Great Circle
A Novel
O frantick, fond, pathetique passion!
Is’t possible such sensuall action
Should clip the wings of contemplation?
O can it be the spirit’s function,
The soule, not subject to dimension,
Should be made slave to reprehension
Of crafty nature’s paint? Fie! can our soule
Be underling to such a vile controule?
JOHN MARSTON: The Scourge of Villanie
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.