Karl was at work. From twelve to half-past-two, from half-past-six
to twelve, six days of the week, Karl played in the Trio at The
Bismarck. Played sentimental music ... grime of German and Italian
soil, froth and scum of Broadway. He drew with his bow complacencies
and veiled obscenities ... at work. His mind and his senses in revolt
leaped away towards life: swirled, delved, circled; beaten, brought
back to his heart which sent them a burden whose eternity he could
not understand, would not accept: of Pain.
His eyes saw the café for whose lounging patrons his hand fingered,
his hand drew a bow. His eyes saw his associates ... clever, ugly:
Stumm with bald, blond-ruffed head at the piano; Silvis, the leader,
dark, agonizingly eager to be artistic, swaying, who was a muddy
cloud about his violin.
Karl was at work and his mind and senses beating out of tune.
The flamboyant German Hall: smoked woodwork, paneled and carved in
Gothic sayings, beermugs and flags under the sombre rafters like
brittle colors falling, unable to rest. And in the sudden alcoves,
men and women: idle eyes that took in so little, moist mouths,
distended bellies that took in so much. Karl bowing an aria from
Bohème; and the crass glint of the hall with its arrogant beer mugs,
its mottoes, its elbow-leaning guests currying his mind and his
senses as they yearned forth towards purer air.... The bald head of
Stumm was round, it rested upon his neck like the head of a pin. His
wrists bounced up and down. They dragged Karl back from the purer air
he sought. Silvis crossed a knee upon the other and swayed with a
small finger fluttering from his bow. His eyes were half shut in an
absorbent leer ... absorbing Puccini whom he loved. The weak grace of
his body, swaying, leading, sucked Karl from his need to be away....
Last chord. _D A F-sharp D_.... Stumm swung about on his stool.
Silvis’ legs stretched forward, abdomen collapsed--like a bug
stiffened no more into organic form by its creamy fluid ... the music
... now all oozed out. Their words scraped Karl’s head. When their
words spoke to him, it was, this day, as if their fingers touched his
lips.
“Lehnstein says, next fall we are going to move for a raise--”
“Did you hear about his wife? I guess she’s his wife--”
“Why don’t Max bring that beer?”
The hard loom of the hall, the coldness of men and women abject
before their senses, taking in heat ... heat of air, heat of sound,
heat of food, heat of sex ... into their coldness: the soil of these
two men, his partners, playing this parody of life for an unreal
living: himself with truant senses reeling back and bringing to his
heart what pitiful crumbled fragments?--a woman stately with white
breasts clamped in iron, a woman with brown beaming smile, all One,
a woman of whom he knew no good, no ill, save that she had been his
Mother--or to bar him from these a row of brittle books upon his
mantel?... Karl with a burst of pain he could not understand, at work
making his living to know that this was life?
He covered his ’cello and stood it away in the corner made by the
piano.
“Ain’t you going to eat?”
“No, thank you.”
He was in the street.
Where was his mind? What was he suffering for? What about?
A lovely day. Here was pure air. Why did he breathe it and not taste
it? He wanted more of it than he could breathe. What was air? Why was
it pure ironically to him?
Long stiff rows of dirty houses exuding like sweat and excrement his
sisters and his brothers. Cold houses sweating in the spring. Sick
houses emptying their bowels upon the pure air.
He climbed by stairs into a house.
A swarthy little man in a great white vest with gold chain larding it
from arm-pit to stomach, opened the door. Hands brandishing, lying,
welcomed him.
“Well, Loer!... Come in.”
“Just a moment, Dooch. I’m in a hurry.” Hurry for what? What am I
hurrying towards? “Will you, as a great favor, Dooch, take my place
tonight at The Bismarck?”
Brandishing lying hands: “O, my dear fellow. Y’ know I’d love
to--anything to help you out. But I’m so busy ... lessons ... lessons
... all day. I must have my rest. At night ... the only time. Why
don’t you ask, let me see ... well Facker’d be glad....”
Another visit? “Ten dollars, if you’ll do it, Dooch.”
Hands dropping from lying. “Well, you know, I’d do anything for
you.... Half-past-six?”
“Thank you, Dooch.”
Hands sincere, palm upward: waiting. A bill in a hand happy, silent.
Once more the air....
Sudden Karl heard these words in himself above the beat of his
feet: “I have never learned to use my mind. It’s hard. That is what
hurts.... It will come.”
His legs walked on. He walked through desolation.
“O God, let me find _something_--” He stiffened, hearing his words.
“Of all prayers, if one is absurdest, this is the one.”
But he walked still through desolation. He sensed how he walked
swiftly. Interminable houses were a heavy, fluttering canopy that
passed him: banners they were of some arrogant dominion, dragged
through mud, stiffened in frost. They shut him out.
Warm air. It was spring.
Children went under his beating knees like the drip of frozen houses
melting in spring.
“Let me think! What do I want?... Something more solid than air....
Something as pure that is more solid than air.”
His right hand clasped his left wrist behind him. His knees and chin
thrust forward. From waist to shoulder he tended back. So he walked.
He walked through his life. He ached as he walked through his life.
He felt himself trample. He trampled what he felt. Was it not clear?
Clarity. He had lived in a pigsty. He had come forth. He was young.
He would make a better way for himself in the world than the way
of Silvis and Stumm. He would study, he sensed already, and was
it not good that already beyond the bowing of fiddles he had won
the trenchant accent of Reason--Spencer, Darwin, Huxley? He yearned
towards the ecstacy of their release from mist and frowziness ...
from beer and Puccini. A crumble of old churches falling in dust,
drenching the air with dust. He had hands to tear down. He partook of
the ecstacy of the release that lay in clear books, clear eyes, hands
tearing down....
His father went to church. He saw again the great stomach and the
little eyes and the twist of the wreathing mouth ... the heft of fat
red hands he felt ... they were sodden in hair ... beating against
him, beating the children of his father’s house. Karl’s arm swung at
his side, his chin no longer thrust. He felt now his mother’s voice:
it lay like a warm purple scarf against the chill of his thoughts;
his mother had a red, sweet mouth shut upon her mystery; she moved
beyond the shoulder of the town like a sunset bleeding. Karl’s hand
clasped a wrist once more beyond his back.... The woman whom he had
seen in the street and who haunted him ... he struggling against her.
“Think! Think! Conquer yourself!”
He walked now heavy and stiff.
“Very well. What is she?” he fought.
He turned upon this woman with clamped breasts ... this myth ... this
nonsense. Why was she like green fields? Why was his mind like lead?
Married ... a stranger! Oh, she was suffering, he knew.
--Once I spoke to her; but my lips trembled.
“No, I am married,” came her pleading whisper. But her hand moved
toward him....
A complacent clod of a little man. But husband. Married. A
stranger....
Why was his mind a forest of hot trees when he needed a path? A
pavement. Hard, clear, cool, like here where his feet were pounding.
Tedium. He played in a waste of soiled senses. He walked through a
waste of frozen thoughts. He was frozen in tedium.
He sat down, for he was tired. He opened his eyes.