* * * * *
Mrs. Luve leaned back in her chair, took the brimming words of Samson
Brenner.
They poured from him, free, full, into the dark pool of her eyes. They
poured bright, candid: in the dark pool they fell dark.
--You talk of your fears and your pains: you talk of your loves and your
dreams. You are a Jew, you are true. Why is the word Christ never in
your mouth?
--O there is reason, deep! What is the pain of nearness--you pampered
Jew, you Jew-boy, plump about sorrow--that blots the word Christ from
your mouth?
“Mrs. Luve, I forget myself. I talk. I lose myself, there sudden I am. I
do not know myself, but I say ‘that is me!’”--Pampered boy. “I talk and
talk. God knows of what and why. Mrs. Luve, do I bore you?”
“You move along a path that is mine. Go on. I have no earthly thing to
do but hear you.”
“You are grave!”
“Not so grave as you.”
“But I laugh. I must tell you ... the first time I really heard
laughter....”
--You move upon my life like a broken sun ashift through cloud at
evening after a black day.... You in the flame of my candles, you in
the black of my room.... What is this word Christ you know too deep to
utter?”
* * * * *
Fanny standing moved her hand from the gathered flowers on the table ...
cherry and pear buds high, bowls of anemone, violets ... to her lips.
“He is coming!” She stood.
The door thrust forward--and was away from between them. Clad in white
she held firm against the sight of him; tall and dark with pale hands
and face, he rose from her still eyes like a column of smoke.
“Harry!” Then she held out her arms.
He shut the door. He knelt.
“Get up, husband.”
He kissed her hands.
She lifted his head in her two palms, lifted him up. His lips were on
hers.
They were thin, sweet, laden now with little gasps of air warmed sweet
in sweet lungs: no smells of liquor and smoke like a hot corrugation
scraping her sense.
He broke from her and sat in a chair. His breath was sudden, he had run
a race. One hand lay palpitant against a knee: breathless, afraid, a
being out of its element. She thought of a sea. He was fished up dry
from a sea.
“Harry,” she spoke low. She knelt at his feet: she looked up: she could
smile now.
“Get up, wife.”
“No ... let me. Let me always.”
His dry hands, tremulous, waved about her hair: seeking, afraid: they
were moths now, fluttering upon a light: so his eyes. His face was pale
and hurt turned down upon her smiling. Fluttering search collapsed. He
hid his face in his hands.
“Do not cry now.” She felt shut out by his hiding hands.
“I do not cry. Instead, I pray.”
He looked at her. All of him was dry. From his words he seemed to have
won bravery. She felt shut out in his looking.
His eyes were braver: his hands. They moved forward upon her shadowing
face: they sought a thing, found it. They carried her mouth upon his,
differently, upward. He stood, she under him. Her flesh touched his
flesh.
Tall white flesh, scabbarded in black ... and in prayer. Lips washed
clean of liquor, scrubbed lips, thin ... very thin. Hands corroded in
cleanliness against the nape of her neck. Odorless, fireless.... Fanny
flung her arms about him.... Shoulders pointed forward, thrusting away a
world. She clasped him close.
“Harry--Harry,” she cried. “O I am so glad you are----” she stopped. She
lay swaying in his arms, clasping him tighter, tighter. A faint moan
rose from her parted lips as her arms clasped tighter....
They sat and looked at each other.
“You have loved me, Fanny.”
“Yes ... yes.”
“You are my wife.”
She could say no word. She could feel no thing to turn into a word. She
was a wisp of cloud: beneath her a weathercock stood still. Harry
moveless pinned like a weathercock upon a bloody spike ... under a sky
with one wisp of cloud.
From a fringed green horizon, memory like a wind moved up to her.
--I love him. I serve him. I have dedicated my new free strength to
that. I have sworn how I was wanting, how I failed. Life now together!
“You know about me,” he said.
“I know you have come back, and I love you ... love you.”
“I must tell you all ... all the sin. You are my wife.”
“Tell me now, only that you are mine.”
“I am yours: for you are my wife since in my sinning you have loved me,
Fanny. God rewards me. You were there, awaiting my conversion.”
“We are wedded at last. Do not use words I cannot understand.”
“You must hear all my sins....”
Why did she feel:--He is satisfied with his words?
“I know my sins. God has put upon me, as my way of being cleansed, to
speak my sins. As they come forth from my mouth, they cleanse--God has
made a miracle in that they cleanse. I am washed clean, speaking them.
Already scores of boys, young men, hearing them, are clean. All their
horror, each detail of my sins, is a hand washing clean.”
Why did she feel:--Speaking, he moves away?
--I am jealous of your sins. What are sins?
“Tell me at once, then, Harry. Then we can bury them. Then we can start
to build. Then you can come and hold me.”
“I was away more than two years....”
--He has come back to hold me.... I will hold him so he understands he
has come back to hold me.... O to be held!... He has never held me. We
were too wise, we fools, to hold each other. In a plunging world ... O
my God how the world veers and plunges ... what fools not to hold each
other.
He spoke, he was very eloquent and sure, dwelling again with his sins.
He was warm in them. When he looked out from his hot sins to his wife,
his eyes were colder.
--Hold me. Hold me! Let me hold you. Come plant your hand in my heart.
He spoke, dwelling warm in his sins.
--Damn your sins!
He ended. He came to her and knelt once more. Not feeling him, she let
him.
“Fanny, my dearest, my wife, my wife ... do you forgive me?”
Not feeling him there, she was very quiet.
“I do not feel, my love, that there is anything to forgive.”
She looked straight, a little to the side of his white face. She was
still.
“We were young,” then she said.--I must speak. “And did not know. All
that is past, but is good ... all ... since now we know.”
“I have sinned deeply. Forgive me.”
“You wandered loosely, because I held you loose: because you did not
hold me. Now we clasp each other close. It is not a sin to have been a
child.”
“Bless you. Bless you.”
“I have learned----“
“You have been always wonderful.”
“No, Harry. I have learned. I have changed.”
“You.... You have not needed to change.”
She looked at him. “Two years you left me alone: and before that two
years you left me alone while I was forced to live with a drunkard. Do
you think these years did nothing to me?”
“You suffered.”
“And what might come of suffering!”
“Fanny, my Christian wife, you were strong, you were not harmed by
suffering. You remained pure. You have been not changed, dear:
tempered.”
“O Harry, I am afraid ... so afraid of your words.”
“You are a Christian, dear, and do not know it. That is why you are
frightened by my words.”
“You never saw me, Harry.”
“Yes, dear, always. Under a mist, but always. The mist lifted. Darling,
I must tell you: that frightful immortal night ... you and Christ.... I
saw you both at once together.”
“You never saw me. You do not know how I have changed.”
“You love me?”
“O my darling!”
“You suffered, waiting....”
She put his hands together: helpless she beat her hands against his
hands clasped hard.
“You did not give up ... waiting, suffering?”
“I knew you would come back. I saw you, always, coming. Now I know
that.”
“Then you have not changed. For you do love me, then.”
“Harry, love to survive must change.”
“Dear, dear ... you were right. I have told my sins. Each one. You have
them all. You must remember them all. Let me hold you now, in silence.”
“But Harry, perhaps I too have the need of telling.”
“You have no sin.”
“No Harry, I have no sin. But there are other tidings.”
“Hush, dearest. Hold me----“
“Listen!”
He looked at her. Impatience bit his lip, puckered his eyes slightly.
“ ...Have you thought ever, Harry, of what I did, these years of waiting?
of what I was? Harry, look at me clear. Have you ever tried to see me?”
“My Christian wife!”
--Patience, patience!... “Harry, this coming home must be beautiful, it
must not be hideous. Give it your share of light, Harry. You must to
save it, to make it. Look at me.”
He puckered his brow: he suffered, looking at her beauty he would ...
now he had confessed his sins ... have preferred to kiss.--All of you,
hidden under your white prim dress! “It is so long since I have kissed
you.”
“Harry, your word sin, does it cover up from your eyes what you and I
have done? Am I right, dearest, to fear your word sin?”
--I want to kiss you. You are my wife and have forgiven me. I’m done
with vices. I have the right, by God! to kiss your mouth and....
“Your going away killed me, Harry. I was near dead before you went. Your
going away killed me.”
“Forgive me, I say.”
“Never! if you use that word. Forgiveness, sin ... they are words,
Harry, that cover up. You killed me; you did not sin. You struggled for
life and killed me. That is all. I struggled for life, after your
struggle had killed me. Can you imagine how I needed, alone here in the
house with Edith whom you have never seen, to struggle against the death
in which your going buried me?”
“Edith----!”
“She is asleep. Have you thought, Harry?”
He stood up. “What can I do or say? Yes I have thought. It is that agony
I brought to you which I call my sin: it is my heartache for it, my
rushing back to you with hands imploring, that cries ‘Forgiveness.’ You
stop me.”
“Harry you did not sin, because you needed life. Always that comes
first; our need of life. I did not give you life. I don’t know why, but
I did not give you life. You went elsewhere, fumbled. Now I feel strong.
I feel now, Love, that I can give you life. We can now, from our new
strength, at last give life to each other. If I did not know this, I
would never have seen you again.
“But Harry ... please, please understand! I understand your wandering,
your hurting, almost your killing of yourself and of me ... in order to
find breath. Understand mine!”
“What do you mean, Fanny?”
“I am human also. I am not ... I do not want to be that perfect
emptiness you call your Christian wife. O my beloved, I am all warm for
you, I am all living for you, because I too have struggled and have
wandered ... in order to find breath.”
“What do you mean?”
She stood close to him. “Look at me close, my love.”
“What do you mean?” Very slowly, his pale white hands with their blue
veins curled up like leaves in autumn, drying, drying: fists.
“Do you feel how I love you? Do you feel ... O you must ... how my love
now, that was a little stupid girlish thing, has bloomed: how it is full
of blood, full of sustaining sweetness? Do you not feel, Harry, how you
have come back to a love that will feed you, that will lift you up until
the end of years?”
“Yes ... I feel that. What do you mean?”
“That love is over the despair and death of our past years as a tree is
over the ground.”
“Fanny ... I....”
“ ...rooted in it. I was under the ground. That shows I loved you.
Always, always. If I had not loved you, I should not have been so
deep-buried under the ground. I was dead. That shows I loved you. I am
all open in the air, high to you. That shows I love you. Love for you
has never stopped, it has grown.”
“What do you mean ...?”
“There was a thing that helped me to push up from my despair, from my
death under the ground where you had buried me, Harry. There was a
man....”
Harry Luve stepped forward and viced her wrists: “A man--!”
“Harry dearest, you must let _me_ now, _me_ now tell you all about it.”
He stopped her. “One thing only.... This man--” His voice broke. He
dropped her wrists. His face was an ashen mist. “For God’s sake, Fanny!
You didn’t ... you didn’t, Fanny--“
His eyes saw her. Saw her face. Her face nodded.
His hands covered his face. He flinched away. He saw her not. He went
back, back ... the wall caught him. He crumpled to the floor. He lay
under his white hands. Lay long....
At last:
“Harry, Harry ... it was because I loved you. O the hurt! See, I have
killed you too. Because I loved you.... I too needed to live, for you
had killed me. Do not judge yet. Let me tell you, let me help us
understand. I heard you ... your horrors, your orgies, your hells. O
Harry, this was not so ... this was clean somehow ... leading to birth,
to you. It was, since I am here now, loving you ... ready to give you
all, all of a life I have at last won to give you. O my boy....”
With each word she crept closer, sank nearer beside him. She knelt
beside him. She sought his hands, his eyes ... his eyes. He saw her face
hands eyes kneeling beside him who was crumpled beyond her.... He saw
not her face, not her hands. He saw white thighs, white, wide, very
soft, very penetrable ... hers ... darkly penetrable; they were the
stuff of his flesh, they were the stuff of his brain and they were
pierced by someone!... He saw rootflesh of a man ... _not he!_ piercing
the stuff of his brain.
He got up. Her face was still low where his face had been. Her face was
near his feet. His feet touched her face.
“Our Lord has spoken,” he said, “and I throw no stone.”
She was very still, her face low above his feet. Listening with a firm
stillness her body was hard and she held her face above his feet.
“Our Lord has spoken further!--‘_But I say unto you, that whosoever
shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication causeth her
to commit adultery._’ So has said our Lord.”
She was moveless.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Rise up.”
“Let me here, dearest, try to tell you all. Try to tell you what I know
now I must: how I was helpless, how I was poisoned dead ... how I was
lifted up.”
“Get up.”
“O Harry, Harry ... I have killed you, too.”
“Get up, I say.”
She lifted her face, furrowed with tears, to his.
“I did not choose, Beloved, the Way I was saved....”
“Do you put that on God? or on Christ who has spoken against you?”
“When has He spoken against me?” Fanny Luve stood silently before him.
“He has spoken against you ... even He. He has said: Cast no stone. No
stone shall be cast by me. He has said: Put her away....”
Her hands clenched under his mouth.
“--and I put you away.”
“You put me away!”
“I put you away.... Not for myself. I must travel. It is my mission to
travel from College to College. I must be away much from my home,
bringing where I can to my brothers the Word ... the Word of our Lord
who puts you away. I put you away ... for the sake of my child.”
“Whom you have never seen!”
“Whom you shall never see--“
_THREE_
WHITE SKY
Fanny Dirk Luve stood on the Bridge where she could see the river up and
down.
--I know what I am going to do. I know. Not die. Not going to see--What
can I--? Since she knew, “Why! Why!” she said aloud.
She searched the world trying to find the anguish--I am not going to
die!... of what she was to do.--Why not? But she knew that.... Not die.
Not see her child.... She saw the river.
The river came to her from trees. The city, a raised shadow near her
eyes, pulled her eyelids down away from there beyond, where she lay once
on her back. She lies on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting in
erection, spilling in bud. Over: he.... From these trees came the river
... from this past ... flowing like the dimension that was time upon her
standing on the Bridge. Time and the river were one. It swept upon her
from the past of trees, past of sweet love, thrust against her, surging
resistless; it was going to overwhelm her. Where? Time and the river
flung in a stroke eternally sure against her standing dry in
anguish--love an edged steel--on the Bridge. She turned. It turned her.
Time and the river sweeping from rootage and trees struck her now in the
back. She saw where it flowed.
It flowed into flat land. A rugose strewing of rust and yard and factory
was the flat land. The city in the heights fell down from its proud
mansions--through dawdling soiled cottages, through clustered
shanties--fell to the flat land of rust and coal. Slow brackish river
here, turmoiled ... full. It swirled in oil, it recoiled from the harsh
thrusts of the makings of men--of junkyards. River and time stole
through this newness of noise and filth away, in a filmy scarf of
smoke-bitten locusts, beyond the eyes of Fanny. She felt in her back the
subtle thrust of a beginning world of high-banked trees free in the air:
how it fell, grew, now hurling through noise, dirt, misery--making,
struggle to make!--to beyond her eyes that lay so wistfully against the
dying locusts, unable to fall farther.
And at her side the city fell along. From its secluded shadow--warmed
mansions fell with her along into a rising clatter of smoke, a foam of
steel, huddling men moving.... Mist.
Black-purple mist ... red rust ... the shriek of wheels crunching
resistless against and upon steel lines thrust resistless also.
Fanny left the Bridge....
* * * * *
In one hand of Fanny was a valise. Her other hand was a fist.
Her mouth asking for a ticket shut fast. Her hand counting change shut
fast. She sat in a train, shut.
The moving train worked at her, stole up in her, swayed, shook, pried
her open. Her feet in the opening rhythm of the train. Her legs. Her
loins. Warm loins. Breasts, not so frozen, melting. Her head, erect on
her frozen breast, now plunged in their melting. She sat in a train,
open.... She lay in a hot bath of her melted pain and life, flowing
within it, open.
She had no sense of a world of objects--fragments to beat against her.
She was all melted hot. She had a sense of the whole world ... whole
worlds ... all ... falling. The train fell sure, it was sure of itself
in its fall. It fell with the world it held so sure, so steadfast; it
was a blessing so. She had the sense of the whole world falling in a
stark cadence upward upon God. Tears, battle ecstacy of loss ... a
falling somehow upward upon God.
Her hands gripped the plush arms, shrill sharp against the quick of her
nails. The world was her world again, and was a delirious tangle of
broken objects hurling against her eyes. She was bruised and aghast in
the rain of broken objects of her world. But that which she had sensed
in the melt of worlds remained. All fell upward ... let her pray!--can I
dare?... fell upward upon God.
--I am falling away. Grappling, crying, she saw at last how real was
this falling away from the whole warm world of her sorrows and joys and
wants.--_Edith, Harry; myself, O Edith my heart!_ It is true. _Can I
fall upward?_ ...
The fast train seemed to be running over her life. It ran over an earth
full of flying fragments. Over houses, fence snapping, cows dipped
sudden into trees, pool flaring skyward, cloud-full, caught in the
porch of a house, road ribboning a tobacco-field, shaken straight, road
stiff like a rod flashing away beneath her.--This is Virginia, this is
I. The fast train running over her life smoothed it clear....
She could have remained and fought him for her child, she could not. She
could have remained and won him ... repulsive ... she could not. She
moved upon a track that was there she sensed before her moving upon it.
But Edith! What sort of a life is this, moving away from Edith? The pain
of her deprival was a thousand pains, gray: a thousand gray birds
circling her in mist.--I am suffering, suffering. Can I stand this? The
mists cleared. She saw her Pain clear ... one Pain ... one moment. Pain.
She saw that it was not a thousand pains, weeping in gray wings mistily
about her. She saw that it was Life.
Life solid and salient.
--_What is this terror? What have I to do with this terror?_
_You are within it!_
... Like this Virginia, an unbroken sweep, broken alone by the unwonted
stress of the dimension of moving. One can face solid. One has two eyes
and a mind for facing solid.... She loved her daughter.--I love you,
love you! More things she loved. Not Harry perhaps, O yes ... the warm
dreams she had born in Harry. The house around Edith. Clean beds, linen
her own, the kitchen where she came each day and the apron she tied
about her hips and the hips too she loved which arms must circle she was
sure of. Edith’s. Home, daughter, man ... why were they all destroyed?
--But they have never been.
What have they been?... pool of my blood of dream.
Stagnant and dead: pool of my clotted blood.
My dream’s blood flows!
It was true. Bleeding to death? Bleeding to birth? She did not know. But
flowing.
“God, let me think!” The words came aloud.--God, let me think! now
silent....--Edith? Yes, Edith was flowing alive. But Edith was not
herself, not _her_ blood flowing. Edith’s blood flowing. Let it flow for
Edith.
Fanny sat shaken in a mother’s storm. Help for her child. Could her
child flow first alone? Where was the mother to help her? Father? Fanny
sat trembling. She saw him, as he oldens in the cant moulds of his
ideals. Harry, pious, weak, stale ... leading the life of her child.
What did she have of her father?--If she is like her father let her rot!
But now would she not surely be like him? She alone could save her child
from that. _She alone could, who could not._ ... The train ran.... Fanny
saw the Town, it would be the world of her child growing, of her child
learning to live in the world. World of such women! Edith’s blue eyes,
open beneath the dimpled softness of her brows, behold a world of such
women ... the only world! Stiff brittle creatures, floating upon the
viscid surface of a stream they have no weight to pierce. And their
Laws: “Have no weight, have no thrust that might pierce the viscid
surface of our stream.” World of such men! Liars, builders of lies, men
taught to pray to Christ and to cheat their fellows, to cheat their
women and wear them ... trim them then wear them ... taught to ignore
half of the aching world that was black.--Let me go back to Edith! O let
me go back!... The train ran smooth.--You may not.
Fanny faced the dead of her heart. She felt the world of her child
clear, how it stank, how it swarmed like an evil stinking weed sucking
the soil of God. She saw the blue eyes of her girl. They stood upon a
body, white and clear like a flower: and all about, the Weed, swarming
and purulent with its harsh roots sucking soil, with its hot leaves
stealing sun.--What can I do? She faced she could do nothing. Yet
reasonably something. Fight ... pursuade. There was reason with the cry
of her mangled heart that there was much she could do. _Turn back._ The
train, racing, swept her eyes upon a world lying folded in myriad skies,
a world solid, a world one with space and stars ... space solid joined
her to the stars as her white body joined her eyes to her limbs. One.
And Edith within it, flowing her way. Ruthlessly hers....--Let her blood
flow for her.
Fanny facing the dead of her heart faced the life of failure. She knew
at last she could live.
The train swam into a strewing of neat flat houses, cut across asphalt.
A marble Dome in sun rose above smoke of roofs. Washington!... Leon’s
home.--I must change here. Every hour New York trains every ... get
there by day, though.
Fanny walked through a city incredibly neat.--Very fine. Government
world. Fine and dead. It has not started to grow, it has not started to
be. It is easy and fine, like a nonexistence.
Her feet were heavy as if she were walking in space.
“When, God,” she said aloud, “do I begin to think?”
* * * * *
She stood halted by a building. She knew which building it was.---- He
is inside! Of course perhaps he is inside no longer. It was a gray pile
rising in numberless piddling columns to the white of the sky. It was
cold. She looked at it. “I am not going in.”
He was perfect in her. Why should she go in to take from him perfection?
She was afraid for his perfection.--How can he be this holy man in this
grave? The Government Building stood like an insolent lackey fending her
off. It glared at her and was very insecure and stupid within its
ruffles of marble. It strutted its turrets before her like a vain proud
bird.--He is perfect. He is done. He is no more. He is buried here. She
felt a great need to see him.
She knew she must not. “I must seek you,” she whispered against the
mounting marble, “differently.”
She walked and knew that Leon Dannenberg who was in each of her steps,
in each of her pangs, in each leap forward of her blood was forever
beyond her eyes.--Here you are, holy man. Where am I? There you are.
She walked away. A vast openness was upon her flank, it ached sweetly as
if her blood poured through it. An open longing lay upon her flesh as if
she walked away from him who had given her birth.--You are behind. Not
so far behind as Edith. Nearer, holy man. Farther ahead.