[Illustration: RAHAB]
BOOKS by WALDO FRANK
_The Unwelcome Man_
_The Dark Mother_
_Rahab_
_City Block_ (in preparation)
_Our America_
_The Art of The Vieux Colombier_
_Virgin Spain_ (in preparation)
RAHAB
_By_
WALDO FRANK
[Illustration]
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_RAHAB_
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
_Printed in the United States of America_
_To_
_Magic_
ERRATA
Page 57, second line from top, “stook” should read “stood.”
Page 113, eighth line from top, reading “the cigarette smoke,
closed them, sat down,” should be eliminated entirely, and the line
should read “deliberate they beat against her hips”
Page 147, twelfth line from top, “shadow” should read “shallow”
CONTENTS
PAGE
_One_
BRASS GAS CHANDELIER 13
_Two_
RIVER GARDEN 21
_Three_
WHITE SKY 69
_Four_
PAVEMENT OVER EARTH 81
_Five_
CLARA 167
_Six_
PAVEMENT BROKEN 203
_Seven_
EARTH 245
“_Be consoled: thou wouldst not seek
me if thou hadst not found me._ ...”
_PASCAL_
_ONE_
BRASS GAS CHANDELIER
The door opened against the drawn chain, grating against it.
In the grey strip a woman’s face, very grey, very unexpectant, suddenly
was bright.
It measured a man, young, standing at ease. The chain clicked free. “O
it’s you, Mr. Samson.” The door opened wide, shut them in.
The hall was a long shadow beyond the glow of them standing. He was
quiet waiting, not sheer against her: his shaggy coat poured the
street’s coldness. She was a dim thing about eyes.
“I’m so glad it’s you, Mr. Samson.”
She walked noiseless through shadow, she took no space from it, she was
infinitesimal within a mood. He followed.
“I was taking it right easy ... reading.”
In the gaslight she turned and fronted him. She took his coat. He was a
fair boy, gentle, somewhat plump. He sat down, she stood.
--I have been in this room before, I have seen this woman before. It is
not the sort of room, she is not the sort of woman I want to see for I
am here for neither.... Why strangely now this sense of her reality upon
me?
It was her room, there they were after all, the woman in her room
touching upon him.--Let me see in this silence the woman in her room.
Her quiet words did not obtrude upon a silence whose margin he caught as
it waved. He saw her a battered creature. He saw her absurdity of
painted cheeks, two imitation flowers stuck in the ruts of a road. He
sat in a room whose dinginess enarmed him. He sat in the misery of this
woman. He sat deep.
“Still so cold out?” Over her head a chandelier ... brass gas, hideous
brutal under the flecked ceiling. His feet glowed with renewing warmth.
In his eye beneath his shoes a carpet of acid green.
--We sit.... She sits in a cloud of dinginess. Sharp spirit veiled in a
cloudy flesh. Now: centers of glow, thrown from the woman, solid like
her spirit. He was aware of loveliness.
Under the blow of the chandelier a delicate Pembroke table ... book and
a glass of whisky.
--Under my arms, pressing against my back, a high arched Windsor chair.
In the break of her hip, standing, a Hepple--white desk.
--We have no furniture like this at home!
She spoke. He peered into the form of her words. His eyes took the gloss
of the subtle table, it was one with her words’ accent. Futile words ...
grammatical, well-ordered. A subtle table, and beyond a virulent huge
sideboard. A faint quaint accent in her pointless words curling like
heat of hidden flame above the table, against the sideboard: whispers in
how she spoke, like these glowing poems in wood, of a day distant from
his New York where there had been leisure and when from the dung of
human misery America grew flowers.
A quiet pain in the table and her words ... a distant pain. He did not
put his immediate question.
She felt his pause; in it drew up her chair. She sat he thought with
grace athwart him at the table. The whisky glass was gone, he had not
noticed her hide it. The book was there with her hand. Black little
book. _Bible!_ He felt her feeling him feel her. Now she was silent.
They were silent upon each other. Heavily.
His brow twitched.--Let me see her! She was cold and helpless. He
understood he could not understand. She seemed a chaste woman with burnt
eyes. She drew him.
Words to pull him aloof: “I am afraid we don’t read that book ... half
enough.... I don’t I mean,” he blushed. “Do we, Mrs. Luve?”
--Wrong. Wrong! A delicate line left ... he felt _left_ ... under her
folded thin lip. Lip folded away.
“It’s a rattling good book.”
“O but _you_ do.”
“I?”
“_You_ read it enough.... You’re a Jew.”
“I’m a Jew,” he repeated. Above her and the table the flourishes and
bulgings of the chandelier ... brass gas ... were lewd. “I’m a Jew. If
there’s any soul in me worth speaking of, it’s in that book.” She leaned
forward upon the table with elbows drawn tight back. “Yet I can’t read a
word of it, except in English.... I’m ashamed of that.”
She laughed embarrassed. He was understanding deeper he could not
understand. She was up swiftly. She took the Bible, opened a door in
the sideboard. Glint of glasses, plush, odor of liquors. She placed the
Bible within them.
“I suppose,” a smile to her face, the first: as sudden again her face
was grey,” ...you came for Thelma?”
“Why ... yes.”--Of course for that I came, for that only I come ever to
your dirty flat.... She has delicate fingers.... How else did I come at
first? Dirty? There was a silence fringing his questions, veiling them,
making them false. In the silence the presence of strangeness.
“I am afraid I may not be able to get her ... right away.”
Her fingers curled up. He felt how they had drooped from the hard square
palms like shoots frozen in a cold Spring.
“There’s just a chance. If you’ll ... excuse me I’ll phone.”
The door shut him in.
He sat quiet because he wanted to get up, hunt for something. Bible? He
walked up and down because he wanted to stay, hoped she would find
Thelma.
He needed Thelma to-night.... He knew this.
--I do not feel it now. For only a sharp need brought him to this flat
he despised. Where alone Thelma would meet him.--I am here again. I must
need Thelma. Mrs. Luve was back.
“I’m sorry. Thelma’s gone to a Show, with some friends. There’s just a
chance ... later ... she might possibly go after eleven to the Garden
Cafe. I could phone there, then.” Mrs. Luve stood in the door, her face
was bright, she smiled again it was grey. “You----“
He shook his head, not getting up. She did not stir also. Her face was
bright. Her mouth trembled. He said: “Have you any beer, Mrs. Luve? We
might have a drink?”
He could not help seeing her, seeing her more and more. Frail slain
fingers resting upon a table warmer than her hand. She all a sapling
broken in frost ... standing seasons dead.
--What is there here to see? He pulled a bill from his pocket. As his
hand went toward hers, a hot wind stopped it. He felt them both cold.
Under her eyes he saw a shadow like a whip’s mark.
He put his money away.
She left the room.
She returned, she carried a silver platter. Upon it a bottle of wine.
Two slim glasses.
It was long silence now, with them less heavy against it. Silence full
with its own mood, its own blood, strong to live.
The wine stood erect on the subtle table. Mrs. Luve leaned and poured of
it, a drop first in her glass, then his glass full, then her glass full.
Her bare arm pouring red wine came from a dim kimona.
... In the face of a worn woman black eyes burning: eyes blazing against
the face, leaping from face and woman: eyes touching the red of the
wine.
He felt:--I am disappearing.
There is a silence like light
Upon us.
Moving like light a silence
Upon words.
There will be words moving in light:
There will be lighted words....
_TWO_
RIVER GARDEN
Spring ... a Southern city in song. A city drifting fading into the wide
arms of earth, into trees, fields running under grass, into trees, into
high thrusts of earth, into trees, trees. The city a raised shadow upon
earth. Against earth’s sweep through the Precinct of suns and stars,
apart from sun and stars--blotch of hard houses leaning back upon the
dead days of their makers--whole city leaning back, falling away from
the wide freedom of sun, earth, stars, twirling together locked. And
they two ... man and girl ... clasped in the steadfast spin of life--sun
stars earth dust--that swung away from the city.
Fanny Dirk was on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting up in
erection, spilling in bud. Over: he. Under and over: One. She was viced
in One: Grass, hair, fingers, twigs broken to leaf, lips and earth hot
against her.... One. She was surrounded by One. She was beyond
distinctions. She was One. She was in ecstasy....
Then they walked to their horses on the distant road.
A house, coddling itself warm, despite bright elms, in its shadows of
men, cast a grey finger up from the Town to the young man’s mind. His
house ... running no longer away from the immobile dance of earth and
sun ... reached up now, arrogant, clambered with its long harsh shadows
into the mind and mood of his mother’s and father’s son.
“Fanny!”
--Harry, Harry.... O you ... you my life!
“Fanny, now we must get married.”
--Hush! I hate you. How can you speak so now?
“Why are you silent, Fanny? I’m a gentleman, little girl. Don’t think I
respect you less, because you love me.... I love you ... we....”
--No respect, then!
“ ...will be married. You are not less the lady.”
--Stop, stop, stop!
“Secretly, of course. Till I am done with College. Not so long, Honey.
You can wait? We’ll have a real wedding, then.”
--Can’t you stop? What are you killing? What are you killing? Can’t we
stop?
Fanny Dirk became the wife of Harry Howland Luve.
* * * * *
Mrs. Luve held her slender glass in frail spent fingers. She sipped. Her
hot eyes swept above frail flesh, spun glass.
--I want you to see me! I want you to see me!
Mr. Samson nodded.--What else can I do?
--Can you see this? I was as fresh and ruddy as a maple blossom!...
She was hard, she was intact. Her husband took her to a little house on
the best street: three squares away was the Luve Mansion which one day
should be his. “This is our home. It’s small dear. But so are you small.
We’ll live here till our love bursts it.”
He was tall and thin, yet he gave the air of softness. His big black
eyes being soft, his delicate hair that lay thinning on the transparent
tinge of his brow gave his sapling body the air of holding a softness.
He had small dimpled hands tapering to fingers with which to hold her
who was hard and intact.
“O I love it!”
She did not love the hard Luve Mansion, her own home had been prim and
small, her hardness needed tender and small things of the world.
“O I love it, Harry! I’m glad it’s no larger. O--what a kitchen! Can’t I
do for you right snug in that gem of a kitchen.”
“No, sweet, not that. Mammy Sue comes along. I can’t say No to Mammy. I
can’t begin now saying No ... when I’m married. She’s been waiting’,
fixin’ for that. She’s been totin’ me from a baby just for that. You’ll
surrender, Honey! She loves you for making me surrender ... to her.”
“And I bake such biscuits.”
“You may ... when Mammy’s not looking.”
She made him sit down. “You’re so high!” She clapped her hands. Sharp,
she kissed his hair, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Sharp kisses. Each
finger tip she kissed. “O--O you!” She opened his waistcoat, she opened
one button of his shirt. A sharp kiss on his chest. She leaped away,
clapped her hands.
“I’ll manage Mammy.”
“Whom couldn’t you manage?”
--You.... I leap gaily clapping my hands, my Love. I leap on Pain, on
the shadow of Doubt I leap. What can I do with you?
She was on her knees: her arms embraced his legs, her cheek was hot
against his cold shoes.
--Under the Pain is there sunlight for dancing? Under the doubt is there
a solid world?
“She loves me,” said to himself Harry Howland Luve. “Blessed
sweet!”--Well, I’ve married her. She’s married to a Luve. She’s leaping,
dancing on a joy I can understand.
* * * * *
Mrs. Luve and Mr. Samson talked of small matters pleasantly.
--He sits there sweetly, chatting of small matters. O it is good. O it
is cool water. Bless you! He leaves me alone, he does not touch me. I am
myself. We move marvelously into myself. He is content there, merely
talking, with me a woman, of small matters.
--I have a mind, good mind for others. You shall have the benefit of
that whenever you need it. I’ll find out whenever ... good good Boy!...
--I am alone. That is the blessing of talking with you here on cool
small matters. You do not touch me as the world does when I am alone
with no one. O you heal me: will you at least, after these years, these
years, such years, be my healer? Not touching! The heal and the health
and the miracle of that. Not touched, at last. The years full of bloody
bubbles, each year a bubble of my blood unhealed. I shall not tell you
of myself. You will feel....
--For thanks of God ... your God.... I embrace you, Boy. When one has a
God one can have cool small matters. Let us talk on, for your God’s
sake, of your cool small matters.
* * * * *
“Why do you drink? O Harry ... why, why now?”
“You are not always there. At College you were not there, Fanny. Drink
was. One took what was to take.”
“But now....”
“Drink was there first. O I don’t know. When I am drunk I am wrapped in
warm smooth clinging stuffs--like entrails--like insides of a great warm
creature. When I drink I am wrapped in a woman.... Let me creep into
you, Beloved. Farther, nearer. O you are so _whole_. Won’t you let me
creep away inside of you?”
“Harry I am all open to you. Come.”
“No dear. O my love! No, dear, I can’t. God damn you. You entice me ...
impossibly. There you are--you are a woman, _there_. I can’t touch you
... you’re _there_. I am here. Touch you? Break you. I’d smash you into
this air if I could. Damn you! Damn you. Why shouldn’t I have another
drink? _It_ goes inside of me ... all of it ... serves me ... warms me.
It’s mine, that. Going inside of me, same as me going inside of it.
Inside of you ... impossibilities. God damn your sure solid eyes. Let me
get out.”
She lifted his head from her lap. “Go then.”
He rose uneasy to his feet. He wiped straying silk hairs from his
swimming eyes. He turned: stumbled: sank. He sobbed.
She placed him on his back on the floor: cradled his head in her hands.
“Let me get out! Let me get out!” he shouted, motionless.
“Sh-sh. You can go.”
“Fanny, Fanny,” he whispered, “hold me ... hold me still.” His body
swung on the floor, the floor careened about his eyes. Her arms,
cradling him, swaying his head, were alone moveless.
She dragged him to bed. He was a helpless drunken child. She undressed
him. Her hands, touching his naked body, brought to his face a veil of
ease. Her hands ceased. He raised his naked flesh from the hot covers.
“Give me a drink!”
“No.”
His eyes swung back from the wall of her response. But his arms surged
forward, they caught her. He dragged her against his naked flesh....
* * * * *
She, little woman, sat in her rocking chair on the porch, looked up at
the flood of sun and tried to find the world.
--Up the sun that is warm and good, up the sun that blinds me
Struggling, not overwhelmed, I send my eyes....
She was clad in a pink dress whose dainty softness brought clear the
silvery atunement of her body. There was naught slack in her. Her bare
arms were a gentling, a subtle rounding of her bones: a haze of dark
hair on them: hands rose intact and long from the fine wrists like
flower from stem. The little breasts stood in the pink tulle, alert,
infinitely one with the awareness of her eyes and wrists ... like the
antennæ of a bug holding the world upon their frailty.
She sat challenging sun: not wilting: waiting her husband.
--Every day now he drinks. He gambles. He loves me. What have I to do
with cards and liquor?
* * * * *
She, larger woman, sat deeper in her chair: lost now in a swathing gown
of gray that rose like a wave to her white neck. Her shoulders and her
chest; bare, were still planturous in their running variance of plane
and mood: strong seeking chin, throat swelling as if with graceful
words, chest rising downward from the aloof virginity of her neck to the
slow fulness of her heavying breasts. Fanny was pregnant. She sat there
... taut limpid body ... in the sun, eyes unwilted, about her child like
a sunny song hiding an omen. She sat there gradually giving way ... her
taut and limpid sun-shape giving way ... to the dark press of a swollen
larva tangled inside her blood, pressing, kicking, sucking weight to
rend.
Harry Luve was gone three days, without a word ... plenty of signs. She
knew.
--He has gone. I shall see him again. O yes. Long after I have looked in
my child’s eyes. Thank God for that! I shall look long, years perhaps?
long and deep in my baby’s eyes in order to understand how I must see
him again.
His going down was simple like all of Harry Luve ... simple like a very
plaintive song. She sat between the high sun and the low wail of her
husband: balanced about a child.
How sustain the light madnesses of College? except in drink and
gambling. How nourish the child in him he was? save with the rolling
bloods of liquor, the swift tossings, cradlings, plungings of luck at
cards. At the end of deep immersement in a helpless joy forever Birth
which was an end: the Birth here at last Disgrace, as the Birth once
air. Too much money lost, too much folly of a night in his cups. A woman
half dead, half naked, bent across a table, a mirror smashed, ten
thousand dollars debt. A birth that! Harry slipped down into it as
doubtless he had slipped from his mother’s womb ... whimpering,
blinking, inarticulate--nostalgic. He was gone.
But his father had Honor to groom. The debt was paid, the woman was
salvaged and sent off. No word in the papers.
“He will find out he’s safe ... turn up, sobered ... my Dear. Never
worry,” his father assured her.
“And I ...?”
“You are his wife, Frances. You must wait.”
She got up.
“Will you move my chair, Colonel Luve ... over there?”
She walked, clear slender neck and legs with her child so full before
her her walk seemed to say: “My child comes first.”
Her husband’s parent shook his head.
“What can you do, my daughter? You must wait....”
She sank in her new-placed chair.
“ ...in the sun.”
--She is pregnant, Colonel Luve explained away the inconsequent words.
Fanny waited.
* * * * *
“I know your name.... I knew it always ... now you will let me?--_Samson
Brenner._”
“You say my name as if it meant something.”
“Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does. Go on.”
“I sometimes wonder why I am studying Law. Writing poems is more fun ...
and you know? seems _realler_!”
“Yet you distrust writing poems....”
“--bad poems.”
“Bad because you distrust doing anything for fun?”
“You know, I think you’re right!”
He smiled like a child, pleased but a bit scared when he finds true what
he had sought in make-believe. His brow wrinkled. He turned away from
the brass glare of the light.
“That light is horrid,” she said.
“--all substitutes for the sun,” he said.
“That is so.”
“Yet what a wonder what a glory,” his body stiffened, “that we should
have a substitute at all!”
“Why glory, Samson Brenner, if the substitute is false?... Wait.”
Mrs. Luve came back. She placed two candles between them on the Pembroke
table.
“Shut out the gas,” she said.
There was blackness, heavy, hot, clasping them both. Two jets of liquid
glow tongued from the mellow wood, made the wood lift and gleam like a
sun’s ray through moving cloud: cast wreathings subtle, evanescent, out
against the blackness.
They were quiet. The candles ... two fingers rose, touched them across
the table, joined them, hushed them.
“May I say something to you?”
“What, Mrs. Luve?”
“You have a tongue that speaks truth, you have a tongue that lies.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“You must not have a tongue that lies: for you have a tongue that is
true.”
“Haven’t we all ...?”
“You must not----“
--He does not see himself.
He moves through a black Hole
Bright--pouring brightness.
Where is a Sun whereby a Sun may see?
--I have ten fingers ... ten to weave a Web
To catch at God.
Too frail--too fine ... yet you slip through?
* * * * *
Fanny looked out from her back sun-parlor upon trees.
Beside a high grey wall rose the thick life of a magnolia; beech and
cherry and dogwood sang their light swift presences, a lawn was fresh
like dew.
“Trees,” she murmured....--They have waited the Winter. It is Spring,
they prepare to give a whole new life--blossom and seed. That is why it
is Spring. Each year ... at their feet the dead leaves sink and rot.
They push forth new ones. Each year.... They cannot help themselves.
She could go no farther.--Helpless bravery.... Upstairs in her cradle
Edith slept. Harry was gone, voiceless, eight months. She was imprisoned
in her man’s absence, in her child’s presence.
She had a dream. Harry jumped on his black horse, stood over her in his
stirrups. He ribboned the black flanks red with his spurs. The horse
leaped: as he flew away he leaned to her and cut deep her breast with
his crop.... She awoke thinking of Edith. Her child was the red salute
of Harry’s going: the scar of it. She loved her child.
She had a dream. A tall man with a baby’s face lay crowding in her arms.
She could kiss his baby’s face, but he had tall legs, they spun and
twirled about her. They struck a lamp which fell, the house was in
flame. All of the town rushed into her house: she saw his father and
mother, her mother who was dead and brother ... all of the city came
into her sitting among flame holding a baby face. They stood there,
pointing, poising, sneering at her. “What is she going to do? She sat
rigid holding her baby face. What a fool, she sits there nursing a dead
child with fire all about her!” She was helpless.
Now, sitting, watching the brave helpless trees she could go no farther.
She had a child whom she loved and who was the wound of another love
upon her.
--Trees do not think, they are brave helplessly. Why am I not brave?
Trees lift into air. I am buried.
She was buried. Her friends and her relations, seeing her Mrs. Luve,
buried her daily. Her child, seeing her mother, buried her daily. Her
husband, a distant stroke in a far world, ploughing, ploughing like
steel ... heaping the soil of his ploughings forever upon her, buried.
--Trees do not think. I try to think. Thinking is bad for Winter.
Thinking is bad for Spring. Thinking chills Spring. Thinking calls sap
to Winter which Winter kills. Yet I must think ... for I am motionless.
To think is to move when one is motionless. Trees move forever. Leaf and
trunk move upward, circle out: seed moves downward, inward. Trees swing
forever so they are thoughtless. But I am a broken curve, a splintered
part of a Circle I cannot see.... My thought’s a finger feeling from the
line of my brokenness for a Roundness beyond me.
--What am I going to do? How am I going to think?
She was the wife of Harry Howland Luve. Pretty clever astounding Fanny
Dirk: here’s a riddle for your independence, which we ... your Town ...
have had to swallow ever since you were a child bossing your
schoolmates, snubbing the smart young men, running through the
gray-mossed tangles of our thoughts and ways like an April wind through
a sleepy August. You have shocked us, angered us, made us love and
accept you. You caught the best match of Town ... here is a riddle for
you, smartie Fanny Dirk!
He will come back: she was very quick to find her own way, her own words
for it: yet who of us dare say she was not always the lady? Mrs. Harry
Luve. He will come back. Nothing for her after all but to sit and wait
him....
She had a dream. Her bed was a vast blackness.--It is white, I have no
eyes so my bed is black. It was soft and rich, it was comfortable. She
lay within it, folded, lost, and it was white vast comfort all about
her. A Hand from a sharp wrist thrust down, clasped her throat ...
pressed. She was pressed deeper within the bed: as the Hand pressed down
her throat was deep beneath her body, deep beneath her head: her mind
and her blood rushed down from her head and body to her swollen throat
that a white Hand pressed. The bed unfolded lip within lip as had her
body when Harry loved her: now her body cut deep into the bed ...
enfolded it was lost in the bed’s blind comfort.... She saw the Hand
that pressed her down by the throat. Upon one finger was the ring of
Harry: upon another finger was the wedding ring she had worn secret for
a year, and was the diamond ring set in platinum which he had given her
later. The Hand was colorless like the shell of a departed locust. The
wrist above it was long and red and moist. The Hand, pinning her throat,
was dry, her throat was dry. She lay there cased in her hot bed ...
frozen: under a Hand that pinned her.
She got up. She went to her child and held her in her arms. Edith slept.
She held her close against her breast. She stiffened her arms in order
to be still. Within, a voice shrieked: “Wake, wake!” It touched the air
through her hardened nipples. It touched her child. Edith awoke. She
placed her back in her crib.
“Sleep, daughter ... always sleep.”
Saying these words, she felt her gums were hard; it was her gums, it was
her teeth that said them. Her lips were still! She kissed her daughter.
--Lips had better kiss.
The child, who had lain wide-eyed silent, fell asleep....
Fanny stood beside her bed. It loomed like a white sucking mouth--white
lips. She pulled a quilt away, sank to the floor. With knees high
huddled in her arms, near her chin, and the quilt lightly touching her
bare toes, her knees, her mouth, she slept on the floor. The world’s
blackness, the ghost-grained night of her sleep was not the world, not
her sleep ... was the bed above her. Blackness was spun white threads
come to rest: each thread beside the other, each thread of white not
touching any other. She lay escaped from her Bed in undulant hardness,
she flowed ... at last at rest ... like a red worm through water....
* * * * *
--At this Party too, they aren’t going to let me be gay!
All they would not let her. They smiled on her and carefully patterned
their talk. They had eyes forever wiping against her thoughts. They must
have hated her, had she been gay and forgetful of her loss. They did not
want to hate her. They preserved her low and broken where they did not
need to hate her. “Dear poor Fanny--so brave!” Their words and their
ways announced: “We try to be gay with you, we try to make you gay.”
They would not let her be gay. They hoisted their talk uphill against
the evident pull of their sole interest in her, of their solemn
compassion for her. They would not let her forget. “We are being gay, we
are trying to cheer you up. We are talking with you of indifferent
matters.” So....
Fanny waited ... here too. In these bright congestions of men and women
was there not surely somewhere a color that went with her own, a tone
that could make her vibrate? She waited in stiff rigor, not knowing she
waited.... Gowns and shoes ... words put on like gowns and shoes over
different flesh. She smelt at times under satin and starch warm flesh
that needed air. She sat and let herself be talked to, be sympathized
with, be gloated over.--If only you’d shout you are glad! Healthy that,
naked.... O no. She was stiff as in death.
A tall man, dark....--Newcomer, strange ... moved up to her and spoke.
Words not spawned or swerved by her own story: words she needed not to
hear since they were fending away a world that would not let her be gay.
In a new separateness Fanny felt herself....
Felt herself laughing.
Found her feet, after his quiet resolute own, pattering out to a
seclusive alcove.
She saw him.--I don’t size you up. I don’t care! You release my feet and
my laughter. You are big strong ... black ... what are you?
* * * * *
He came to her home.
Her ears did not count, yet her ears did for they had given her a label
to stick on him so he could pass through her door.... Leon
Dannenberg--attorney from Washington--Government lawyer--on short
business here. He passed through. More than her eyes saw that he was
very strong with hands full of ease. She leaned back in her rocker: her
toes jutted forward: they twinkled against his black strength.
They chatted, she had no ears, she had voice. She was gay.
When he left her: “You are unhappy, Mrs. Luve,” he said. “I think you
are the unhappiest woman I have known. You must be strong, then ...
too.”
She took his hand and liked how her hand was lost in his hand that was
full of ease.
“You let me be gay.”
“I’m coming whenever this Case ... and these Conferences ... let me.”
* * * * *
“I have respect for you,” he said. He took her in his arms and kissed
her....
He said: “We are strangers ... we are strangers who respect each other.”
“Help me,” he said.
“Help you?”
“Help me to bring you to yourself. You are stunned. Ill things come over
you and you are stunned, you cannot make yourself clean.... I want you
naked. Help me. Naked against me naked. You will be at last yourself ...
inviolate. Help me!”
He undressed her. She helped him to undress her. She lay in his arms:
lost sweetly like a tree in a warm wind.
* * * * *
“You make me feel that I have roots,” she told him.
She found that she had been buried in a corrodent silence. She was
lifted forth. She had words.
“You are strong,” he said, “and you have been a fool.”
Holding her in his arms, he was to her a sunrise ... cool ... cutting
mists and a dim sleep. She lay in him like a warm creature in a gentle
sun, sucking sun ... all open.
* * * * *
“Soon I must go ... back to Washington ... my home.”
“You have a home?”
“Why do you doubt it?”
“You are so strong away from home.”
“You are a glory, Frances Luve. You are a spirit like a tree, standing
alone on a single rock in a marshland.”
“That is what you think of my people?”
“That is what I think of your people.”
“But have you a home?”
“The Western World,” he smiled with a fine bitterness that hurt her. “I
am a Jew, you know.”
“Yes ... I know,” she hushed.
“The first Jew you have ever known?”
“The first....”
“Do you know me, Fanny?”
“Will I ever know?... You are going away.”
“That is right, also.”
“Yes.” She looked at him. She sat high above his prone strong body;
looked at him. “Yes, it is right. I look at you. You are beautiful. You
are clean. You are wilful and straight. You have black curling hair like
a savage dance all over the white tenderness of your body. You have eyes
that look forever. Yet I do not love you. I love my husband. He is weak
and dirty. Until you came I said: ‘He is weak and dirty, I hate him.’
You came with your clear strength. You took me naked. I took you naked.
Because I have taken you clean and strong I know that it is he whom I
love.”
He held her hand.
“There is God,” he said, “May he bless you.”
“What does that mean ... if He blesses?”
“The Jews in three thousand bloody years have not found out.”
“I tell you I do not love you: I tell you and you bless me.”
“I reverence you, Fanny. You are clear like water. Love is a word I have
not won the use of.”
“What have you done to me!”
“You are water, Frances. You were muddied and thick. You can look down,
now, through the clearness of yourself, to the dirt base of
yourself....”
“ ...to Harry!”
“See him clear, through your own clean-ness.”
“You are strong. O how strong you are, you man who have won for yourself
a power in the world that hates you. Your people have been beaten
bloody: always, always. Beaten bloody by their God ... beaten bloody by
the world to which they gave their God. They are a bent dark people. Yet
you have won for yourself a body fair to see. Never shall I forget your
lovely body. Yet I do not love you. I love a man who had all and who
cast it away: who was fair as you were never and who has dirtied
himself.”
“He only deserves your love.”
“Why that?”
“ ...if you care for him.” He took her hand again. “Since you care to
care for him....”
“Good-by,” he said.
She said: “The word Love is never in your mouth.”
“Good-by,” he said.
She said: “I will do what you want.... I would do always what you want.
I do not love you: but I bow to you. I kiss your feet. You are holy....
Why are you holy?”
“I have moved you only as a wind that passes.”
“You are putting me aside,” she said.
“No. I touch your branches. I spread them. I take seed of you with me to
the fallow meadows. I do not stir your roots.”
“They feel sunshine for you have spread me open.”
“I do not stir your roots--because I have respect for the word Love.”
“Good-bye, then, Leon. I shall find out what this great truth is ...
this truth I know, the first truth I have ever known ... that you are
holy.”
“Good-by,” he said. Then he went.
* * * * *
Mrs. Luve looked through the golden flame of an old table, of two
candles, burning within the blackness of her room. There ... not of the
mellow flame, not of the dark ... a young man speaking of small matters.
Where the flame touched him he glowed; where the night touched him his
body withdrew harsh into shadow. What is this encaverned boy, talking of
small matters?
--He is plump: he is a boy: he has no strength of his own. He is very
strong and he is very old. Blond hair curls from bland brow. They are
Jews ... _he_ was straight like steel, hard, sure. So gentle. Sureness
alone is gentle in a fumbling world.... _Are you hard also?_”
--You do not know, but I have seen your parents. If I said so would you
flush? would your heart rush back in panic, hide in your flesh I have
touched by seeing your parents? She counted me change so soberly ...
correct, correct ... ‘If I make a mistake against you I will lose by and
by: if I make a mistake against me I lose now.’ The greed of justice in
your mother counting me change. That time when the clerks were all busy
and I in a hurry, your father came out smiling, sold me--what was
it?--sausage and cheese? So simple, so condescending he was. You are the
child of such parents. They have saved: they have saved in justice of
greed, in justice of condescension: and of this saving of their greed
and arrogance, you buy your College books, you buy your poetry books,
you buy your hours here. Aren’t you ashamed? No he is not ashamed. He is
right. Sausages and dollars saved are slime, are lies. You are true,
Samson Brenner. You are older than your stinking parents.
She filled his glass with wine.
He sipped. His eyes were hot amber in an iron vat. He asked no question,
he sipped.
“Do you want to hear the poem?” he said.
--I hear it already. “Repeat it.”
He did not question her words, he did not question her wine. He took
them. His head bent forward. He held his face in his hands ... soft
hands. He spoke his poem through soft hands. The poem was a stiff, an
alien thing: but her words she had not spoken in the glow of his face
were his and came back to her, a poem.
--I become myself. I become untouched. Speak on, Boy. Make me
untouched!... He has young eyes--the shadows that rim them are marked by
thousand years....
* * * * *
The world was a sunny field and the young mother walked in it and was
herself. Each thing was itself, stood clear up in the sunny field of the
world. Black ant over a tuft of grass held the sun in its blackness.
Grass threw sparkle of sun against a blue sky dazed with sunniness.--I
too walking and carrying the sun. I am very sharply myself, like an ant,
like a leaf, throwing with them the sun in a vast gold shower upward
into the sky....
Leon was gone: there would be no word of any sort further between them.
Fanny had a way of sitting on her porch and pinching the flesh of her
bared arm. Solid! She loved her solidness--I am real! She was sunny with
feeling her flesh and her soul real.
--Harry is coming back. O I know! I must be ready, I must be _real_.
She was real. Her thoughts, her feelings, her pain were petal and stamen
and pistil of the full flower of her realness. Sitting now, different,
in her little house where she had been abandoned ... above the pry and
the impudent concern of those about her, above the hurt and the insult
of Harry’s going ... facing the sacrament of his return--how? beaten,
broken?--fully as she had faced no truth in all her life.
... With her child in arms she could pinch bravely and find real....
--I can kiss you now--Baby! little sister!--we wait together for him who
is coming back.
--Coming at last. For the first time coming. There was a holy man. He
released us, stripped us naked to ourselves. And because of a holy man,
we can wait real now, sure, intact, so gently wait and so long, for a
man who is coming.
--We need not ask who he is. He is ours. He will find us and love us,
won’t he, little sister?... and leave us no more.
--Like you! O my blessed baby--like you whom I was strong enough to
bear, not strong enough till now to look upon--like you he is ours.
--O the black night into which you were
born, my child.
O the long pain you stood upon: it rose like
a flame from my womb you stood upon
... up, up throughout you, to your eyes
and fingers.
O the black night of fiery pain you were,
with your sucking mouth upon my naked
flesh....
We dawn together, Love, into a sleep where
with eyes open
Cooly we walk toward Day.
Fanny held her child and again she looked unwilted into sun. It was to
her as if she gazed on a bright field, and there above flowers, under a
sky, stood a woman sheer with a child in her arms. Her feet in grass
were cool. Her hair in sky was cool. She was sheer, cool ... unburned
by the fires of birth. She was born ... washed clean of the bloods of
birth and born. Very cool, very sheer. So Fanny saw herself.
... Saw certain things making her sunny field of the world--as the light
of her vision lay clarified in context of green thrusts running, forms
sprayed and ashift over earth.
She had long talks holding her child in her arms....
“I must be more to him when he comes back than I was ever! I can be
more!
“I accept you, Harry. I have no pride, I am humble. I challenge drink,
gaming, women. I am ashamed no longer. I shall beat them. I shall crowd
them out. I shall be for you what they lied seeming they could be for
you. You will find me everywhere, meet me nowhere. No obstruction. You
will find me risen in a great pride, in a great strength, now that my
pride is gone and I have lain, prostrate naked, sucking the strength of
a stranger.”
--O stranger! not a thought more for you. Not a thought. That is as you
will. Harry, he made me love you.
She went into her room, stripped her clothes from her shoulders. She
looked in a glass at her nakedness, feeling under her eyes her shoulders
gleam like cool flames upward.
It was strange: her shoulders were untouched, her breasts had not
fallen.--I am whole! Come, Harry, take me.
There had been a wind, there had been a bath for her naked shoulders.
She was naked, flushed by a swift wind ... gone ... cleansed by a
running water ... run away.--I am whole, I am born. Will you come,
Harry, so you can see the woman who has been born?
She stood long, looking at her naked self. She was clad in a bloom. She
was a hard young world in its first Spring. She found that she was
laughing. She pressed her laughing fingers into her firm breasts.
“I am good,” she said, very sober. She caught up her child. Cheek upon
hers she swayed, very still, very sober. “O we are good. Good, we two!
Won’t you hurry, Man?” ...
“Now I see you. Clear! Never has any woman seen her love as I see you. I
am a woman born. Edith dear, look at your Mother. You are a child
born.... I am a woman born. I am rarer than you! I am very rare. I see
you clear, you little sucking flesh. Sweet, sweet! I see him clear;
wistful yearnful boy, with a soul all wrinkled and athrob like your
forehead, Sweet, when you were born ... a soul open and empty and greedy
like your mouth, when you were born.
“ ...Come, suck me, you two dear ones!”
--Do I see my love clear? If I do, I see a fading.... “I abdicate that
sight, my dear Beloved. My hands must not shake, when you come back to
me shaking.”
--What is love? what is a field?... a running of sweet grass over earth,
grass leaping away from the earth in which it lives.... My love is you
and you ... that is seeing enough!
--Love is the field and woodlands of the world.
She was a little woman waiting for her husband....
* * * * *
Strange news came to her world of Harry Howland Luve ... thrilled it,
made it talk.... “Blood will tell.” ... “After the wild oats the sturdier
planting....” “God has his way....” “From one drunkenness to another.”
Fanny took to herself the news and felt it true. The path of her man
came clear in her white mind.
--I feel him, all the way he has crawled livid red from my hands. He
turns, full flow, to my breast! She saw his path like a writing.
The Reverend Doctor Poole brought her his gift of comfort wrapped in
complacence.
She made him sit down, he chose the stiffest chair.--I must subdue
myself, she felt. He was brittle, little. She held back the flood of
herself. But it was easy since his sharp small eyes not knowing she was
a flood, brought her help.
“Your husband, my Dear, has found Christ.
“It happened in New York. Never mind, my child, where ... and who shall
ever say How? He has found Christ and like Him he has risen. More, my
daughter. Like Him, he is walking the ways of men bringing God’s word.
Who has found Christ _truly_, in every respect must act like Him. I am
very gratified ... very grateful. I have come to you, my daughter, ...
you have neglected our Church, never mind, Dear, the strayed sheep is
the dearest to the Lord and to the humblest Pastor ... to pray with you
Thanksgiving and rejoicing. Your husband will be here soon. You know
from his dear father what he’s doing?... He goes from College to College
telling young men how he slipped down the pleasant path to Hell--and at
its gate found Christ.... I have had word from colleagues in Princeton,
Yale, Williams ... elsewhere. His effect on the student bodies is
amazing, electrifying. A true evangel. He is eloquent, simple ... rather
his message is, that speaks through his lips. The students learn how he
... as they do ... played a little, drank a little, smoked--all the
little innocent indulgences ... and what horror happened. They flock up,
after his visit, and sign the pledge of Purity, join fellowship in
Christ. He has received invitations from dozens of Christian
institutions to come with his message, to help save our Christian youth.
He has found a true work, indeed.... And you, daughter, have been worthy
of him ... waiting. Prepare yourself now for the return of your
Bridegroom.”
* * * * *
Face clawed close by myriad tiny fears and horrors. Hot eyes. Feet
stumbling. As Harry’s body lurched forward, his feet stumbled faster to
support it. Hands dead white leaves, dry, crackling at his sides.... A
saloon swings open, his head bowed above thin shoulders twitches in,
away from the crash of an impending train above on its swinging iron
rail. Wave of acrid beer, soiled flesh, wet clothes. Above it, his head
a moment is still.... Sober. Harry steps up to the bar, with sharp feet
and hands marshalling sudden to his head against the lazy swing of his
body within the fetid wave. He grasps a glass of whiskey, carries it
untouched before him to a corner. Bodies huddled like hulks of beef or
pork, covered with rags. He floats above them, finds a seat, bowing to a
naked wooden table. Invitation. Glass elbows on the naked table. Head on
the table? No!--One gulp to swing my body free with my sharp head ... to
soberness.... So....--_What am I?_ ...
Harry Howland Luve gazed on his world. A man snoring near him blew a
spray of blood from his mashed nose. A man, beside a barrel, let his
fingers trail like grey worms through the sawdust ... a red tongue broke
through the muck of his mouth, licked the grey worms of his hands, he
slept again. At the bar, careening like ships on a wave of the world,
heads dipped into huge glasses, swung against mirrors, broke thudding
upon a window upon a wall that was a grin of hardness.--What am I? Harry
Howland Luve laboriously counted his fingers....--One two three four ...
one two three four ... one two: my God! where is my fifth finger? “I
lack a finger! I lack a finger!” Body with head feet hands was one ... a
toss, a catapult from the stinking Harp House into a darkness clear,
biting, without, beneath the surge of the “L.” He flew. “I lack a
finger.” He stopped. “What else do I lack?” Again a train. He was
caught. He could not move.--It is coming over! He was clamped; the
train’s murmur rose to a beat, a roar, a crash. Iron and wood and steam
shrieked and stampeded, mountained on his head. He was clamped. He was a
silence of horror under a mountain of noise, crushing against the
eggshell of his skull.... It passed....--I am alive. He walked quiet
now, looking on the pavement tracks for his lost finger.
“You have lost something?” A black form rose from the street like smoke
on a clear night. “Yes ... I have lost ... have lost....” “Perhaps,”
said the smokey man, “I can help you to find. Come along, Brother.” He
clasped his arm. The smokey man of God, the white seeker of color moved
down the cavern of Chatham Square where the high houses dimmed away like
stalactytes and the “L” thrust its lance into the belly of a world too
weary to cry, too worn to bleed. Before him Harry Luve held his white
dry hand. “My finger,” he muttered. “Yes,” said the man of God. “I see
... your pointing finger....”
He sat in a quiet room. Coffee and a sandwich rolled in his raw stomach.
“That tastes good, eh?” said the man of smoke. “Hot, eh? Whiskey makes
you shiver, I’ll bet.” Luve held his hands together and began to cry.
“Heat is the best thing in the world. Good heat is God. False heat is
the Devil ... and makes you shiver,” he said. “Another cup of coffee?”
“My finger ... my finger!” “Brace up, man. You’re a gentleman. You were.
I can see that. See clear, and you’re whole....” “How can I see clear
when I lack ... I lack--” ... “Hush--listen.”
There was a sound like a soft white quiet on a red wound. Music.
“Bow your head, Brother.... Listen.”
The quiet crept upon his body. Tucked in his toes, moistened his hands,
lay on his mouth. The quiet was warm. Was music. Harry shut his eyes.
The wave of the world, booze and streaking men, fell away. He was in a
flatness downy with gentle grass above a gentle river. His feet hurt, he
was glad, hurting was living. A warm cloud muffled his head: through his
eyes and mouth, through the warm cloud came words:
“Our Father which art in Heaven ... thy Kingdom ... give us this
day our daily ... not into temptation ... for thine is the Kingdom
... halleluja, Blesst!... the glory for ever and ever ... seek and
ye shall find ... seek seek and and ye ye ... unto you opened ...
unto you, opened ... Blood of the Lamb, red blood, ... there is a
quiet house, all white, where it is warm this bitter Winter night
... all warm a quiet house ... and arms holding me to a redness,
passion, that is allowed. Allowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ...
allowed. Christ smiles on it, his blood is red and holy.... Fanny’s
red, I have seen her red blood. Since I have married her, holy ...
red and holy ... knock and it shall be ... opened ... red warm,
dear ... all white is the blood of the Christ....”
The smokey man was speaking: “Miracle is not dead.”
Harry Luve rolled around upon his face. The music was still. A new
quiet, also warm, wrapped him about. He rolled and rolled in a warm
water. “The quiet is ever’ where.”
His eyes gleamed against a blackness suddenly calm and dun, a wall. He
looked at a wall in a lighted room. He saw a man beside him clad in
black. A hand touched his. Harry was thankful how that hand touched his.
“I have seen,” he said, “ ... O I have seen--“
The hand clasped his. “What, brother, have you seen?”
Harry wrenched away his hands, placed them like fenders before him.
“Let me--let me--!” he stopped. He swayed caught: he flew caught in a
chord that sped with the bright room through a roaring darkness. Roar!
He was dizzy. He tried to cry. He saw his hands speeding before his eyes
like two birds through cavernous space. He stopped from breath ... one
two three four FIVE ... he counted his flying fingers. A tiny spring
sang over his eyes, sang fraying ready to break. He wanted to cry ...
five five!... a little woman flew before his hands like a white bird in
the blackness. Naked. One red spot in her naked body where he had made
red once ... Fanny!... warm ... allowed. _Hallowed allowed hallowed
allowed._ The red spot was a painted house home ... could be about
him.... Blessed are they that mourn ... blessed are they that mourn.
Blessed are the poor in spirit ... comforted ... Kingdom of Heaven lead
us not ... rejoice exceeding glad ... into temptation----
“--_Warm and sweet is the blood of the Lamb
That washes us sinners white.
Sinners sinners
Black and quivering sinners we
And the blood of the Lamb it warms us
It washes us sinners white._”
... The hand of the man in black touched his again. Smokey ... flame.
Warmness, red warmness, white from hallowedness. The tiny spring burst.
His eyes burst out into myriad diamond stars. A sluice opened. He was
all wet. His soul poured ... a pent torrent ... out: speechless
whiteness.
“Something--say something, Brother! What wrestles in you? What chokes
you? What do you see?”