(From _The Dial_)
The room was bright with the sun. Three stories up.
Three dark halls, three worn stairs, the mustiness of walls to which
grimed hands, worn shoulders had rubbed their intricate soiled
burden, held up this room that was all bright with the sun.
The door was open: two windows with their mesh Dutch curtains were
thrown high: Clara Jones dusted.
She was a short woman, colored a dark brown in which were shadows of
blue and orange. She was of indeterminate age. She worked slowly,
diligently, with a sort of submissive rhythm to the sweep of her
arms, the sway of her head, as if an invisible Master timed her work
with gentle strokes on her bent back. The contours and objects of the
room were a familiar haze against her hands. Her eyes did not take in
the books upon the mantel, the morris chair which her hands groomed
and shifted, the blue cover of the couch which the room’s tenant used
for a bed. Her eyes were focused dimly beyond the room, beyond the
sunlight also that did not make them blink--beyond the sun. At times
a murmur as of words answering in herself, a shred of tune, came from
her. And these were in unison with the rapt measure of her work. And
it with the distant fixedness of her eyes that moved as if to remain
upon some point either far within or far without herself. Or both....
A tall young man ... almost a boy ... stood in the door. He
buttressed both his palms against the threshold’s sides: he watched
her.
Her face turned to her shoulder, then fell forwards back into its
somnolent rhythm.
“Lor’! that you already? You-all _quick_ this mo’nin’.”
“May I come in?”
“Sho’ly, sho’ly. Sit down over th’ah.”
She did not stop. She held a broom in her two brown hands. With
a steady stroke of shoulder, back and forth it went, rasping ...
swinging; her small, soft body cadenced with its stiff advance.
“Th’ah you are, Mr. Loer!” She waved a musty rag over his desk, over
a picture nailed above it. “Th’ah you are.”
She turned and smiled at him. He was still standing in the threshold.
She had a round, small face, and her big mouth smiling seemed to
cover it. Her eyes still focused distantly.
She dropped the broom against a shoulder and flung the rag into the
fold of an elbow. She laughed.
“What yo’ got, this mo’nin’? I’m done. Come along in.”
“I don’t feel like being alone this morning, Clara.”
Clara’s smile was tender. Her face tilted to a side.
“Lonely, Mr. Loer?” she said. He felt caressed.
“Oh, no.” He stepped into the room, lifting his knees unnecessarily
high. He sank down in the morris chair and primed a pipe.
“Clara,” he seemed to hold her, “how’d you sleep last night?”
She folded her hands.
“Oh, fine, Mr. Loer. You know I always sleeps fine.”
“Well I slept rotten.”
“I wouldn’t sleep none at all, Mr. Loer ... ef I went to sleep same
as you does.”
He looked up from his pipe. “What do you mean?”
“’Thout prayin’. Yo’ tole me so yo’self. No wonder you sleep rotten.
Lor’! I wouldn’t sleep none at all ... ef ... I went to sleep ’thout
prayin’.” She paused. “Watch out, Mr. Loer,” she said with a sweet
tremulousness. “Supposin’ the time comes when you cyant sleep at all.”
“I don’t know whom to pray to.”
The old woman looked at the broomstick standing against her shoulder.
“And you so--eddicated,” she declared.
She ambled out, still keyed to that impalpable warm measure kindling
her feet, her hips, the drone of her soft voice.
The door’s gentle click made him alone.
He relaxed forward in his chair. Crumpled hands held his sharp, fine
chin. His eyes were disturbed. They wandered. They saw his room:
sharply each object in his room caught in his eyes and held there.
His eyes were hurt because they saw no farther.
He jumped up, flung his coat. He ran his fingers through the high,
blond hair. He faced his books.
Spencer’s “First Principles” ... “Introduction to Anthropology” ...
Dewey’s “How We Think” ... caught like long splinters in his eyes. He
shook his head as if to shake them out.
Then he took the psychology book and settled, rigid in his chair, to
read.
His mind held back. It seemed stiff and small, dry and remote. It
gave no attention to the book. It gave no attention, now, to the
movement of his body as the book fell from limp hands and he was
stepping to the corner where stood his ’cello.
He placed a stool. His body flexed and grew co-ordinate as it
received the instrument. Softly, with eyes arching beyond him and
his mind still gone, he began to bow. His mind held away no more. It
broke forward. It leaped, it sang: his fingers moved with delicate
precision making slow music.
... The street. A woman, tall, clouded in dark glow, whom he had
seen, whom he had seen in the street. His mind out there beat against
her uprightness; it was a sea beating and breaking against her. It
went up, it went down--as did his fingers--avail-less.
... Then his mother. There was no doubt, she reminded him of his
mother who had died when he was a lad in Holland.
Karl Loer bent his face upon his loved ’cello and played deep,
plaintive words. He saw the woman whom he had passed so often in the
street.... She has arms piteous towards a man who is her husband.
She pleads with her arms. She wears a straight black dress. And
underneath her dress he saw her breast. It is bleeding! There is an
iron bar, clamped hard and close, on the breasts of the woman!
His fingers stopped. He drew his bow dazedly back and forth. He
jumped up.
“O you! O you!” he cried, clutching his loved instrument. “I could
wring your neck. I could dash you to bits--” He lifted his ’cello in
violence with both hands above his face. Softly he laid it on the
couch.
He stood now with eyes free and found that he was thinking of his
life.
“What nonsense! what nonsense!” he began. He had forgotten how he had
begun.... “Mother, this woman ... two women I have never known.” He
loved his mother. She was French. He recalled her stately and dark in
a town of light, plump people. He recalled her lovely in a world of
clods.
The whole world knew that she had been unfaithful, and had
disappeared ... disappeared for ever and for ever: that was eternity,
her disappearing ... after his father turned her out. He and his
two brothers knew how sensual indulgence grew like the fat upon his
father, clogged him, clotted his brain ... and he had turned her out.
His father’s soul shrank famished, he was a sucking brute. Then he
was mad ... she was gone ... and Karl had come away.
America! He brought to it, he thought, his yearning and his music. He
dwelt in misery. He dwelt, it seemed to his free eyes, in misery that
grew more deep, more blind.
He wondered why.
“I have a good mind,” he said aloud. He swung his chair to face the
row of books upon his mantel. So he sat looking at his books. Proud
of them--I wonder why?
And as he sat, he forgot the books that stood within his eyes. He
thought again of his mother. Why had she been unfaithful? What had
driven her, and what his father? Was his brutality the way of sorrow?
Had she found joy in that eternity where he had lost her?... Sudden
like a stroke across his brain, the woman with white breasts crushed
in a clamping iron: her piteous arms stretched towards a man--not he.
He walked up and down. He forgot the vision.
“There,” he said aloud, with an emphasis that was a plea, “there is
what comes of music ... of emotion. Idiotic ideas ... visions. That
woman ... what do you know about that woman? Rot!”
He bent down and picked up the book that he had failed to read.
“Here’s the place for your mind,” he said aloud.
“You,” he turned to his ’cello, “you’ll go on earning my living.” He
stroked the fragile wine-hued wooden breast. “For a while.... But
you’ll not boss me, hear?” He stood the instrument away.
There was a knock. Clara with a letter.
He took it. He seemed strangely perturbed. He laid the letter,
unread, aside. As she reached for the door, “Clara,” he said.
She turned.
“Clara,” he said again, “why are you so happy? What have you, Clara?”
Her round face was all warmth and smile. She found her ease on her
feet.
“I had fo’ babies, Mr. Loer. An’ ev’ one of ’em died afo’ they was
six. An’ my husband that I nussed fo’ ten years--he was sick ten
years a-dyin’ on his back--he’s gone too. They is all in Heaven,
Mr. Loer. They is all waitin’ th’ah fo’ me. Ev’y onct in a while,
they comes to me at night. I sees ’em, sees ’em standin’ th’ah as
clar--why as clar as you is! An’ they speaks to me: wuds as clar--as
clar as mine is. They’s all gone and safe, awaitin’ for me up th’ah.
Tha’s why I’m happy, Mr. Loer.”
Old woman and young man stood very still, looking at each other. Karl
stirred first. His hands, then his head. He walked up and down. She
was still.
“But Clara--but Clara--”
She beamed on him. He stopped. He smiled also. He grasped his cap. He
rushed into the street.
Into the street his smile and her words went with him ... shredding
his speed, eating into the mood of his release, until his smile went
and he stood stock still.
The sun splintered into the block, from the east, through mouldy
cornices of houses. Men and women moved separate upon stone, moved
from sun to shadow, brokenly. The day was yet too young to have
welded them into the substance of the block. Each was a particle
thrown out from a separate home.
Karl stood, looked down through the scatter of men and women, the
scatter of shade and sun. Athwart shoulders and skirts and hats that
bobbed like dark flotsam in a golden sluggish stream, he saw a man
move up.
A weight rose from his bowels, clutched at his throat. The man he had
seen once, with the woman he had seen often!--Her husband....
A sense of omen cloaked his head and made him dizzy. He felt only his
body free, his head was cloaked. The street was suddenly a force,
physical and relentless, fixing him there within the channel of this
man.
He could no longer fight for the fading word in him: Folly!
The man was almost abreast of him standing to face him. There, in
himself he heard, sharp like a fusillade, the words that were his own.
“_I’m stopping you! Because your wife’s in danger! Look at her! Who
put the iron bar across her breast?_”
A young man leisurely moved up. A smile in his ruddy face, his red
lips mumbling as if he discoursed amiably to himself. His eyes
wandered amenably. He saw Karl. Something furrowed his brow into a
question. Karl swerved aside. They passed each other....
And now the word that had been fading ... “folly” ... shrieked. It
besieged him and shrieked. It was very brave.
“Fool! Fool!”--what did the words mean? Why am I in the street? Why
did her husband cross me in the street?
His mind reached for the surety of his mantel and of its row of sober
books. These casual things could be explained. He was lonely. Perhaps
he was a bit ... unreally, of course, since what did he know of
her?... in love. Nonsense.
He jerked his cap over his eyes.... _Look at her! Take away the bar!
Place your arms there!_... he returned to the house he lived in.
The area-gate was open, so he went in by it.
His mind, he was very sure, was master now. It was a hard fight of
course. He had had so little training! For so very long, he had
weltered in emotion. At home, the emotion of rage and of salvation
against the brutal gluttony of his father: the emotion of faith
against the crass certainty of his world that his mother was bad. And
in America, above all, the emotion of hunger. With one way only to
destroy it ... his easiest gift ... the emotion of music with which
he earned his bread.
--But it shall not master!
His mind pictured the book on psychology upon his mantel. I’ll learn
about that. And then some day I’ll dash the old ’cello ... no,
absurd!... I’ll sell it.
His feet led him into Clara’s kitchen.
She was alone. An ironing board was laid from table to low shelf.
He saw her back. A bent old back ... a small round head ... a mass
of tousled hair dusted with white. Yet as the bare arm pressed the
steaming iron to and fro, he felt with a new poignance how a wind,
tropical and fresh, wielded this woman.
He tiptoed in, sat down and watched her. The rhythm fleshed.... A
naked woman, tall and firm and glowing like red earth. Her hands are
above her head. Her hands are flowers with the wind in them. There is
a tree above her. And her long, bare feet, with the straight toes,
are intertwined to the tree’s roots.
Clara moved to the farther side of the board so as to iron and see
him. Her shoes were huge misshapen shreds of leather barely holding
about her feet, so that but for the glide of her body, her moving
might have seemed a shuffle. He saw her smile now over her board at
him. He thought of a cloud saturate with sun.
“Clara,” he said, “I should be studying. But I’m a good for nothing.”
“Yo’ mustn’t say that, Mr. Loer!” As her words came, her arms went to
and fro, pressing the steamy steel. Her shoulders spoke in concord.
--Nigger woman ... you are all _one_!... What a strange thing to
think about a person!
“No, Mr. Loer,” she crooned, “yo’ mus’n’t say that! We is all good
fo’ som’p’n. We doan know what a heap o’ de time. But we all is--”
“How can you be so sure of Heaven?”
She rested her elbow on the board. “I done seen it, Mr. Loer. I sees
it ... _offen_.”
“How do you know you see it?”
“How do I know I’se a-seein’ you?”
“You could describe me, Clara. Could you describe Heaven?”
“Why, ob co’se I could! What I sees I can describe....” She ironed.
“It’s a great big place! Mos’ly light ... glorious, golden light!
An’ angels in white wings an’ harps a-singin’, a-singin’.... When
yo’ plays sometimes, Mr. Loer ... dem waily shatterin’ tones ... dey
sings like dat. Dey music ... it starts _away_ down an’ it leaps
_away_ up!”
She ironed.
“Clara, what would you say if I told you that was all a dream--what
you saw?”
She beamed and ironed.
“The wise people, Clara, the wise men who study deep and who write
books ... they say all that is nonsense.”
Clara beamed. “Dey ain’t wise ef dey say dat, Mr. Loer.”
She was bent over her towels, beaming upon her towels. Towel after
towel she ironed, folded, laid upon the pile of towels at her side
... her brown face beaming.
She stopped. She straightened and looked at Karl. Then she went back
to her work....