

— All right — stop here.

Enter, to grow in wisdom.

A dollar, ten cents for the tip.

And now to take the rain on the chin, and the world on the heart. The solar knockout. Through the Yard? Through the Square? But Tao is round and square by turns, and perfectly indifferent to its participant particles: what does it matter: salute the cheerful lights of the Square: walk under them: bathe in the lamplit perpendiculars of the rain: count the drugstores: the restaurants: the dealers in athletic goods: the skates in the windows: the fur-lined gloves and neckties. In that lighted room up there, as a freshman, I carved my initials on the window sill, meanwhile saying over and over to myself, “tu pupila es azul, y quando lloras—” I who had never wept, to whom tears were unknown, whose little griefs were the merest trifling creak of growing wood. Christ. How things change. And here, all of a sudden, it was almost half past nine, a hundred years later, and gray hairs beginning to show above his ears, rain falling on a row of yellow taxis beside the subway entrance, and now a deep swirling bell striking the half hour, half past nine, half past God, and only a ten minutes’ walk between him and a new destiny with a new dragon shape and new dragon eyes. Be calm, old fellow. Look at it carefully and quizzically, from a distance, measure it with a calculating eye, count the hackles and spines on its back, offer it a tin of condensed milk. Perhaps it will be friendly. Perhaps it will curl up before you like a pet cat, and go to sleep. Why worry? Will a mere disaster kill you? Is love so damned essential? Or pride?

But you should have called her up on the telephone. You should have called her up. It isn’t fair. You aren’t giving the poor girl a chance. Girl? Don’t make us laugh. Yes, just the same, you know it’s true, you should have called her up. Why not do it now. Here at the drugstore. What difference does it make? Even over the telephone, if she’s guilty, she’ll know you know she’s guilty. Say you’ll be home in five minutes: that wouldn’t give her time to put things to rights. All the little telltale things: the caught breath, the changed voice, the ill-chosen word, the overdone welcome, and then the hairpins on the pillow.

He stood at the counter, put his wet hand on the edge of nickel, looked down at the rows of cigars in cedar boxes, the gaudy paper covers with lithochromes of Cuban beauties, flags, palm trees. The row of telephone-booths were just beyond, at the back, beside the little tables and chairs of twisted copper. He saw them with the corner of his right eye. Come on Andy, be a good guy and call her up. Give them a chance. But whose funeral was this? It wasn’t Bertha that was going to suffer — it wasn’t Tom — it was himself. This was nothing but cowardice, cowardice, cowardice masquerading as consideration. The thing must be cut off instantly, with a knife. Fsst: and done. Antiseptic. A pure and beautiful therapeutic murder, severance of connections now no longer real or useful, in order that each of them, released, might continue to grow. Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Just the same—

— Yes, sir.

— A package of Camels.

Just the same—

His eyes were full of rain. Unreasonable. Church Street, where the lilacs used to be, and were no more, and the gray wooden steeple of the Unitarian Church, pointing upward toward the low bright illuminated clouds full of Cantabrigian and Bostonian rain. And the old gymnasium there, among the stables, and the huge book on physiology which they had all read in secret. Sex! Good jumping Jesus, to think of the nuisance, and nothing but nuisance, that sex had been. And after all this time, after a hundred years, at half past nine, or half past God, this final climax. This banal climax.

At the corner of the old graveyard, beside the milestone, he paused in the rain, hung hesitating, watched the brightly lighted Belmont bus splash through a wide sheet of water. Garden Street, or through the Common? Common or Garden? What on earth did it matter? Better take the shorter way, and get the thing over. Past the cannons, which he used to straddle. Past the baseball-field, where he used to strike out every time he came to bat. And the Civil War monument, about which the French architect had said, “Ah! Il est sorti!” This is your life here, here are all the days and nights, the sunlit afternoons, the school mornings, the bird-hunting expeditions to the Botanical Gardens or the Observatory, here was the dancing-school, misery of miseries, where later too, in freshman year, were the Coffee Parties, the Cheap and Hungries, all your past life here lies about you, cauchemar of echoes and whispers, here palpably still vibrating in the rain and darkness. Take hold of them. Resume them. Immerse yourself in them. Pull yourself, as it were, together. You are only a football field in the frost, the hard frozen turf, the raw knuckles, the mud on the cleats, the baseball-glove rubbed with olive oil, the baseball with scarred skin. You are only a drawing of a bowl of nasturtiums, the flowers drawn faintly and delicately, with tenderest self-love, the leaves heavily and boldly outlined, black-leaded, the veins deliberately varicosed. Here you are still bringing across the dance floor a glass cup of lemon sherbet to your darling Bertha, who waits for you in a varnished folding chair, with a white shawl drawn across her young shoulders, the violets pinned to her waist, her eyes still looking up at you shyly as you approach, as you continue forever approaching, like an eternal variable which never reaches its ultimate in God. Shall we sit this one out? Shall we go down to the steps for a breath of air? It’s so hot in here. You know, I’m so afraid I bore you. Bore me! You couldn’t bore a hole in a wall. I saw you yesterday on Brattle Street. Did you really — why didn’t you come and speak to me? I saw you walking with a girl by Fresh Pond. Oh, yes, we went to see the pumping station. And the algae. The algae? The algae. You know, Miss Wentworth is so interested in lichens and algae. Well, it seems a harmless taste, doesn’t it? Would you rather have had chocolate ice cream — I ought to have come and asked you, but there was such a crowd packed round the table that I thought I’d better get what I could. Tom wants the next dance — I think I’d better let him have it. It would look better. Here he is, coming now, laughing as usual, with that long athlete’s lunge of a step, his beautiful slippers turned inward in studious imitation of the Indian walk. Another variable approaching another limit — and now — no no no no no no. But it couldn’t be. No. This is not that time, that year, this is later, another world, another place, another pause between star-ruins, there is no connection, no logic. You are here alone in the cold rain, under the lighted windows of the new apartment house, under those very windows where a fortnight ago the man and girl were found shot in a suicide pact. Two dead in Love Nest. You tear open the package of cigarettes, breaking the blue stamp with your forefinger, pinch the edge of a cigarette between two finger nails, draw it forth, light it on the corner of Concord Avenue and Follen Street. This is you, Andrew Cather: you have changed: you are no longer there, in that dance hall, nor there at Arlington Heights looking for star flower and False Solomon’s Seal and anemone, nor do you still wait patiently for hours in the Botanical Gardens with a pair of opera glasses, hoping to see the scarlet tanager or the grosbeak. These have nothing to do with you. This is dead. You are dead. You are at most a shadow of those events, they no longer concern you: cut yourself off from them: give up forever that pale Narcissus who everywhere wants to walk beside you: beat him down, away, break him as you would break a false mirror, walk freely away from the shining fragments, which still would whisper to you their intriguing lies. This is you, this being whose steps stagger just slightly with alcohol, whose hands just now again trembled as you again lit your cigarette, in whose hip pocket the flask of gin is beginning perceptibly to grow warm: taste it and see. Why this desperate and eleventh-hour attempt to recapitulate? You are engaged in a victory, an exodus, not a recapitulation. Cut them off with a word. Blow them out of the window, out of the world, out of bed, with a word. One ringing word like Roland’s horn, winding among the wind-worn Pyrenees.

Bores me. The sum.

The immediate engulfed him once more, the fine rain saluted him, a gust of cold wind lifted the tail of his coat, and here was Montrose Hall. Tom. Enter, to grow in wisdom. He entered, slipped on the marble floor, the worn wet heel slipping metallically, and slid toward the row of brass letter boxes and the double row of bell pushes: Diana of the Ephesians. Thomas Lowell Crapo. To ring or not to ring. He leaned his forefinger against the button and pressed prolongedly, at the same time lifting down the receiver and listening: he could hear the faint buzz in Tom’s apartment. Why must one hold one’s breath? Was life as exciting as all that? He breathed quickly, held his breath again, again listened to the far-off cicada trill. Is there an adulterous human in that room, sitting perhaps by the window with a book on his knee, or maybe a married woman? Is Troilus at home? Taking a bath? No answer. The room is dark, the cockroaches are scuttling in the pantry, the melting ice drips in the ice chest, the little gold clock ticks patiently by itself on the yellow table. Tom is abroad. Tom has gone forth. He is probably at the Faculty Club, or gone to a burlesque show, or a prizefight. He has gone to the Square to see Greta Garbo. He is playing the grand piano at the Signet to an admiring audience of sophomores and a pederastic philologist. He is walking back from the Square with two doughnuts and a cup of coffee in his belly. He hums the waltz from the “Rosenkavalier,” feeling the chords tensing his long fingers. He is dining with his aunt in Sparks Street. He is doing all these things simultaneously — Why? precisely to avoid doing anything else: safeguarding the world against a catastrophic suspicion: he runs from star to star protesting his innocence: he is a good fellow, a faithful friend. His pockets are full of spider wasps and colloids. He has tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind him of an innocent appointment. Come on, Bertha, come on, Andy, we’ll drive down to Duxbury and have a lobster and some steamed clams. Clam broth. A drive out to the Long Beach, the Gumett. Dead fish on the sand. The sea …

Christ, no.

He released the bell, turned, went out, was reimmersed in rain, walking rapidly and uncertainly, his eyes downward, watching the uncertain thrust of his mud-tipped shoes. Blood was in his face, his neck and throat felt swollen and vague, everything was dimmed and rushed and whirling. Garden Street. In this street once — you broke a watch-chain, wrote a valentine, threw snowballs at the feathered trees. In this street once. The red bricks glistened darkly, became near and important and highly organized, rich-patterned symbol of the complicated world. Speed must replace thought. Action must replace idea. You are now an automaton. Thank God, your revolver is at the bottom of the trunk; by the time you dug it out the impulse would have become ridiculous. Hurry — hurry — hurry — everything was hurrying. The world was hurrying. The rain was hurrying. The water in the gutter was hurrying. Be a child, why not, step into the gutter and walk along in the rushing water: it will conceal your spoor, you will leave no traces for the detectives to follow, and besides it will be such fun. Go on, I dare you. Wet feet? You have been drowned, and are wet all over. But these bricks, now, these dead leaves, now, these limpid braids of brown water, this elaborate pattern of the earth’s floor, this curious wall of star surface on which you walk like a fly — admire it, Andrew, be bewildered by it, let it confuse you in such a way as will be cosmically useful to you in the coming scene. But what if there were no scene? It will be useful anyway. It is your insulation. It is holding you off from your agony. The unimportant has become important in order that the important may become unimportant. Found it marble and left it brick. Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad.

Shepard Street.

The turning point.

A letter box.

Arc light.

Dripping forsythia bushes.

Turn right along boardwalk for fifth act of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Real blood hounds. See Eliza crossing the ice. See little Eva go to heaven.

He walked with dizzy carefulness, tried in vain to place his feet on the dark cracks of the boardwalk, gave it up, and began to smile. It was probably not Tom at all. Or maybe it would be a party. Bert with a new poem. Celia with a new frock. Floyd with a new dance record. Why, for goodness sake, if it isn’t old Andy! But where are your things, Andy! Where’s your bag! What’s happened! Explain yourself! How come you’re back so soon! Welcome home and have a drink. But what about your bag? What indeed. Left it at the Harvard Club by mistake, after too many cocktails — as you can see. Yes indeed. Telephone for it: they’ll send it out in a taxi. All very simple.

Shepard Hall.

He stood, stared, the wind whipping his coat, held up his hand to shelter his eyes from the rain, regarded aslant and unseeing the large wet words of carved stone in the wild lamplight. In this house once. The little red table being taken up the stone stairs. The bedspring being juggled into the shaky old elevator. Old Mr. Macumber sitting on the steps in the summer evening to listen to the whirring of nighthawks. The bare floors, before the rugs had come. The bare walls, before the pictures had been hung. Old newspapers on the floor of the bathroom. The white enamel doors of the ice chest open, showing the lining of dull and stinking tin. Stale smells of former occupation: the history of the world. In this house once — but that was long ago. Prehistoric. Before the flood. Before Christ. Before Tom. Retreat, you idiot. Go back to the Harvard Club. Get your bag and hire a taxi and drive to Duxbury. Duxbury? Why Duxbury? Go to Concord. Go to Montreal. Anywhere. Let the rain and wind decide it for you: they are already shaking you to a decision: urging you towards Garden Street: obey them. This house has ghosts. Its walls are made of nasturtiums and Haydn, its ceilings are a gossamer of lost words and cries, forgotten embraces and tendernesses, rebukes, reproaches, and quick words of anger. Rain rain bubbling from right to left along the granite steps. This house has tears. This house has hates. It has arms, hands, and eyes, it listens to you with a conscious expression which is neither pity nor contempt: it knows you without remembering you. Bid it farewell.

He entered the rococo marble hall, ignored the elevator, feeling as he did so a sharp cessation of breath, and automatically thrust his hand into brass letter box number sixty-four. No letters. Of course not. Bertha would have removed them, as he perfectly well knew. Dishonest device to gain time. What for? Terror. Abject terror. His knees were trembling, blood was singing in the side of his neck, his wet hand still hung tremulously in the cold metal box. Remove it: bring it back to you, inform it that it is still yours. But the bell — what about the bell? Six rings, or seven, or the mystic nine? Something to alarm them and put them on their guard? He rang the bell twice, prolongedly, as at Tom’s, smiled suddenly at his own instant decision not to listen at the receiver, unsteadily entered the elevator, and ascended. At the third-floor gate a woman was waiting, holding an umbrella. On the fourth floor a rubbish box of canvas. On the sixth floor — exit to grow in wisdom. He let himself out, trembling horribly, smiling, feeling like an idiot, paused insanely with one finger uplifted, took out his key, crossed the oilcloth floor on which were muddy footprints, and let himself in, closing the door with a bang. Good God — are you going to faint? Are you so weak? Lean your back against the door, and regard Tom’s hat and stick on the chair, the fur-lined gloves, too, and the wet galoshes. Observe also that there is no light in the sitting room, but a dim light coming from the crack of the bathroom door. All very cosy. All very quiet. Christ. Rain flew across the Shepard Street window.

— Hello!.. Hello, darlings! Lochinvar is home again.

He swept the gloves, hat, and stick onto the floor: the yellow stick clattered. In their place he flung down his own soaked hat and coat.

— View halloo! Tallyho!

The light in the corridor was switched on, and Bertha’s hand and face were motionless, frozen, inclining forward from the bedroom door. The mouth was relaxed, the eyes concentrated, with fright.

— It’s a melodrama, Berty. Will you come forward singly or in pairs?

— Andy!

— Andrew One-eye Cather himself!

The surprised face disappeared, taking with it the white plump hand. The bedroom door creaked very slightly.

— Take your time about dressing: I’ll wriggle some cocktails.… Wriggle is the word.

He stumbled into the sitting room, turned on the light, stood in the center of the Kerman rug under the hideous brass chandelier, and stared out through the black window. Rain. All the way from Boston to New York. Rain devouring New England. Wonders of the Invisible World! And there were the Goddamned nasturtiums too — the nasturtium quid — and the damned little gilt clock, ticking subtly and complacently to itself, for all the world as if it were Tom’s own pulse. Break it. Dash it to smithereens on the red-brick hearth. Step on it, kid — let time be out of joint. But where were they? What were they doing? What were they saying? He listened. Nothing. Not a sound. If they were saying anything, it was in a whisper — a frightened whisper — they were pulling themselves together — wondering what line he would take — pulling on their stockings and shoes — perhaps not daring to look at each other. The room gave a streaming lurch, and to steady himself he put his hand on the corner of the yellow-grained mantelpiece. A Spanish grammar. He plucked the red book out of its place on the shelf, opened it at random, then flung it onto the couch. What about another little drink. Or the cocktails.

In the kitchen, unthinking, he assembled on the table a can of grapefruit juice, a lemon, a small sharp knife, the sugar bowl, the cocktail shaker, and began chipping the ice in the ice box. A cockroach ran out and fell to the floor. Then Bertha’s voice spoke oddly behind him.

— Andy.

He missed his stroke, his hand slipped along the smooth cold surface of ice, then he resumed his chipping, the chunks of ice clunking into the grooved pan.

— I’m sorry, Andy.

— Gosh, is that all. I said this was a melodrama, didn’t I?

He flung the ice pick point forward so that it stuck, quivering, into the wooden drainboard of the sink. Then he began gathering up the broken ice between his two palms and dumping it in the shaker.

— I think we’d better talk reasonably about it.

— Sure. Go ahead. Step right up with a wagonload of reasons. This is going to be fun, by God. Go fetch Tom and tell him to have a drink.

— Look at me, Andy!

— Why the bloody hell should I? But I will, if it’ll do you any good.

He put the cap on the shaker and started shaking, then turned and looked at her, smiling. She had on the Mandarin jacket, a band of black velvet was round her copper-colored hair, her eyes were deep, dark, tear-bright. She leaned against one side of the door.

— I see you, Berty! There you are — the known unknown at last.

— That ought to be something.

— Oh, it is, believe me. Hell, I forgot to put in the grapefruit juice. And the lemons.

He found the can opener, opened the can, breathing heavily, poured the contents into the shaker, sliced three slices of lemon, then shook black squirts of angostura over the floating ice. Five, six, seven, eight. He felt dizzy, and held an ice-cold palm against his forehead. Whoof. The world must be slipping sideways. Better grab on to something. Perhaps Bertha. The prop of your old age. Perhaps the rung of a sideways chair. A dish cloth.

— I don’t see what good it’s going to do you to get any drunker than you are already. For six months—

— For God’s sake, don’t talk to me about six months! Go on, get out of here, sit down and I’ll bring the glasses.… Oh, there you are!

He tilted his head to one side, elaborately, and grinned at Tom.

— Hello, Andy.

— Nice little surprise you planned for me. Have a drink.

Bertha turned abruptly on her heel, went into the sitting room, and sank onto the couch. She sat upright with her hands beside her, staring at nothing. Tom followed her awkwardly. As if to avoid the appearance of approaching her, he went to the farther side of the room and stood for a moment by the black piano, frowning. Then he took a step or two back towards the kitchen.

— I don’t think I’ll have a drink, if you don’t mind.

— Oh, sure, come on, might as well do it amiably, say the hard things amiably—

He put the shaker and glasses on the red table, and waved his arm over them.

— Go on — make yourself at home. Everything that’s mine is yours. Don’t try to smile, though, till you’ve got your face under better control.

— Look here, Andy, old man — I think I’d better go. You two had better talk it over first — don’t you think so, Bertha.

— Yes.

— Nope. Nothing doing. This is now a famille à trois. Family conference. Every one to be represented. Though I must say you don’t either of you seem to have much to say. Strikes me the scene is a little disappointing. Oughtn’t you to say you were waiting for a streetcar? Or came back for your umbrella? Did you lose your motor bike? You know, something like that. But of course the thing isn’t really a surprise to any of us, is it — we’ve all seen it coming for such a long time — months and months — Jesus, I’ve got to laugh.

He laughed, pushing his shoulders against the mantel, while Tom, his face white and strained, handed a cocktail to Bertha. She took it mechanically, without looking at it, and as mechanically drank it.

— Why did you come back tonight, she said.

— Why? Because a little bird told me.

— I don’t think it was very sporting of you.

— Neither do I. But what can you do. I’ve never faced a situation quite like this, my dear, and you must forgive me if my technique is a little crude. As I remarked to begin with, it’s a melodrama; and in a melodrama, you’ve got to behave like actors in a melodrama, haven’t you? Suppose I’d telephoned from the club. Everything spoiled, postponed, all of us left in doubt and suspense and agony, nothing settled. What the hell was the use of that? I thought of it, believe me — looked at the telephones — but, no, I decided it must be cut off with a knife. Psst — and done.… Here’s how.

Tom had perched himself on the arm of the big chair, and was tapping his glass with a finger-nail.

— You’re perfectly right, he murmured — Perfectly right. Of course I don’t need to say how sorry—

— Oh, no. We needn’t go into that. We all know how sorry. One of those awkward complexes, nicht wahr, in which delight and sorrow are so painfully and inextricably mixed. I’ll give you credit for the sorrow, which I know must be real. Of course. Naturally. You like me — I like you — we’re old friends, aren’t we — knew each other before we knew Bertha — grew up together — how couldn’t you feel sorry? Same here. I feel sorry, too, though it may surprise you. Sorry for you and Bertha and myself in about equal portions. Yes. A sort of weltschmerz. Perhaps a little sorrier for myself than for either of you, which is selfish of me, but you’ll forgive me. I suppose, as a matter of fact, I ought to kill you? I even thought of it. I thought of it at the corner of Garden and Shepard Street: had a vision of my revolver lying brightly at the bottom of my steamer trunk. But that would be ridiculous.

He walked over to Bertha, lifted her chin with his hand so that her eyes were raised toward his own, looked idly into them for an instant, saw that they were now hard and tearless, and turned toward Tom with a conscious brightening of expression.

— Besides, you’ve got on one of your most beautiful waistcoats, and the handsomest tweed suit in Cambridge, and I couldn’t bear to spoil them. And if I missed — good God. You’d kill me with one hand. In self-defense. And I’d rather go mad than die. Oh, much.… Jesus.

— Thank you, said Tom — I appreciate your esthetic tact.

— Don’t mention, old fellow — there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Step right up and help yourself.… But as I was saying. What was I saying?

He frowned into his glass, then covered it with his hand. Tired. His wits were gone. He was saying things badly, saying the wrong things, off the track somehow. Something else must be found, some other direction, something deeper, more to the point, more plangent and poignant. Profound abstractions, self-sacrifice, nobility, a great constellation of bright and beautiful stars. A vast bouquet of planets in a purple sky.

— Why don’t you say something, Berty? God knows you usually have enough—

— What is there to say. It’s done.

— I suppose you didn’t think of consulting me about it.

— Yes, I did. But it came too vaguely, and then too suddenly—

— He swept you off your feet.

— Oh, for the love of mud, Andy!

Tom stood up, very straight and angry.

— I wonder if you quite realize your own part in this situation, Andy. For six months you’ve left me practically alone. You’ve been drunk night after night. If Tom behaved decently to me, did a little something to make things happier for me — if I could get a little enjoyment out of life—

— I see. Yes, indeed. Tom as the good Samaritan. The neglected wife. But I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that it was partly just because I saw this business beginning that I withdrew myself?

— Oh, no! You can’t get away with that. Oh, no. It had begun before that, and you know it.

Silence. This wasn’t right at all. He stared at the carpet. He felt their eyes fixed upon him, and for the moment wasn’t quite sure that he could look at them. A deep pain opened somewhere within him, a deep sadness, an enormous sense of lostness and futility. It was all no use. Impossible to explain. What on earth could one do with words? Memories? Ideas? A trifling little barter of facts? He walked to the table, refilled his glass, went to the window beside the couch and looked out, looked down into the rain-dark street, where the twin lights of Shepard Hall entrance illuminated the boardwalk, sodden with water. Perhaps it was himself, after all, who was wrong. Was it wholly impossible? Ten years. The dance of places, the dance of rooms, the dance of houses. Bertha plus one, Bertha plus two, Bertha plus three, Bertha plus four. Bertha at the Coffee Party, at the skating rink, on the toboggan at Oakley, on the river at Concord, the Sudbury, the Assabet, walking in spring along the granite lip of the Frog Pond — and now Bertha here, Bertha belonging no longer only to himself, if indeed she belonged at all. Where was it all gone? Where was it now? It was nowhere. It was gone forever. Nothing could now ever be the same in the world, never again. This was no longer his Berty, that was not Tom — two new persons sat in the room with him, two strangers who looked at him with hostility and misunderstanding, whose minds and memories were now allied against his own. He was outnumbered, outmaneuvred, outwitted. What was the use. Better get completely drunk, and let it all go to hell. Speak out his bitterness and be damned to them. Yes. Be damned to them. Let them go to hell and stay there.

— All right, Tom, I suppose you’re right — you’d better go home and leave this to Berty and me. Go on, get out. Put on your damned little galoshes and gloves and carry your pretty little malacca. But first I’d just like to call you, to your white face, a worm: a curious and very handsome worm. Don’t you think so?

He lifted his glass in a toast and drank it off. He had come quite close to Tom, and they were looking with an extraordinary amiability into each other’s eyes. Protractedly. Exchanging what? He felt his gaze move subtly from one to the other of Tom’s two eyes, was for a moment conscious of Tom’s ancient embarrassment at having to look at a glass eye, and felt it now as a peculiar but too fortuitous advantage. He was pleased at the thought.

— Good night, Bertha, Tom said.

— Wait a minute. There’s one more thing. I suppose you’ll want to marry her, and make an honest women of her? It’ll be a divorce, of course?

— Andy! Is that quite necessary?

Bertha flung the words at him crookedly as she flung off the black velvet band from her hair, which she tossed angrily to the right.

— Perhaps not — perhaps not.… Go on, Tom — get out.

From the doorway, he watched Tom pulling on the galoshes, straining and flushing. This was fun. Awkward moment for Tom.

— Sorry your hat and stick are on the floor.

— It doesn’t matter, old man.

— I suppose you’ll be going to Sanders on Thursday?

— Probably.

— Well, sleep well!

— Good night, Andy. Come in and see me when you feel like talking about it.

— Yes, indeed!

He patted Tom delightfully on the shoulder of his raincoat, smiled, and softly shut the door. A beautifully managed exit. Couldn’t have been better. And the idea of Tom’s sleeping. Good God. Who would sleep after this? Who? Himself only, for only himself would have the sense to get thoroughly and completely and obliviously drunk. Yes. Drunk. He was drunk already. He was beginning to feel gay. Rubbed his hands on his forehead and then together and stepped quite nimbly into the sitting room, where Bertha, her back turned, was looking at the books on the mantelpiece.

— Well, darling, now we can discuss this quite amicably and privately. Isn’t it nice? Now we can really go into it, without self-consciousness.

— I think you’re behaving revoltingly.

— Revoltingly! What the hell do you mean. I’m behaving like a perfect gentleman.

— You know what I mean.

— I’m damned if I do. But I’ll be delighted to hear. Have a drink?

— I think you might at least have kept sober, and not introduced, or tried to introduce, this element of disgusting farce.

— God, you make me laugh. Your usual total lack of perception. Blind as a bat. I suppose I ought to have sent some flowers first, in a taxi, with a little message? Congratulations and facilitations. The bridal chamber was decorated with roses and syringes. Typical of you not to see that the only way, the only way, of handling such a scene is humorously! Good jumping Jesus. It’s that, among other things, that’s always been wrong with us. Your heavy-handedness: this fatuous Brattle Street dignity: all these Goddamned poetic hypocrisies. I suppose we ought to be tragic about it, and behave like people in a novel, or an Ibsen play. Ought I to have apologized for having come into my own flat and then cried about it? Tragic! Who’s it tragic for, if not for me, supposing I wanted to give in to it? What the hell have I come back to? To a stinking void. To a part of myself that’s dead. Well, all right. That’s my funeral. Not yours, and not Tom’s. If I want to make a joke of it, for the moment, so as to avoid cheap sentimental dramatics, the sort you act in at Brattle Hall, you might at least have the intelligence to see why I do it, and that it’s my own business. I get drunk because I don’t want to be wholly conscious. Because, I admit it, I’m partly a coward, and don’t want to know, or to have you and Tom know, exactly how many volts of pain I’m carrying. Do you want me to cry? Do you want me to comfort you? Or do you expect just a calm rational discussion of the ethics and esthetics of sexual fidelity?

— There’s no use discussing anything, if you’re going to be merely abusive.

— There you go. If I state facts, I’m abusive.

— I think you might at least have tried to see my point of view. I’ve been starved—

— Yes, for Christ’s sake drag that up again, starved for love! You don’t know what love is. You’re a thirteen-year-old romantic, a bleached little Cantabrigian Madame Bovary. I want love, she cries, and pulls on a pair of tarpaulin knickers.

— Shut up!

She turned suddenly and glared at him, her mouth dreadfully relaxed, the tears starting quickly from her eyes. He was looking at her quite coldly, with the familiar hatred, the familiar deep ferocity and need to injure. She was beginning to suffer. Pursue the advantage. Grind it in, beat her down. Give her the works. Analyze the whole marriage, drag it all up by the roots, reveal her to herself for once and all, all the piecemeal horrors laid out like entrails on a bloody platter. Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad, bumwad. The whole prolonged obscene and fecal grapple in steadily deepening darkness, year after year of it, the burden upon his consciousness becoming hourly more foul and more frightful. The history of a bathroom. Dirty water. Dirty clothes. Dirty habits. The upright soul indifferent to filth. Jesus, angel of grief, come down to me: give us a speech as pure as ocean. A tumbler of neat gin, fiery strangulation, a cough, tears on his marble eye which might be misinterpreted, a sudden impulse to make them real. The awful contraction of the belly which precedes weeping. A new red edge provided for anger.

— All right — I’ll play the piano.… No, I won’t, either.

He played two bars of a Bach gavotte, then stopped.

— Isn’t it ridiculous. Why do we make such a fuss about it? Especially as we all flatter ourselves that we saw it coming. Or did we? I must confess though—

— What.

Bertha’s face was averted, her voice flat.

— I hadn’t really expected you to go through with it. I thought Brattle Street would be too much for you.

— I see. You thought as usual that I wasn’t quite human.

— Not at all. Don’t be in a hurry. I thought you were too damned moral. Or loyal.

— Loyal to what, exactly? I’d like to know.

— Oh, me, for instance.

— Yes! After you’d flaunted Molly—

— Don’t be more of a fool than you have to be.

— Besides, if you admit withdrawing from me, what difference does it make. You know our marriage hasn’t been a marriage for almost a year—

Of course. There was that. There was that, which he had forgotten. But how explain it to her? There was no explaining it. The problem of rhythm: the inevitable succession of approaches and retreats: love, indifference, hate — then over again, love, indifference, hate. Disgust, then renewed curiosity. Exploration, then renewed retreat. Soiled clothes, then sunlight, a concert, a few drinks, an evening of witty conversation, psychological discussion — and all of a sudden the divine recapitulation. Would this have occurred again? Had he really wanted it, or hoped for it, to occur again? Or had he at the bottom of his heart desired this precise consummation, this disaster? The sacrifice of everything. And in that case, why make a fuss about it: how could it hurt him? How, indeed. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the unwoundable pig.

— Oh, God, what’s the use.

— I meant to tell you that I thought I was falling in love with him. And that he was in love with me. He meant to tell you too.

— How long have these discussions been going on?

— I meant to tell you before anything happened. But you see—

— I suppose you want me to believe that tonight is the first time?

— No.

Well, by God, that opens up a nice vista into the past, doesn’t it.

To ask or not to ask. To pry or not to pry. He stared at the carpet, pushed a cigarette end with the toe of his muddy shoe, felt the blind agony beginning to contract his whole body. One night, or two. One week, or three. Before he left for New York, or after. In Tom’s flat, or here. To think this was sickness, madness, disruption. Drunken and maudlin disruption. What was Bertha, then, that even now he should suffer? This pale oval of female face, with the speckled gray eyes and the always too-innocent mouth? A mere face. A mere idea. A mere history, now finished. Or was it finished?

He picked up his glass and crossed to the table. Bewilderment. The empty glass in his right hand meaningless.

— Yes, a lovely little vista into the past. The past suddenly becomes the present, doesn’t it? And a damned pretty future.

— Well, you’ve always preached psychological freedom and honesty—

— Christ!

— Why not practice it?

— I can safely leave that to you!

— That’s not fair!

— That’s the coolest defense of whoredom—

A curious singing began in his right ear. He put down his glass very hard on the red table, which was unexpectedly near, then walked quickly, with Bertha’s glare still fixed upon him, across the corridor to the bathroom. The door closed, he stared at his reflection in the greenish mirror. White as a sheet. First stage of drunkenness. Boy, you ain’t seen the half of it. This is going to be a souse in a million. He watched himself swaying, rested his hands on the marble basin, and saw his face beginning to cry. The mouth curled itself grotesquely, like a child’s, like the wound in a tragic mask, his eyes closed themselves to slits, the white face began absurdly jiggling up and down, in time with the rapid soundless convulsions of his chest. He turned on the two taps in the basin, to drown out the extraordinary noise Andrew Cather had begun to make. A sound like a swift departure of wings, pigeon’s wings, whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe-whe — then a shudder of breath quickly indrawn, and another hissing flight of wingbeats, and a long oooooooooooooo — subsiding to caught calm, as the tears fell into the steaming water. Grates me. Is this the face that launched a thousand quips? Is that you, One-eye Cather? Wash your bloody, driveling little map. If, the last time your mother spanked you, when you were seven, you refused to cry, why cry now? What is there to cry about? Is it manly to cry? Disgusting. Step up, ladies and gents, and see the weeping pig: the pig with wings, the pig with a glass eye. Look at the little red veins in his nose, heritage of six months’ drunkenness, the whiteness of the white of his left eye, the redness of the white of the right. Wash your face with cold water, as you have often seen Bertha do after a midnight quarrel. Observe yourself from a great distance, as if you were an ant crawling over the toe of your shoe. Isn’t he a funny little thing? Does he know where he’s going? Has he a god? Does he distinguish right from wrong? Has he sexual appetites, loves, hates, despairs? Has he an ideal? A secret richness of soul, tenderness of heart, susceptibility to injury? Have you lost your wife, your friend, or is it only an egg? Tu pupila es azul; y quando lloras—the world is a lost egg. A mislaid egg. It will hatch, out of season, in a universe of intemperate weather, an absolute zero, and the god it contains will be born dead.

You are not angry: you don’t want to be angry: you are hurt.

His face washed, the temples cold and transparent over the brain, he returned to the sitting-room. It was now Bertha’s turn to cry. She lay huddled at one end of the couch, her back turned, her cheek on a green pillow, a handkerchief held over her eyes. One of her pianissimos, a soft whispering sound, persistent, uninterruptible, the kind that could go on for hours, for all night. She looked small and pathetic, but also absurd. He felt a profound detachment and irony towards her, watched the slight shaking of her body, the irregular lift and fall of the blue mandarin jacket on her left shoulder, the movement of the blue elbow, noted the heaviness of the upper arm: she was getting old.

— I’m not angry, Berty: I don’t want to be angry: I’m hurt.

The rain answered him. Hurt? The word seemed singularly inadequate. But words in a scene were always inadequate: it was always like this: these midnight quarrels were always the same: ridiculous phrases followed by ridiculous silences, sudden shifts from fury to pathos, from the heroic to the absurd, and at last a bedside reconciliation dictated by sheer fatigue. But not tonight, not this time. No. Good God, no.

— Are you going to say anything?

No answer. His hands in his pockets, he walked into the kitchen, looked at the table, the empty tin, the tin opener, the half lemon, the sugar bowl, the spots of gin and water on the varnished wood. Still life. A cockroach signaled at him with alert antennae from the edge of the kitchen sink. The ice in the ice chest settled itself with a grating slump, metallic. Domestic interior: the persistent order that underlies all disorder, the useful tyranny of the inanimate. Say good-by to it, old fool — this is the beginning of the end. All is over. No more ice chests, shared cockroaches, fruit knives, gin rings to be mopped up with handkerchiefs. To hell with it. No more mosquitoes on the window screens in the summer evenings, to be squashed with one finger against rusty wire. The last day of the calendar, the calendar with the sacred cow. Out with it: this is the terminus. Let Rome in Tiber melt—

— Perhaps you’re right. Yes, I believe you may be right. What’s the use? How can we summarize everything in a few well-chosen words. Your life, and my life, our life together. Non si puo.… Just the same, I don’t see what you’re crying about — you’ve got what you want, haven’t you?

He looked at her quizzically: she was quieter, but he could still see her left shoulder now and then spasmodically lifted, hear the sharp intake of breath. He picked up the red Spanish grammar from the other end of the couch, seated himself where the book had lain, being very careful not to touch the slippered feet which were so close to his knee.

— Impossible to find the right words, isn’t it. Just as well read at random out of a book. For example. It is lightning, and I fear that it will rain. Is she unhappy? She appears to be so, but I cannot believe that she is so. He is sorry that he is ill, and I am sorry that he is ill. Use the subjunctive after expressions of doubting or fearing, joy or sorrow, or necessity. Mientras dure la vida—as long as life lasts. Ella está enamorada: y si lo está, que mal hay en ello? No harm at all.

The rain answered him. No harm at all.

— Or how about this. This seems to settle everything. It seems to me; it seems to you (fam. sing.); it seems to him; it seems to us; it seems to you (fam. pl.); it seems to them, I go to bed; you go to bed (fam. sing.); he goes to bed; we go to bed; you go to bed (fam. pl.); they go to bed. All life in a nutshell, by God. We hate each other; they (masc. and fem.) hate each other. We embrace and kiss each other.… Cardinals and ordinals. We shall reach the city of Waltham before night comes on. Let us take leave of the wounded man: he slept well yesterday, and he is not moaning tonight. This is a Spanish proverb: “Although the monkey dressed in silk, she remained a monkey!” It is snowing or raining all the time in this town: we hope that the weather is better in yours.…

No answer to his lifted eyebrow: he began to feel angry again.

— I like the “fam. sing.,” don’t you? He has a toothache, and is shedding a lot of tears. If you do not prefer to lend them the pens, do not lend them the pens.

The sound of Bertha’s weeping became louder: she made a sudden convulsive gesture with her lifted elbow, turned her face farther away into the pillow, and said:

— Will you stop it, please?

— Certainly, if you like.

— I believe you have — I believe you have — no heart at all.

— Step right up, ladies and gents, and see the pig without a heart.… To drink is to live. An old Spanish proverb. Have a drink, Andy, old fellow. Yes, I will, thank you.

He sat still, staring, let the opened book slide to the floor, then rose and stood before her, jingling the silver in his pocket.

— Well, what do you suggest?

— Nothing.… Whatever you like.

— I see. You want me to make the decisions. Is that it?

No answer.

— By God, I could kill you when you take refuge in weeping and silence. It’s a damned dirty way of evading your responsibilities, if you ask me! I’m going back to the club. I don’t know where I’ll go from there. Anywhere. I’ll let you know—

He lurched into the hall, struggled into his wet coat, put his hat on, returned to the couch, where Bertha still lay motionless, squeezed her elbow once between finger and thumb, saying, “I’m off,” and a moment later found himself running along the slippery boardwalk toward Garden Street. In this street once. He got into a yellow taxi, which started moving before he had quite seated himself: he found himself on his back, and for a few seconds lay inert, uncertain whether he wanted to laugh or cry. Lights. The expensive hum of a Packard. Bertha at the opera, in the borrowed car. Mrs. Skinner, the old buzzard, sat behind them. “They were just finding each other,” she said. Just finding each other. Oh, yeah? And now they were just losing each other. One as easy as the other — now you see them and now you don’t. Close the eyes. Let the chin come to rest, where it will, on mother’s breast. Let us frolic on the hills at Arlington, under the shadow of the water tower. Wild barberry. Black-eyed Susan. Does some one see us. Is some one coming. Beams multiply in a scaffolding, the scantlings cant, the lashed ladder topples, falls, veers, descends dizzily down the booming well. She has bats in her belfry. Long sounds, long lines of sound, long lights on backs of sounds, rode like the Valkyrie, whooping through the tunnel. Let fall your chin on mother’s breast. No, you mustn’t here, this is too public, some one might see us, don’t, Andy, you’re too dreadful. The taxi ticking, Mr. Rodman said: I said: Mr. Rodman said: tu pupila es azul. Paid the bill. Saw the spittoons, garboons. The ice in the urinals, too, and the brass keys on the rack. Who’s on the rack? Beams multiply in a scaffolding, the scantlings cant, cross levers, struts and stays, footholds and handholds, giant’s jackstraws, you are lost among them, come down, oh, maid, from yonder height, get out from under before it all falls, it will fall, is falling, fam. sing. and all, go on and hoot your way into hell. Who was hooting? The dead man under the bridge, fumbling in darkness along slimy piles, bowing to the tide, felt hat in hand. Good evening, madam. Have they found me yet? Has my watch stopped ticking? What brick was it that spoke that about ticking? It was the train, over the joints, over the rails. In Rome too as the Romans too.

The silence—

— A dollar and a quarter. And ten.

— Thank you, sir.

— Don’t mention.

That probably surprised him.

The club was empty and still, opened before him spaciously and with marble echoes, followed him downstairs with subdued lights and sounds, with portraits of philosophers and a bison’s head, with shells from the Somme and a Chinese dragon on scarlet silk. The chessmen too. The Hoboken gambit? I’ll pawn my queen. The bar closed for the night, but water would do. A Lily-cup of waxed paper, cold water on greased skin.

At the locker, he refilled the silver flask, took a long burning drink, filled again, then placed six Lily-cups in a white row on the table in the bombproof, two of them filled with water: supplies for the night. Within reach of his hand, as he lay on the red divan. Better have a night-cap. Jitter might have been here, often was. You know, Andy, I think there’s something yellow about you. Close the eyes, to shut out swimming. Rest the chin on papa’s hairy chest. Not very comfortable. Screwed his head from left to right against the hard leather. Sleep drunkenly, tomato juice in morning, cold clam juice, ice water, cold shower set you right. Wake up, Andy, it’s time to get up: you have an appointment to tutor at eleven. That little Jew. Weisskopf. The long swift darkness swept over from left to right, here and there a streaked star, a dark pouring sound, the subdued roar of all blood. Bumwad, bumwad, bumwad, bumwad. Oh, bumwad. Now nausea plucking at the corners of the arid mouth, the twitch of sickness, the race between sickness and unconsciousness, the interstellar skid. The hands nerveless and placeless, now on the belly, now at the side, now hanging towards the floor, touching the cold leather, stubbornly conscious, waiting for something, afraid of sleep. Wake up, Andy, it’s time to get up. That was a footstep, near, menacing.

— Mr. Cather, sir.

— Hello.

An attendant, deprecatory.

— Pardon me, sir, Mr. Cather, but would you like to be found here?

— Found and left.

— Yes, sir.

The long darkness swept superbly from left to right, the blood began its universal pouring over the small tossed body of the world, hurled it and whirled it, swung it obliquely through a screaming abyss, hoisted it again to a toppling pinnacle. Good evening, madam. This is my drowned hat that I am eating. We signed the contract. I am successful. When he saw the sparrow in the road, he got off his horse. It had a broken wing, the bones were sticking out. Of course, what did I tell you. More calmly now. More darkly now. Smoothly, on even keel, into the dark station, the tunnel, the banked lights stately and still on stone columns, birds of brightness, cold and light. I saw you before you saw me, yes, I did. Why didn’t you tell me, and, besides. I was walking there.

In pure light came the remote flight, the little flight of a flock, coming nearer and larger and brighter, the flight of little winged bones, winging through heaven, little wrist-bones and delicate ankle-bones and even figulas and femurs and scapulas, and each with as neat a pair of wings as you’d see on a bleeding sparrow, and every one of them on its way to a star, far off; or was it God himself? He watched them with one eye, while he picked up the skeleton and began to eat it; first the feet, then working slowly up the legs; and dry going it was, what with no sauce, no mustard, no Worcestershire, and the bones getting bitterer as he crawled right up through the pelvis, devouring all, and crunched the ribs. The spine tasted like the Dead Sea, like ashes in the mouth, getting worse as he crawled nearer to the skull; and the skull itself was a black mouthful of charcoal, which he spat out. And in mid-space then he saw behemoth in the act of biting off the conning tower of an interstellar submarine, one of these ether-going craft with one eye, a little way off to the southwest of a pink star, which was wearing white drawers, like a woman. And in a canoe then, in a canoe, a birchbark canoe, up the marsh channel, above the red bridge, in amongst the hosts of seething reeds in the hot salt sunlight — the bright drops on the paddles, the bare arms freckled and wet — is this the way to the Gurnett? — Oh, no, that’s the other way — you’ll have to turn round — yes, it’s the other way. The other way, to the Gurnett.

The other way, a long way.

And when he came, they gave him an oval reception.