vest.”
“Oh, forget your damn clothes. Does your eye hurt?”
“I feel fine,” I said. Everything was sort of violet and still, the sky
green paling into gold beyond the gable of the house and a plume of
smoke rising from the chimney without any wind. I heard the pump again.
A man was filling a pail, watching us across his pumping shoulder. A
woman crossed the door, but she didnt look out. I could hear a cow
lowing somewhere.
“Come on,” Shreve said, “Let your clothes alone and put that rag on your
eye. I’ll send your suit out first thing tomorrow.”
“All right. I’m sorry I didn’t bleed on him a little, at least.”
“Son of a bitch,” Shreve said. Spoade came out of the house, talking to
the woman I reckon, and crossed the yard. He looked at me with his cold,
quizzical eyes.
“Well, bud,” he said, looking at me, “I’ll be damned if you dont go to a
lot of trouble to have your fun. Kidnapping, then fighting. What do you
do on your holidays? burn houses?”
“I’m all right,” I said. “What did Mrs Bland say?”
“She’s giving Gerald hell for bloodying you up. She’ll give you hell for
letting him, when she sees you. She dont object to the fighting, it’s
the blood that annoys her. I think you lost caste with her a little by
not holding your blood better. How do you feel?”
“Sure,” Shreve said, “If you cant be a Bland, the next best thing is to
commit adultery with one or get drunk and fight him, as the case may
be.”
“Quite right,” Spoade said. “But I didnt know Quentin was drunk.”
“He wasnt,” Shreve said. “Do you have to be drunk to want to hit that
son of a bitch?”
“Well, I think I’d have to be pretty drunk to try it, after seeing how
Quentin came out. Where’d he learn to box?”
“He’s been going to Mike’s every day, over in town,” I said.
“He has?” Spoade said. “Did you know that when you hit him?”
“I dont know,” I said. “I guess so. Yes.”
“Wet it again,” Shreve said. “Want some fresh water?”
“This is all right,” I said. I dipped the cloth again and held it to my
eye. “Wish I had something to clean my vest.” Spoade was still watching
me.
“Say,” he said, “What did you hit him for? What was it he said?”
“I dont know. I dont know why I did.”
“The first I knew was when you jumped up all of a sudden and said, ‘Did
you ever have a sister? Did you?’ and when he said No, you hit him. I
noticed you kept on looking at him, but you didnt seem to be paying any
attention to what anybody was saying until you jumped up and asked him
if he had any sisters.”
“Ah, he was blowing off as usual,” Shreve said, “about his women. You
know: like he does, before girls, so they dont know exactly what he’s
saying. All his damn innuendo and lying and a lot of stuff that dont
make sense even. Telling us about some wench that he made a date with to
meet at a dance hall in Atlantic City and stood her up and went to the
hotel and went to bed and how he lay there being sorry for her waiting
on the pier for him, without him there to give her what she wanted.
Talking about the body’s beauty and the sorry ends thereof and how tough
women have it, without anything else they can do except lie on their
backs. Leda lurking in the bushes, whimpering and moaning for the swan,
see. The son of a bitch. I’d hit him myself. Only I’d grabbed up her
damn hamper of wine and done it if it had been me.”
“Oh,” Spoade said, “the champion of dames. Bud, you excite not only
admiration, but horror.” He looked at me, cold and quizzical. “Good
God,” he said.
“I’m sorry I hit him,” I said. “Do I look too bad to go back and get it
over with?”
“Apologies, hell,” Shreve said, “Let them go to hell. We’re going to
town.”
“He ought to go back so they’ll know he fights like a gentleman,” Spoade
said. “Gets licked like one, I mean.”
“Like this?” Shreve said, “With his clothes all over blood?”
“Why, all right,” Spoade said, “You know best.”
“He cant go around in his undershirt,” Shreve said, “He’s not a senior
yet. Come on, let’s go to town.”
“You neednt come,” I said. “You go on back to the picnic.”
“Hell with them,” Shreve said. “Come on here.”
“What’ll I tell them?” Spoade said. “Tell them you and Quentin had a
fight too?”
“Tell them nothing,” Shreve said. “Tell her her option expired at
sunset. Come on, Quentin. I’ll ask that woman where the nearest
interurban—”
“No,” I said, “I’m not going back to town.”
Shreve stopped, looking at me. Turning, his glasses looked like small
yellow moons.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going back to town yet. You go on back to the picnic. Tell them
I wouldnt come back because my clothes were spoiled.”
“Look here,” he said, “What are you up to?”
“Nothing. I’m all right. You and Spoade go on back. I’ll see you
tomorrow.” I went on across the yard, toward the road.
“Do you know where the station is?” Shreve said.
“I’ll find it. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Tell Mrs Bland I’m sorry I
spoiled her party.” They stood watching me. I went around the house. A
rock path went down to the road. Roses grew on both sides of the path. I
went through the gate, onto the road. It dropped downhill, toward the
woods, and I could make out the auto beside the road. I went up the
hill. The light increased as I mounted, and before I reached the top I
heard a car. It sounded far away across the twilight and I stopped and
listened to it. I couldnt make out the auto any longer, but Shreve was
standing in the road before the house, looking up the hill. Behind him
the yellow light lay like a wash of paint on the roof of the house. I
lifted my hand and went on over the hill, listening to the car. Then the
house was gone and I stopped in the green and yellow light and heard the
car growing louder and louder, until just as it began to die away it
ceased all together. I waited until I heard it start again. Then I went
on.
As I descended the light dwindled slowly, yet at the same time without
altering its quality, as if I and not light were changing, decreasing,
though even when the road ran into trees you could have read a
newspaper. Pretty soon I came to a lane. I turned into it. It was closer
and darker than the road, but when it came out at the trolley
stop—another wooden marquee—the light was still unchanged. After the
lane it seemed brighter, as though I had walked through night in the
lane and come out into morning again. Pretty soon the car came. I got on
it, they turning to look at my eye, and found a seat on the left side.
The lights were on in the car, so while we ran between trees I couldnt
see anything except my own face and a woman across the aisle with a hat
sitting right on top of her head, with a broken feather in it, but when
we ran out of the trees I could see the twilight again, that quality of
light as if time really had stopped for a while, with the sun hanging
just under the horizon, and then we passed the marquee where the old man
had been eating out of the sack, and the road going on under the
twilight, into twilight and the sense of water peaceful and swift
beyond. Then the car went on, the draught building steadily up in the
open door until it was drawing steadily through the car with the odour
of summer and darkness except honeysuckle. Honeysuckle was the saddest
odour of all, I think. I remember lots of them. Wistaria was one. On the
rainy days when Mother wasnt feeling quite bad enough to stay away from
the windows we used to play under it. When Mother stayed in bed Dilsey
would put old clothes on us and let us go out in the rain because she
said rain never hurt young folks. But if Mother was up we always began
by playing on the porch until she said we were making too much noise,
then we went out and played under the wistaria frame.
This was where I saw the river for the last time this morning, about
here. I could feel water beyond the twilight, smell. When it bloomed in
the spring and it rained the smell was everywhere you didnt notice it so
much at other times but when it rained the smell began to come into the
house at twilight either it would rain more at twilight or there was
something in the light itself but it always smelled strongest then until
I would lie in bed thinking when will it stop when will it stop. The
draft in the door smelled of water, a damp steady breath. Sometimes I
could put myself to sleep saying that over and over until after the
honeysuckle got all mixed up in it the whole thing came to symbolise
night and unrest I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking
down a long corridor of grey halflight where all stable things had
become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt
suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without
relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they
should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.
I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last
light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror,
then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little
like butterflies hovering a long way off. Benjamin the child of. How he
used to sit before that mirror. Refuge unfailing in which conflict
tempered silenced reconciled. Benjamin the child of mine old age held
hostage into Egypt. O Benjamin. Dilsey said it was because Mother was
too proud for him. They come into white people’s lives like that in
sudden sharp black trickles that isolate white facts for an instant in
unarguable truth like under a microscope; the rest of the time just
voices that laugh when you see nothing to laugh at, tears when no reason
for tears. They will bet on the odd or even number of mourners at a
funeral. A brothel full of them in Memphis went into a religious trance
ran naked into the street. It took three policemen to subdue one of
them. Yes Jesus O good man Jesus O that good man.
The car stopped. I got out, with them looking at my eye. When the
trolley came it was full. I stopped on the back platform.
“Seats up front,” the conductor said. I looked into the car. There were
no seats on the left side.
“I’m not going far,” I said. “I’ll just stand here.”
We crossed the river. The bridge, that is, arching slow and high into
space, between silence and nothingness where lights—yellow and red and
green—trembled in the clear air, repeating themselves.
“Better go up front and get a seat,” the conductor said.
“I get off pretty soon,” I said. “A couple of blocks.”
I got off before we reached the postoffice. They’d all be sitting around
somewhere by now though, and then I was hearing my watch and I began to
listen for the chimes and I touched Shreve’s letter through my coat, the
bitten shadows of the elms flowing upon my hand. And then as I turned
into the quad the chimes did begin and I went on while the notes came up
like ripples on a pool and passed me and went on, saying Quarter to
what? All right. Quarter to what.
Our windows were dark. The entrance was empty. I walked close to the
left wall when I entered, but it was empty: just the stairs curving up
into shadows echoes of feet in the sad generations like light dust upon
the shadows, my feet waking them like dust, lightly to settle again.
I could see the letter before I turned the light on, propped against a
book on the table so I would see it. Calling him my husband. And then
Spoade said they were going somewhere, would not be back until late, and
Mrs Bland would need another cavalier. But I would have seen him and he
cannot get another car for an hour because after six oclock. I took out
my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldnt even
lie. Then I laid it face up on the table and took Mrs Bland’s letter and
tore it across and dropped the pieces into the waste basket and took off
my coat, vest, collar, tie and shirt. The tie was spoiled too, but then
niggers. Maybe a pattern of blood he could call that the one Christ was
wearing. I found the gasoline in Shreve’s room and spread the vest on
the table, where it would be flat, and opened the gasoline.
_the first car in town a girl Girl that’s what Jason couldn’t bear smell
of gasoline making him sick then got madder than ever because a girl
Girl had no sister but Benjamin Benjamin the child of my sorrowful if
I’d just had a mother so I could say Mother Mother_ It took a lot of
gasoline, and then I couldnt tell if it was still the stain or just the
gasoline. It had started the cut to smarting again so when I went to
wash I hung the vest on a chair and lowered the light cord so that the
bulb would be drying the splotch. I washed my face and hands, but even
then I could smell it within the soap stinging, constricting the
nostrils a little. Then I opened the bag and took the shirt and collar
and tie out and put the bloody ones in and closed the bag, and dressed.
While I was brushing my hair the half hour went. But there was until the
three quarters anyway, except suppose _seeing on the rushing darkness
only his own face no broken feather unless two of them but not two like
that going to Boston the same night then my face his face for an instant
across the crashing when out of darkness two lighted windows in rigid
fleeing crash gone his face and mine just I see saw did I see not
goodbye the marquee empty of eating the road empty in darkness in
silence the bridge arching into silence darkness sleep the water
peaceful and swift not goodbye_
I turned out the light and went into my bedroom, out of the gasoline but
I could still smell it. I stood at the window the curtains moved slow
out of the darkness touching my face like someone breathing asleep,
breathing slow into the darkness again, leaving the touch. _After they
had gone up stairs Mother lay back in her chair, the camphor
handkerchief to her mouth. Father hadn’t moved he still sat beside her
holding her hand the bellowing hammering away like no place for it in
silence_ When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a
dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two
faces lifted out of the shadow. _You know what I’d do if I were King?_
she never was a queen or a fairy she was always a king or a giant or a
general _I’d break that place open and drag them out and I’d whip them
good_ It was torn out, jagged out. I was glad. I’d have to turn back to
it until the dungeon was Mother herself she and Father upward into weak
light holding hands and us lost somewhere below even them without even a
ray of light. Then the honeysuckle got into it. As soon as I turned off
the light and tried to go to sleep it would begin to come into the room
in waves building and building up until I would have to pant to get any
air at all out of it until I would have to get up and feel my way like
when I was a little boy _hands can see touching in the mind shaping
unseen door Door now nothing hands can see_ My nose could see gasoline,
the vest on the table, the door. The corridor was still empty of all the
feet in sad generations seeking water. _yet the eyes unseeing clenched
like teeth not disbelieving doubting even the absence of pain shin ankle
knee the long invisible flowing of the stair-railing where a misstep in
the darkness filled with sleeping Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury door I
am not afraid only Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury getting so far ahead
sleeping I will sleep fast when I door Door door_ It was empty too, the
pipes, the porcelain, the stained quiet walls, the throne of
contemplation. I had forgotten the glass, but I could _hands can see
cooling fingers invisible swan-throat where less than Moses rod the
glass touch tentative not to drumming lean cool throat drumming cooling
the metal the glass full overfull cooling the glass the fingers flushing
sleep leaving the taste of dampened sleep in the long silence of the
throat_ I returned up the corridor, waking the lost feet in whispering
battalions in the silence, into the gasoline, the watch telling its
furious lie on the dark table. Then the curtains breathing out of the
dark upon my face, leaving the breathing upon my face. A quarter hour
yet. And then I’ll not be. The peacefullest words. Peacefullest words.
_Non fui. Sum. Fui. Nom sum._ Somewhere I heard bells once. Mississippi
or Massachusetts. I was. I am not. Massachusetts or Mississippi. Shreve
has a bottle in his trunk. _Aren’t you even going to open it_ Mr and Mrs
Jason Richmond Compson announce the _Three times. Days. Aren’t you even
going to open it_ marriage of their daughter Candace _that liquor
teaches you to confuse the means with the end_. I am. Drink. I was not.
Let us sell Benjy’s pasture so that Quentin may go to Harvard and I may
knock my bones together and together. I will be dead in. Was it one year
Caddy said. Shreve has a bottle in his trunk. Sir I will not need
Shreve’s I have sold Benjy’s pasture and I can be dead in Harvard Caddy
said in the caverns and the grottoes of the sea tumbling peacefully to
the wavering tides because Harvard is such a fine sound forty acres is
no high price for a fine sound. A find dead sound we will swap Benjy’s
pasture for a fine dead sound. It will last him a long time because he
cannot hear it unless he can smell it _as soon as she came in the door
he began to cry_ I thought all the time it was just one of those town
squirts that Father was always teasing her about until. I didnt notice
him any more than any other stranger drummer or what thought they were
army shirts until all of a sudden I knew he wasn’t thinking of me at all
as a potential source of harm, but was thinking of her when he looked at
me was looking at me through her like through a piece of coloured glass
_why must you meddle with me dont you know it wont do any good I thought
you’d have left that for Mother and Jason_
_did Mother set Jason to spy on you_ I wouldnt have.
_Women only use other people’s codes of honour it’s because she loves
Caddy_ staying downstairs even when she was sick so Father couldnt kid
Uncle Maury before Jason Father said Uncle Maury was too poor a
classicist to risk the blind immortal boy in person he should have
chosen Jason because Jason would have made only the same kind of blunder
Uncle Maury himself would have made not one to get him a black eye the
Patterson boy was smaller than Jason too they sold the kites for a
nickel apiece until the trouble over finances Jason got a new partner
still smaller one small enough anyway because T. P. said Jason still
treasurer but Father said why should Uncle Maury work if he father could
support five or six niggers that did nothing at all but sit with their
feet in the oven he certainly could board and lodge Uncle Maury now and
then and lend him a little money who kept his Father’s belief in the
celestial derivation of his own species at such a fine heat then Mother
would cry and say that Father believed his people were better than hers
that he was ridiculing Uncle Maury to teach us the same thing she
couldnt see that Father was teaching us that all men are just
accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps
where all previous dolls had been thrown away the sawdust flowing from
what wound in what side that not for me died not. It used to be I
thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a
kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of
Grandfather’s desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room
where it was I always thought of them as being together somewhere all
the time waiting for old Colonel Sartoris to come down and sit with them
waiting on a high place beyond cedar trees Colonel Sartoris was on a
still higher place looking out across at something and they were waiting
for him to get done looking at it and come down Grandfather wore his
uniform and we could hear the murmur of their voices from beyond the
cedars they were always talking and Grandfather was always right
The three quarters began. The first note sounded, measured and tranquil,
serenely peremptory, emptying the unhurried silence for the next one and
that’s it if people could only change one another forever that way merge
like a flame swirling up for an instant then blown cleanly out along the
cool eternal dark instead of lying there trying not to think of the
swing until all cedars came to have that vivid dead smell of perfume
that Benjy hated so. Just by imagining the clump it seemed to me that I
could hear whispers secret surges smell the beating of hot blood under
wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in
pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and
see evil done for a little while its not always and i it doesnt have to
be even that long for a man of courage and he do you consider that
courage and i yes sir dont you and he every man is the arbiter of his
own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more
importance than the act itself than any act otherwise you could not be
in earnest and i you dont believe i am serious and he i think you are
too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldn’t have felt driven
to the expedient of telling me you have committed incest otherwise and i
i wasnt lying i wasnt lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of
natural human folly into a horror and then exorcise it with truth and i
it was to isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to
flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though it had
never been and he did you try to make her do it and i i was afraid to i
was afraid she might and then it wouldnt have done any good but if i
could tell you we did it would have been so and then the others wouldnt
be so and then the world would roar away and he and now this other you
are not lying now either but you are still blind to what is in yourself
to that part of general truth the sequence of natural events and their
causes which shadows every mans brow even benjys you are not thinking of
finitude you are contemplating an apotheosis in which a temporary state
of mind will become symmetrical above the flesh and aware both of itself
and of the flesh it will not quite discard you will not even be dead and
i temporary and he you cannot bear to think that someday it will no
longer hurt you like this now were getting at it you seem to regard it
merely as an experience that will whiten your hair overnight so to speak
without altering your appearance at all you wont do it under these
conditions it will be a gamble and the strange thing is that man who is
conceived by accident and whose every breath is a fresh cast with dice
already loaded against him will not face that final main which he knows
before hand he has assuredly to face without essaying expedients ranging
all the way from violence to petty chicanery that would not deceive a
child until someday in very disgust he risks everything on a single
blind turn of a card no man ever does that under the first fury of
despair or remorse or bereavement he does it only when he has realised
that even the despair or remorse or bereavement is not particularly
important to the dark diceman and i temporary and he it is hard
believing to think that a love or a sorrow is a bond purchased without
design and which matures willynilly and is recalled without warning to
be replaced by whatever issue the gods happen to be floating at the time
no you will not do that until you come to believe that even she was not
quite worth despair perhaps and i i will never do that nobody knows what
i know and he i think youd better go on up to cambridge right away you
might go up into maine for a month you can afford it if you are careful
it might be a good thing watching pennies has healed more scars than
jesus and i suppose i realise what you believe i will realise up there
next week or next month and he then you will remember that for you to go
to harvard has been your mothers dream since you were born and no
compson has ever disappointed a lady and i temporary it will be better
for me for all of us and he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues
but let no man prescribe for another mans wellbeing and i temporary and
he was the saddest word of all there is nothing else in the world its
not despair until time its not even time until it was