chair.
“You couldn’t remove that Church for me, could you, Mrs. Deemis?”
Mrs. Deemis stamped the steaming iron with elbows right-angled to the
board.
“Now, will you believes me, Mrs. Luve, I wisht I could!”
Fanny tried to laugh.--Haven’t I been joking?
“You mean Saint--acrost the way there, don’t you? They own this house,
and they’re the meanest landlords ... the downright stingiest, meanest
landlords, now, you ever seen. I been here twenty years. On the first of
the month, it’s the rent quick, you bet. But if it’s the roof that
leaks, or the plumbin’ that stinks--O any year’ll do for fixin’ that.”
“This is Church property,” murmured Fanny.
“Yes ... _this_....” Mrs. Deemis flourished the dismal kitchen with its
seeping walls, its crumbling plaster ceiling, its ooze rotted floor,
into the eyes of Fanny.
“How can I live on Church property,” Fanny thought aloud.
“Why!... Mrs. Luve!” Mrs. Deemis doubted her ears. “What’d ye say? Beg
pardon?”
“They’re rotten landlords?”
“Well now ... of course.... I dont say they’re no _worse_....”
“The Church takes the sun from my window, Mrs. Deemis. I love the sun.”
“Why you aint never there? You work. What do ye need the sun for?...
Dont blame the Church for that, my dear. You must be fair. If ’twasnt
the Church wouldn’t it be one of these here ... now ... factories or
office-buildings?”
“---- taking the sun,” murmured Fanny and saw the once more ploughing
arms of the old lady.
“You aint thinkin’ of leaving, Mrs. Luve? Cause ... that’s a fine room
... kin rent----“
“Why no.” Fanny got up. “No, I shant move. I love my room. But if you
could be so obliging as to remove that Church....” She laughed with her
eyes gleaming differently from laughter.
Upstairs she lowered the shades. She undressed. Naked, she saw in the
glass that she still wore her hat. Her brow ached. She let fall her
hair, letting her cold hands run through its electric dusk. Ungowned in
her sheet she lay through the thick night with hands clasping her arms
beneath her breasts. She lay dreamless, moving very fast. When she awoke
it was late and she knew she had gone far. There were red furrows deep
in the flesh of her arms.
The night following ... sudden she emerged from the hot fog that held
her. She is in the Church. Naked she stands before a stately mirror
whose gold-tooled pediment crowned the blaze of her black hair and eyes.
She struck her breasts with a firm fist. “You are cast out, you are
vomited by Love.” She stands there burning in cold shame. Her mouth is
open, and from it, like a white water, runs a moan. “What does it mean?
Christ, what does it mean? Why was I hurt so? Why was I so given a high
thought, high dream? I have been hurt. O Christ how it hurts so to be
hurt without a meaning. Why?”
--_This is a Church!_ She knew that Christ was coming. He was a man whom
she knew. She could not see him, standing there beyond her: but each
nerve of her lay in the impact of his presence.--He sees me! It was
right that he should look upon her naked and shamed.--It is good, it is
good. He looks on me and that is good. He looks on me because my hurt is
an unmeaning hurt....
Her half-opened eyes, her half-shut hands, her outstretched knees and
her thighs touched the warm smoothness of her bedclothes.--I am so
tired! It was good in bed. She slept.
She walked downtown in the young summer morning. The air had a coolness
like lilacs after rain. A man passed. Coming closer, sheer, the sight of
the man tugged on the cheek and on the neck of Fanny. A man old and
bent. Grey beard tangled from a face long furrowed: the eyes were blue
and gentle and the brow was untouched.... His beard was a grey prayer.
His face was his life. Above his life was his brow like a dawn above
storm. “He was a Jew,” she whispered to herself. Then she remembered her
dreaming and her moan.
* * * * *
... Something within her said: “There is no hurry.” Much within her
said: “You have no life, you are broken. Why alive? You are broken and
flayed by life. Life without what you have lost is a mere agony dying
down, a slow starving, a slow suffocation.” But something within her
said: “There is no hurry.”
Something within her stirred to say: “Even your hurt has a soul. Even
the insult lying in your heart has a soul.” Then her hands worked
faster. She had eyes then for her girls toiling in their mute slavery,
that brought out love, like a cool mist rising from a morning sun, into
the dismal workroom.
At times, eating her meat and enjoying it, laughing alone at a show, she
found in herself assurance ... mad and blind howsoever ... like a babe’s
lying within a womb.
She asked herself doubtingly: “You have been unhappier having, than now
when you are empty. Perhaps I am dead!”
Each thought and pain, pushing forth from her, could not leave the mist
of her strange slumber. So that she could not be unhappy. For
unhappiness is the departure of ourselves from ourselves, the adventure
beyond us of our hearts and eyes. Fanny was caught in her pregnant
slumber. Her consciousness was like a maze of creatures crawling about a
Sphere who cannot leave its surface: who cannot conceive of aught within
or without its surface: creatures of two dimensions spanning a Globe
about and about ... and yet unable to know it.
* * * * *
It had been hot, this day: now late, sultry clouds pressed like steel on
the pulsant City. Dust rose in a great wind. The Office seemed to plunge
through a sea of dust and steel cloud.
The others were gone: in the suddenly dark room, Fanny worked alone with
Mr. Johns. He examined her books, leaning over her, just above her
shoulder, breathing palpably there in the dark room.
A gust of wind from the gray window scattered a pile of papers, Johns’
hand came flat on the table.
“It’s going to rain,” he said.
“Yes.”
He strode to the window and shut it.
“That wont be too hot? All these papers will blow, I’m afraid.”
“It’s cooler, already.”
It was not cooler. The shut window made the dark room plunge and stifle.
Fanny felt ill. Her hands ran over the sharp cool sheets of paper. The
nerves of the palms of her hands were shrill.
“Is that all, Mr. Johns?”
“There’s the whole South yet! We’d better see how they’re drinking down
in the South.”
“O yes....”
“You wouldn’t forget the South?”
A picture bright like a knife ... this her house, the garden, Edith in
her blue bassinette ... cut her and filled the room.
--Get away! get away!
“Now--first, Virginia--“
“Yes.”--Get away! O my baby! O Harry! How could you? Couldn’t you
understand? Yet? Where are you Edith?... “This was at Flora’s
table.”--Get away!
She talked. Her words were dim, she could not see her words. She went on
talking ... strong hands gripped her arms near her shoulders, turned
her. A long heavy face--red and kind--thrust bewilderment upon her eyes
that could not see her words.
“Mrs. Luve!”
--Your face is different: heavier, solider ... could it hurt so?
“Mrs. Luve!”
--Your hair is not silky. Silk cuts. Silk cuts.
“Mrs. Luve! what is the matter?”
He placed her in a chair. The window flew open. Steel cool night flooded
in. The room righted.
“Excuse me, Mr. Johns.... I--I reckon I--I was faint a bit. Let’s go
on.”
“There’s no hurry.”
--He’s looking at me. And I can’t see my words. I am talking. I must
talk. Do my words stand between me and him? O they must.... Silk only
cuts.... She stopped.
Her heart was weary.--If you must see, you big good man, then see. I can
fend no more. I let go. She covered her face one moment with her hands.
No tears. Her head lifted, eyes blazing.
“Well,” she said, “have you seen enough? Have you had enough! Coward!”
A heavy hand lay gently upon hers. Gentle hand outstretched from a long
arm.... O how long! and there, vastly beyond as in a dream, this man:
solid red good.
“Quiet,” his hand spoke to her. The other hand. “Quiet.” Fanny jumped
up.
She saw him there, and that he was frightened.
--He is frightened by me, he is frightened about me! He cares because he
sees me in pain. He is worried about me. Impossible, impossible. Right
this!
Fanny’s scream knifed through the grayness. Then she was clear. She
stood there, seeing him in the dark room, clear.
He saw her clarity: his brow clouded.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I thought you were sick: you seemed
hysterical, Mrs. Luve. I meant only to quiet you.”
“Your hand you mean? It was good. Thank you for your hand, sir. It took
one scream from me. Thank you.”
She breathed very fast. She was headclear now, as if in a storm which
had passed all fibre, all flesh had been stripped from her taut nerves.
She was a framework of nerves.
“Thank you,” she said again. “One less scream. Do you know what that
means? One less scream!”
He came to her and clasped her arm.
“Scream again.”
She looked at him full. “Wait,” she panted. He held her. She leaned back
feeling his hands strained by her weight to eat into her arms.
“Wait!” There was a liquid fullness in her voice. “Perhaps I can laugh
instead. Laugh--“
“No. Don’t laugh, I tell you. Don’t lie, for God’s sake. Scream.”
There was a silence. The silence was all fresh and new like a dawn.
Gently she pressed from him. She sat by the table at the room’s far
side. She buried her face in her hands on the cluttered table. She
wept....
She wept long. She stayed still motionless there, with her face buried
among papers after she had wept. The world came back:--The dusk of the
spent day. The long cool wake of the spent heat-storm. The little
office, pitching no longer ... spent ... atop the cluttered City. And
this man, stranger she had worked for now many months, who was solid and
could help ... this man so good that he had made her scream.
With a felt slowness she lifted her head, turned her face.
--He is there! He has not moved. He stands there silent, held by the
sight of me ... while I wept.
She smiled at him.
“Do you feel better now?”
She nodded.
“Sure?”
She nodded. He brought her coat and hat. An orange feather tufted from
the straw. His long vein-straggled hand ran over the feather. She looked
at it. The feather was not ruffled.
“Thank you,” she said very soft.
His face was rounder with a smile. She saw his jagged teeth and his soft
twining lips. She saw the dimple in his chin and his long
neck.--Ostrich! She was alert, serious as he helped her. She felt him
... good ... with her back ... all about her ... as he helped her.
--He is sure! While I wept, he was there, not moving!
The hand she held out to his seemed small to her, pretty....
* * * * *
There was a knock on Fanny’s door.
“It’s me, Mrs. Luve.”
“O Mrs. Deemis. Come in....”
She was almost dressed. The old lady gave a glance that was like a
draught of drink at the whole room ... her room, changed so often into
new mystery of him or her who hired it. She lived familiarly in mystery.
It warmed her. She had no man, her children were gone: she had a family
of mystery. She did not know but on these she subsisted.
“There was a phone call for you ... early ... your office. A Mr.
Johns--he didn’t give no other name--he said as how if you wasn’t
feeling well this morning you should knock off. It’d be alright. Are you
sick, dearie?”
“No.” Restless before her mirror.--What should I do here, workless?
“Yesterday afternoon a little.... The New York heat, I reckon.”
“I guess so. Well,” the old lady opened the door, “Take the chance when
it’s offered. Eh?” She was a silent woman for she was full of her
mysteries. She left. Fanny went on dressing.
* * * * *
But there came a morning in the clear coolness of autumn. Fanny’s eyes
opened from sleep. Her body stretched on its back ... the warm thin bed
... her body less plump already measuring the bed ... the bed measuring
the wall, soft cream ... the room ... windows behind their white mesh
curtains thresholding, flaring, shouting out into the world, all new and
terrible again in its old Pain ... came to her. Different! She lay. She
could lie, eyes open, and the windows flared and led out, and there was
the Pain of the congested world: yet she lay warm, stretched in her bed,
and could bear it.
--It’s Sunday. O how good! It was long, back in the age that was
separate by the Abyss, since she had lain awake in a sweet bed.--Why?
--There’s been a hairy monster sitting on my face!
The hair in my eyes, the fat and the stink and the bag
Glued on my mouth!...
Here was a clear gold morning, full of sun ... a morning mad to
drink....--_He squats there yet!_ Gold mornings made to drink, clear
cool drinkable days. I’ll drink you yet, I’ll drink you yet. Sun-veined
air, wine of the sun, I’ll have you!
--Find out the monster’s name: pull him, tweak him.
Find out his name and he’ll squeal away like a pig.
--O he is there. But I have sipped a morning.
She got out of bed ... dimness before her eyes and brow like a curtain
before fire. The curtain became mist. She knew so yet it must be ... the
mist quenched and quenched. _Not all the fire! Never all the fire!_ In
this way she got out of bed.
* * * * *
In her nightgown she stood by the open window, letting the cold air race
through her. She looked at the Church, she did not feel the cold air
save that there was sun in it. The Church did not race. It stayed there
immovable. It was fixed somewhere under the spinning of her world ...
where the Pain was also. Half naked by the open window and the Church,
she took her Bible and opened it. She felt the Church a dull base on
which the Bible was written: from which it leaped, it leaped in
syllables of sun.
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
Shouted for joy....”
She turned the pages. She saw:
“For I say unto you,
Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause
Of fornication causeth her
To commit adultery.”
She shut the book. She looked at the Church. She looked at the Church,
the morning stars sang through her flimsy nightgown. But she was not
cold. She wondered.
She went back into bed, holding the Bible. Two fingers marked the two
places she had read. Her eyes narrowed.--I am beginning to think! Once
more she jumped up. She turned the curtains back so that the windows
were bare. She went again to her bed. She could see the Church now from
her pillow. She pressed the little black book against her breasts.
“Where,” she said aloud, “in which of the two places does it touch me?”
She pressed the Bible against her left breast and against her right
breast. She liked the feel of the hard book against her.... “What sucks
me?” she whispered.” ... that which has cast me out, or the other that
draws, that welcomes?” She lifted her two hands high above her face.
“Yes” she cried, “the other that calls me good!” Her hands fell in her
bosom.--_I am beginning to think._ Do words in sunlight leap from a
page and leave it? She turned her head, gazed at the wall of the Church
so heavy and fixed against the sun-dazzled window. The organ rose. A
hymn, many-voiced, twined with the organ, pealed slanting upwards toward
her through the window.--It leaves the Church. Comes to me. I hear it as
no one ... don’t I know?... as none of them sticking in their varnished
pews. _I_ hear alone. Out of a Church. She took the Bible again and read
the words of Jesus.
She read them calmly. She looked away seeing the terrible words. Pain,
agony of shame and of deprival, rending of doubt parted once more the
golden haze she had lived in for a moment.--I am sinking back! She was
afraid.--I am sinking. There it was all ... Harry, her search to hold,
to find him: the lancing anguish of her revelation: Leon, Edith, the
ecstacy of Good ... and the cool-lipped stranger so close pointing a
finger, thrusting her out with a finger.
Fanny rocked in her bed, rocked motionless, dizzy with rocking
thoughts.--Go away, go away, she moaned.--Why, why must I ask Why? I
cannot bear it.
There was a knock on her door. She was very still. Knock, knock.
“What is it?”
“May I come in?... It’s Clara Lonergan....”
“O you.... Yes. Come in.”
The girl smiled: “It’s such a bully morning.”
“I am glad you came.”
“I had no idea you’d be so lazy. I thought you might come for a walk.”
“The day came into the room. I have both day and bed.”
Clara brought a chair to the bed and sat down. She saw the Bible.
“And Church too, I see.” Her lips curled but her eyes were really
smiling.
“Don’t you approve of Church?”
“No,” said Clara, “I hate it. _My_ Church at any rate. Pa said it was
the Priests that made Mother willing to die.”
“Well ... what have Church and Bible to do with each other?”
Clara laughed. “O come on! Let’s walk. It’s cold in here.” She drew her
boa across her throat. “Shall I close the window?”
“Don’t you dare!” cried Fanny. She jumped out of bed. She was
exhilerated. Her nightgown fell to the floor.
Clara was up. “You’ll catch your death of cold....”
“No, no,” said Fanny. She stood there naked. Her arms were lifted above
her. “I’m not cold. There are stars and sun in this room ... they are
racing through me.”
“You’re mad, dear,” said Clara. She was close. She placed her hands on
the naked woman’s shoulders. Their eyes met. Clara’s eyes and face went
down. Very lightly she touched her lips upon the throat of Fanny.
“Dress.... Hurry.” Clara went back to her chair; half-turned away she
fingered the fallen Bible. There was a new warm glow between them in
the room.
Fanny dressed silent, fast.
“Why do you want to move about?” She seated herself in her wrapper
before Clara on the bed. “I don’t feel like walking. I’ll close the
windows. I’ll make the bed in a jiffy. You stay.”
“Go and make yourself some coffee. I’ll fix the couch.”
“I’ll make coffee for two.”
“Alright.”
They sat at last, quiet in the clear sunlit room, and smiled at each
other. Sleep and the night were gone, with the bed turned couch.
“Now it’s my sitting room,” laughed Fanny.
“You’ve been used to more than that.”
“Please don’t!” Then Fanny was sorry. “No I don’t mean that. I don’t
mean to hide myself from you, Clara. Only, it hurts.”
“You don’t have to talk ... with me. I’m not that sort. I’m not the sort
of girl who measures a friendship by the number of secrets chattered
about.”
“I know.”
“I feel we’re friends, you and I. That’s enough.”
“That’s enough. But O, Clara, if I knew a single thing in all the world,
I’d tell you. I don’t know anything. Perhaps you know more than I.”
“I know some things,” said Clara.
“I feel you know some things,” Fanny looked at her friend’s long taut
hands. They reached for her bag, opened it, took out a box of
cigarettes. She offered it, open, to Fanny. “Go ahead.” They both
smoked.
“I know that a smoke tastes good,” said Clara. “I know that in the
mornings a cup of coffee tastes good. I know I’m young and that the
world won’t give me a thing ... not a thing!... unless I fight, unless I
cheat.”
“What has it to give?”
“Just things that taste good....”
“Then ...?”
“Then let’s die.”
“Why do you say Cheat, Clara? Why don’t you say Pay?”
“To pay comes high.”
“To cheat comes low.” She looked at Clara long. “I don’t believe you,
Clara. There’s no cheat in you.”
“Then you don’t know me.”
“You said that we knew each other.”
“Well, look at me!” She stood. “I am lovely. Look.” Her hands
caressingly followed her words. “My hair is black and soft. My mouth is
warm. This is a good white throat, I know.... And my body is good--O so
good and clean, and so swelling-slender like a lily. My body deserves
something, that is sure.” She sat down. She blushed. “So does yours,”
she went on. “I’ve seen you. So does yours.”
Fanny’s hands clasped swaying. “If you could see, O girl, if you could
see what has been done upon my body!”
She looked away with her hands still swaying ... The Church! She did
not know where to look. She hid her eyes in her hands.
Clara got up. She lifted the face of her friend and held it between her
palms.
“I can see much, Fanny. Don’t say a word. I can see much.”
Her hands slipped down. They were fists. Slow, deliberate, they beat
against her hips.
Soon she left....
* * * * *
Fanny Dirk opened the windows wide, let out the cigarette smoke, closed
them, sat down.
--Who is right,
Jesus or God?
--What do I know of Jesus, what does Harry know? There is a meaning that
is God’s in the words of Christ, and I can’t find it out. Who knows it?
Leon? It seemed to her that Leon knew. A Jew. He uses neither Love nor
Christ ... the unlovely and unChristian Jews. We did not meet in
Washington. Yet we had a talk. It seems to me I know what Leon said to
me in Washington. What Harry said at home? That is real--yet it seems
more like a shadow. Harry? You must not hate Harry. Hard. You dare not.
What is there terrible in hate? Others hate ... good healthy people
hate. Why can’t you? Why, when hate comes for Harry, do you sicken ...
something in you rips, fades, bleeds away? I am pulled out from myself
as if my heart from my body. It is easier to hate than to love. You
cannot. One hate? O I love this world of little people dragging through
pain, mired in it, sinking in pain. O I love you! We are close. Let me
hate Harry! You dare not. What has he done? He turned good. He quoted
Scripture ... here am I. Edith, Edith--your father killed me quoting the
words of Christ. O this is not it. There is something beyond. I am
exiled. Did God give me exile? I could have stayed and fought.... Not
Harry, God gave me exile. Will you hate God? If Harry because you
thought he gave you exile, why not hate God? Why not? Why cannot I hate
God? He made the Morass of pain in which the world so pitifully
struggles, so pitifully dies! Hate God! Not Harry. You too ... who knows
what agony you have lived, what sickly visions you have had, lifting you
up. Poor Harry ... if one understands you, Boy.... I understand you,
miserable Boy.... Fool! I can’t hate you. God? Hate God?... not if you
understand him also.
--There was a tree, I see a tree standing upon a mountain side above a
quiet lake. And the tree’s roots break out. The tree falls into the
water. Downward it groans, crashing and crushing. But in the water does
it not lie still? No, it rots. Why does it fall, why does it rot so
still when it has fallen? Why does the Hand of God draw it down ... God
who has made it grow ... down against its growing, down against a
thousand sprouts and seedlings?
--I am falling, Fanny. Are you rotten also? Where are you going? O if
you pull me down, Lord, I must go. You do not think that I am bad. You
know. God, you know everything, you must see my girlhood ... how I
pushed up, eager, straight, sunward. You must see my wifehood. You must
see my motherhood. I fall. But I have not lost you, God. O it hurts!...
Fall, fall.... Why are you nearer, Father, when I fall?
She pressed her fingers hard against her brow.--Little brain, is God in
there? Her eyes with a new salience touched the objects in her room ...
the blue burlap on her couch, the chair, the Bible, the wall of the
still Church, the swift sun vaulting away above the vaulting roofs. She
bound her fingers hard about her brow:--All of you ... all ... I hold
you.... There is no air ... there are no spaces. I touch everything that
my eyes see, everything that my mind holds.... God?
Fanny sank to her knees on the floor. She felt her face free and bright
above her body. Her face prayed, and her body:
“God ... go ahead. If I can stand it, Go ahead. There you are down
below. I see you. You draw me like a tree, crashing down, crashing
down.” She held her Bible high, let it go, it fell. “God ... go ahead.”
She got up, seated herself once more: and began to darn some stockings.
She worked long. At times:--I am hungry. Better go out and eat, came to
her faintly dizzy head. She could not. The room was ripe and round,
holding her firm.
A knock.
“Come in.”
--_Why am I not surprised?_ Christopher Johns stepped into the room,
shut the door.
She gazed at him silent.
“You don’t mind?” he asked. “I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d look
in. The lady downstairs ... what a dear old lady!... said you were out:
I could knock if I wanted to be sure.”
“Sit down.”
He took off his coat and laid it on the couch. It crowded nearly the
whole couch. He sat down.
“I’m glad I found you in. This is a nice room,” he said. “Do they give
you enough heat now winter’s coming?”
She went on darning.
“More heat than I’m used to at home.”
“Where is your home?”
“I have no home.”
“You look so home-like there,” after a pause he went on, laborious,
determined. “Darning your stockings ... in your dark-blue wrapper.”
“All sorts of women darn stockings ... and wear wrappers.” She did not
look at him. She was framed in the knowledge that he looked at her.
She saw his hand go through his thick brown hair. She felt it.