do as I say....” And even then, even then she sensed in his words what
she willed, not he.--_Was it so later?_ His going down, the agony ...
what _she_ willed?
“O I’m so anxious to know whom all I’m going to meet.”
Clara shook her head. “Such folk as you have never met.”
“I hope so! I want to meet new sorts. I want to find a new world. I am
sure it will be better. It’s yours, Dear.”
“They’re all I have.”
“Don’t you dare apologize! Don’t you dare spoil it. I feel as if I could
be happy again. Whomever it’s with--I’ll be happy with them.”
“They’re a strange lot,” Clara laughed.
“Who?”
“Well, there’s a Judge: there’s a Gambler: there’s an Officer of Police:
there’s a queer guy who ought to be a poet----“
“O how exciting! Do the Policeman and the Gambler get on?”
“They’re side-kicks----“
“Side-kicks?”
“Partners.”
“My! what a lot I’m going to learn,” she murmured.
“That’s what brought Tessie and Susan together. Her man’s a police
Leftenant. Tessie’s is Abraham Mangel----“
“And Clara, yours----“
“That’s a secret, Dear. You call him Mr. Mark.... O I can tell you.
Tellin’ you a secret’s like burying it. Don’t you let on. He’s really a
Judge, Dear. Right in New York! Think of that. He’s so good.... Shall I
tell you his right name? Sure never to let on? Judge Mark Pfennig.”
“Judge ... Mark ... Pfennig,” she repeated slowly.
“He’s a Jew,” Clara said groping. She won courage from the soft distance
in Fanny’s eyes, inquiring, pondering. “Like most of ’em. They’re the
best, Fan. Really.”
“Why are they the best?”
“They’re the wisest ... and the gentlest. They’re hardest and softest.
Wait till you see Abe Mangel with Tess. He treats her like a father.
Like a sentimental father. Those old puffy eyes of his with little
ridges of flesh beneath ’em--just like her Dad in Carolina, I bet. Only
_wise_.”
“You say he’s a _gambler_?”
“Well, not really. Never plays. Not he! He owns a big joint, that’s
all.”
“And ... Susan’s----“
“Silly! Gambling’s against the Law. You know that, don’t you? Well, what
does that mean? Any respectable Gambler who wants to make a ‘go’ must
have a side partner on the Force.”
“O--I see.”
“You’ll see, all right. But you don’t now. You’re shocked. When one’s
shocked one don’t see. I found that out. Bein’ shocked is the same as
bein’ blind.... Fanny: do you really want to meet them?”
Fanny pondered: her head low, her eyes fallen upon her lacing and
unlacing fingers. Tessie and Susan and Clara....--She has saved me ...
for what?... were in her pondering eyes. She saw Clara always.--What do
I see of Clara? what know? And what of Tessie, Susan? She saw them
often, they came often now. They sat there, quiet, proper, eyes
veiled.... Hurt eyes. Fanny thought of Stride the Kentucky colt whom she
had gentled when she was a girl. They were good friends. Stride knew
her, knew that she would not hurt her, knew that she cared for her
wisely. Stride knew, standing there aquiver while she came toward her
bringing a handful of oats, that oats were good. Yet beneath the knowing
in Stride’s eyes at times a deeper world looked out on Fanny: a world of
strangeness, of the expectancy of harm. So now....--They love me. That
first time showed. Even Susan in her secret way. Yet they are so still!
so far! I do not touch them.
Never had she touched Stride. Never. Now?
Sudden the thought came:--There is a part of them, a whole dimension I
can not see! She wanted to see it....--Their men?
--Sisters! why do I call you so? I want to touch you. That I may know
perhaps why we are sisters?
Fanny’s hands went up, and her head. Brightly: “Yes! Give the party. Do!
Ask everyone....”
There was something Clara, standing there, wondering for her answer,
understood. She took Fanny’s hands and clasped them close in her own.
She kissed them.
_SIX_
PAVEMENT BROKEN
At last the bell rang the door opened, Clara’s man came in. Clara got up
and they shook hands. Fanny was aware in the long strain of waiting that
her power to feel was gone.--I shall understand nothing.
“This is my friend, Mark. Fanny, Mr. Mark.”
He was long and moist and breathless. He laid on the sofa carefully a
bundle of bottles of wine. His broad black frock coat was worn to a
gloss. His skin seemed also, though his hands were white, dark and
glossed like his coat. His coat was a uniform and so was his skin. He
was behind them.
--I shall understand nothing!
Mr. Mark sat down, his legs were short and his knees pointed beneath the
mound of his belly. They chatted ... all three ... she too.
“Well, dear,” his breath was short and thick, “expecting the crowd?”
“O no. Just Tessie and Susan, and Abe Mangel and Jim of course. My
friend wants to meet my friends.”
Fanny began to see him under the cloud of himself: ... the grey sharp
face, larded in fat, the shiny eyes set deep, the lips rounded and red
and soft-thrust forward from a chin too long and grey-blue with its
undertone of beard. His nose twitched, conspicuous, large-pored, under a
brow that was smooth and white like a card.
“It’s good of you, Madame. We’re not such a bad lot.”
“O ... I could know that,” Fanny laughed, “from just knowing Clara.”
“That good we’re not ... not as good as Clara. But we do our best.”
Clara laughed. He sighed, and his little eyes, hard like the shoe-button
eyes of a rag doll, rolled up.
In this opening of mood, Fanny looked at the room ... hard gas-jets,
brash lambrequins, plush.... Room she had lived in ... the floor was
blood-red beneath a shrill blue carpet. Details ... details. It meant
nothing. It formed no word.
The door opened again, again. Susan Sennister stood there bleak and
tense like a caustic refrain to the long heavy man at her side: he was
spiritually galvanized, he moved for all his power as if he were lined
with metal ... Lieutenant Statt. Tessie ensconced in a big chair with
her feet trilling, mocked him. A man, soft, short, slow, with unctious
hands and voice, watched her effrontery with eyes afraid in his heavy
mournful face.--That is Abe Mangel.
--But I have learned something in all these years? She stopped the rush
of her amazement.--Be still. Just wait.
They were not bothered by her. Their knowing each other wove a glutinous
web through the room, and she held in it: her stirring could not have
torn it, she was tight. It was a gross warm knowing: no subtle
brain-fabric ... bowel-strong and sure. Fanny felt her shoulders pressed
together, her head high and sheer, in this viscous tissue of their
being together.
Mr. Mark cleared a lamp and a pile of magazines from the table. Lucy
came in, brought glasses which she placed. Mr. Mark with ceremonial
noise uncorked three bottles of red wine and stood them beside the
glasses. The talk was slow and thick: the wine diluting it, freeing it,
making it run faster....
“You don’t drink?” Mr. Mark stood over Fanny. She smiled up, full of the
incongruous sense of smiling not at a man but at some official
structure....
“I’m afraid--my Doctor----“
“Mrs. Luve is not quite well yet, you know, Mark,” said Clara.
All eyes turned upon Fanny: Mr. Mark’s wilfully considerate, Tessie’s
hurt and afraid blazing a partnership she had no mind of, Susan’s in a
twinging message that was somehow sweet, Mangel’s soft because they were
always soft.
Fanny felt the hard stare of Statt ... empty like a stone.
“O well--do give me a glass.”
She sipped.
“It’s good stuff,” said Tessie.
Susan, warmed, looked at Jim Statt and her warmth turned on him.
“Of course, that stiff’s too good to touch liquor! And he’s as healthy
as a brickbat. All his virtue allows is pullin’ joints!”
Statt shrugged his shoulders. Then he smiled broadly, as if suddenly
aware that Susan had flattered him. Mangel, holding his glass aloft,
smacked his lips.... The eyes were gone from Fanny. They did not come
back.
She drank her wine. She was relieved and brightened. She thought of a
field: it expands as the cloud barring the sun sails by.... The eyes
were gone.
She thought of her own place with these strange thick people. Who were
they?--a Judge, a Police Lieutenant, a Gambling-house proprietor, three
prostitutes, herself! She did not know who they were.
Mr. Mark argued with pointing forefinger:
“Of course we do good! Would the people feel secure if we didn’t have
courts and judges?”
“You do no good. None of us knows how to do good, I tell you,” said Abe
Mangel. “We are all in the Dark. I can argue as good as you. Couldn’t I
say: I am a public benefactor? What do I live on? The luxury and the
vice of the weak and the damn-fools. That’s what I trim. That’s what I
get rid of. Ain’t it better to live on that than on the hard workers and
the good folk? now I ask you! O bosh! I don’t make no such delusions for
myself. We don’t know--none of us--how to do good.”
Statt sat stiffly in his chair. He listened, but as one might listen to
the wind.... The philosophic argument wore down. Mangel and Mark were
unable to support it. They drank wine and turned to their women....
Tessie sat on Abe Mangel’s lap: sideways and still with her feet
tossing. He caressed her neck with a soft and meaty hand.
“Well, dearie--well, dearie, are you happier?” he crooned.
Susan and Jim Statt were close together on the sofa, looking before
them, saying no word to each other. And the large Mr. Mark, his manners
like his sumptuous prim coat, chatted with Clara, and Fanny, listening,
added an easy word.
At a late hour they got up said good-by, and were gone.
* * * * *
Fanny saw them again and again. She had little talks with each of them,
alone. She found she was fond of them all.
“It’s good to come here, Clara,” Statt stalked in. “I told Susan to
come, too.... Here, Broaddus, up here.” The door stayed open. A young
big patrolman in uniform (Statt wore plain clothes always) mounted the
stair, puffing. He deposited a case in the hall.
“Champagne ... and good,” said Statt.
The patrolman, red faced, soft with blue eyes somewhat dimmed, went
down.
“Brought them for you,” Statt turned to Fanny ... “set you up.... From
Diggens.”
“Diggens!” Clara exclaimed. “You’ve pulled Diggens!”
“Yes....”
“What did she do?” asked Fanny.
“Slow on payment. See? And always tryin’ to bargain for a lower price.
Yesterday I get mad. Sort of lost my temper. Perhaps I was wrong. Old
Dig was a right sort of bitch. Well--too late now. She’s pinched. Here’s
good wine, at least.”
He kicked the case with heavy boots. He was big and sure. Fanny and
Clara stood beneath his imperturbable mass.
--How can I thank him? He’s a brute. He’s a monster! Fanny spoke to him:
“Don’t kick that case, Lieutenant Jim.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll break the bottles?”
“No.... Afraid they’ll break you.”
“Break _me_!”
“Hm ... hm, Lieutenant Jim. You’re so brittle.--O ever so much brittler
than bottles.”
He looked at her in a pause that ended with a chuckle.
“O you don’t say!” The skin of his face was rough: his features were too
big. He seemed carved--crudely--by a dull-souled sculptor.
“You’re a brittle child,” said Fanny.--Why do I speak so?
“And you?”
“I’m a child too. You and I are the children here. Yes we are! We two
must look out!”
“Not Mark?... not Clara?... not Mangel?”
“O Mangel is old! and so is Tessie! and so is Clara. You are a stupid,
stubborn child, I tell you. Look out. Me too. We mustn’t hurt each
other.... And you’d better stop breaking the Law.”
“My dear sister child, you don’t seem to understand. I don’t _break_ the
Law.”
Fanny wavered.--Why do I speak so?
“Don’t you know, you come from the South, don’t you?... that gambling
and prostitution are illegal in New York? I am an Officer of the New
York Police. I am the head of what is known in the papers as the Strong
Arm Squad. I raid Houses of gambling and prostitution.”
“All----“
“Those that don’t do their duty.”
“How can an illegal house do its duty?”
“By supporting the Police, of course--the way we must be supported. I
have needs----“
Statt’s face was serious and serene. He stretched out a long leg....
“Needs----” and kicked the case of wine. “You don’t savvy much, little
stupid woman from Dixie.”
She watched him close.
“Aren’t you afraid, Jim Statt?”
He drew in his leg and crossed it over the other.
“I’m an Officer of Police. I’m a Roman Catholic. What have I got to
fear?” ...
Tessie came in, tossing off her hat. Tessie hated hats and gloves.
“--Hasn’t Abe been here? O hello Statt.”
“He’s nursing a hurt,” he answered her. “I’ve raised his price.”
The little girl glowered over the big man.
“You look out,” she muttered. “Don’t hurt Abe Mangel too much.”
“No?... why not?” sneered Jim Statt.
“He’ll turn good----“
Fanny took a magazine and went into the corner of the room beside the
curtains. She tried to read. She did not see the page. What did this
mean? _He’ll turn good!_ Was that what Jews did when they were hurt too
much! Was that when they saw God?...--Harry and I blinded by a blow that
_you_ see God by? Fanny sat brooding over the blank page of her book ...
brooding of the Bible, brooding over the words of Jesus Christ: hearing
the sneers of Statt, the swift shrill scold of Tessie, the warm weary
murmur of Clara.
--O it is good I am here!
Learning ... learning....
She saw no thing. She understood no thing. But she was at ease as an
infant, also perhaps not knowing, who sucks and who swallows.--Why is
Statt also a child?
Abe Mangel was there. He bowed to the group near the door and came
beside Fanny. She held out both her hands and smiled at him.
“Sit down!”
Old man with the heavy face of the Jew!--Your eyes are dark wells, your
brow is dry and rumpled like an old bit of parchment. Your nose and your
lips droop wearily, old man!
“You are tired, Mr. Mangel.”
“O it’s nothing. Tessie’ll cheer me up, a little....”
“Mr. Mangel--may I ask you a question?”
He looked at Fanny with compassion.--You are young too? you too ask
questions?... “Why of course, Fanny. Go on.”
“Why do I like you, Mr. Mangel?”
“O--that! You’ll hav’ to answer that yourself. Such woman foolishness,
liking _me_! how can a man explain?”
“You are a bad man, aren’t you?”
“Very bad. I ain’t no better than a _crook_. Only richer. My wife
dresses better.” His eyes twinkled.
“Well, I can’t help it. I like you.”
He smiled at her with his weary slow-twinkling eyes. She saw his hands
... gnarled yet fat, ugly yet expressive.
“And I like you, Fanny Luve. What’s the difference why you like me?
Don’t ask no foolish questions about a good thing. Take it.”
“But are you glad I like you?”
“I should say so! That sort of foolishness ... that’s all that makes
life liveable, I say! That sort of foolishness--you know what it
is?--it’s Trut’.”
“You think.”
“O no. I am too tired to think. When I was young, I thought. I was
clever. I was full of dreams. I thought--I thought ... instead of
learning to make money. When it was too late, I had to stop thinking of
anything except how to make money, because earlier I hadn’t thought of
_that_ at all. It don’t pay to be a thinker. You end up by being a
gambler.”
“All thinkers----?”
“I should imagine so,” said Mangel. He brooded. Stiffly he got up. “Look
here! What sort of nonsense are you making me say? Fanny Luve, I’m a
stupid old feller. I don’t know nothing. Thirty years ago I was a stupid
young feller. I’m sure. I guess I never knew how to think.”
She held up her face to him.
“I don’t know how to think, either. I am stupid too.”
Abe Mangel shook his head.
“You’re funny. You make me feel we don’t know how to think ... and we
don’t know how to be good.... We men and women.”
He smiled with his old eyes. But his brow was frowning. He walked away
to Tessie.
* * * * *
FANNY:---- You are there!
The world is dark, there is no light in the world.
The world is close, I feel you there about me.
You stir, you crouch, you are still.
You do not know that I am here, knowing you.
You lift your voices, they give no sound:
Shrieking they are still.
--Only the dark world
Holding you and me....
No word, no hand-touch, no signal of the eye
Binds us: only
A dark world.
--Yet we are close!
Could one be closer in the Sun,
Loving in the lap of the Spring?
Harry and I, were we so close?
Edith and I ... you in the grip of my bowels,
you in the suck of my blood and my heavy breasts.
Were we so close?
--A dark world holds us
Strange from each other, groping with blank eyes,
With blank mouths....
Closely.
CLARA:---- You are not well yet, you are not ready to leave me.
What is the matter with you?
Why are you still here?
O I am glad you are here! You are balm, you are pressing
sharpness on my ache ...
I do not understand.
--You are good friends with Mark, and with Susan and Tessie.
Also they already feel how right that you are here with us.
And Mangel feels it. Statt feels nothing. Statt does
not count.
Is it because you are not well, not complete, that you stay?
Is it because we must heal you, must complete you,
that you stay?
Then you will go?--when you have taken from us ... what?
You give?... You give--to me how deeply, to us
all how deeply!
What can we give to you? How can we heal and complete you?
--Is it our hurt that you would take from us?
Is it our broken-ness that will complete you?
MANGEL:---- Tessie should be my daughter.
Then the Fear of God would keep her flesh away.
You have shown me, Luve woman, that Tessie is my daughter.
--I am made of filth. If I could stop hating myself!
I am a dirty Jew ... I hate Statt.
... He makes me feel--this....
But who is he?
His body is straighter because he has no soul.
(There are times when I would love to kiss his body.)
--My soul is beautiful. My soul says to me:
You are a dirty Jew!...
What is the use? One picks the smut from one’s nose,
But one’s nose smells on, the smut comes back,
What is the use of having a beautiful soul?
No one tells Statt that he is a dirty Dutchman.
--You, little girl, with the apple breasts and the hips hard
and sweet like an apple,
You are my soul and you are far away.
You should be my daughter.
Then I should not have to hold you naked....
She is my daughter! O if I could say that, say: Father!
Not:--a whore and a dirty Jew that keeps her.
TESSIE:---- Music is a dancing wall
Between me and the mad man world.
Wall danced away.
Stiff man world holds me and pierces me.
You, Abe, at least have hands soft-speaking.
--Fanny Luve ... what is the name of your kid?
SUSAN:---- I ask myself no question.
O horror, O torrent of horror
If I asked a question.
--The mountainside
Is steep, is snow.
I mount, I mount.
I am erect: my shoulders and my feet
Freeze sharp.
--O the horror, O the torrent, O the flood
Down-pouring ...
If I asked a question.
MARK:---- Well, what difference does it make?
At least half my life is good.
I’m a good Judge, I’m a good husband and father.
Who in New York can say as much for himself?
... They looked on Fanny naturally, without color of her ... seeing her
within the way of their looking on themselves: so that they came not to
ask who she was who was there.
* * * * *
“Well, all right then ... if you ask me: you’re right. Mangel gets my
goat. I can’t go him. He’s nothin’ but a damn gambler. Why does he put
on airs?”
“I never saw him put on airs,” said Fanny.
They stood. Her face, upturned to James Statt’s gray one, glowed in a
strange way.
“He’s so humble----“
“Is that putting on airs, Jim?”
Statt stirred in discomfort.
“You’re right,” she went on. “It’s the worst sort of putting on airs.”
“There, you see? The damn little weasel! I’ll stand none of his
nonsense!”
“He don’t give you any, Jim.”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“I know that you hate him because he’s just himself.”
“Jew!”
“He’s cringing and a coward. But even so, he makes us feel small, don’t
he, Jim?”
“Us small? Are you crazy? Us small?”
“Surely. Even when he is ever so mean and humble, he is asserting to our
souls ... to all in us that feels and understands ... that he is one of
those high up ... who have made us feel and understand.”
“Fanny, you’re crazy. I’ll kill the little beggar!”
“You won’t dispose of him that way, you silly boy. It’s not _he_....”
“God damn him.”
“Jim, you have no mind and you have no heart. You don’t learn at all,
Jim. Why instead of swearing at Abe Mangel don’t you see him straight?
God hasn’t damned him. God’s damned us perhaps ... by spreading him and
the likes of him all over the world: or blessed us. I don’t know, Jim.
But _he’s_ not damned.”
“O look here, Fanny. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Even Susan
don’t, either, half the time. None of us. But we like you fine just the
same. Now, it ain’t because Mangel’s a Jew that I can’t go him. You’re
wrong there, Fanny. I know lots of Jews. Lots of my pals is Jews. Mark
Pfennig’s one, for instance. All the gamblers ... half the gunmen ...
the best of the bulls ... the sharpest of the lawyers....”
“But Mangel’s different----?”
“Yes! His doddering old big-nosed face bowing into the room. His softy
grey hands weaving inside each other. His flat feet that don’t make a
squeak.”
“Is he square?”
“O he’s square, all right.... So far. He’s shrewd. He can be hard and
smart, believe me! It ain’t that, Fanny.”
“A lot you know what it is? It’s because he’s a Jew, I tell you.”
“It ain’t. I got lots of friends----“
“Jim, I don’t think anybody can be a Jew, just because his name happens
to be Cohn or Levy.”
“Fanny ... you’re crazy!”
* * * * *
One twilight Fanny had them clear....
More and more they came to Clara’s flat. Evening ‘parties’ were
frequent. Afternoons, Tessie and Susan often called for Fanny, and took
her for a walk or to a show. It was Spring. The City lay beneath the
Sun’s lubricity. The dirt in the hard streets was fecund. The sparrows
and the robins daubed the warming world with their swift flashes of
life. It was Spring. And Fanny moved, somnambulant, through a strange
ease spread for her by hands forever less strange.
--You ... and you ... and you: now I see you clear.
These men and women were no accident. They had words now she understood.
They had wills now--here was the wonder of her life--that touched her
own. Not Harry’s will had touched hers. Not her child’s, to eat her’s
up. Not Christopher Johns’. And Leon’s ... Leon’s will had stood beyond
her, over the ken of her horizons.
These wills touched hers!--these wills of women disgraced, of men
criminal and broken, outlawed and dissolute.
--I have two hands, and upon each of them five fingers. My sickness, the
harsh four years since Jonathan, have wasted my flesh. Yet it is somehow
sweet. My hair is not the verdant hedge it was, it is a little stringy,
a little limp. But still black. My eyes have fire at times. I am
thirty-five ... and I am real, Fanny Luve!
They felt that she felt them clear. Clara above all. The women above
all. Her feeling them clear at last was a bridge to them. Their will,
long champing on the brink of their division, moved on her own.
Already they had spoken of details of their dream to Mark Pfennig, to
Statt, to Mangel.
“We will take a House. And you will take care of us, Fanny!”
“And make us behave.”
“And make the men behave.”
“And bring God with you?” whispered Clara low....
They sat at her feet that evening after the magic dusk of a hard city
melting to Spring: they were in Clara’s bedroom.
From her chair, Fanny touched them: her fingers in their hair: her skirt
fringing their arms and their faces.
“It’s all arranged, Fanny dear.”
They were below her, seated on the floor ... Clara and Tessie and Susan.
Their will surged over her head.
She was flooded with their will. Slowly her hands stroked hair and
cheek. Their will stormed her head ... surged torrentful about her.
Her eyes lay quietly upon the faces of her friends. And her hands slow.
And their will a tempest.
Slowly, Fanny nodded.
Her left hand closed tight on the hand of Clara. Her right hand upon
Tessie’s upbrushed hair contracted until the scalp of Tessie hurt. She
nodded slowly....
* * * * *
The street is quiet. The House stands braced in a wall of higher houses
dusty and grimed about their stifled worlds. It is of four stories. Its
mellow red brick glows with at least half a hundred years. White net
curtains angle the square windows. The stoop has an iron rail that peels
as Judge Mark mounts, his heaving mass buttressed by a soft white hand
upon it.
He upholds his right palm with its rust stains to Fanny.
“I wish you’d have that rail off. Every time I come here I’ve got to
wash before I can even sit down.”
Susan laughs. Tessie is humming, and her eyes slide away with her
balancing tune. Clara does not care.
“I won’t change it,” says Fanny. “I love that old rail. It’s pretty.
Besides, if it wasn’t there some night you’d fall over into the
airy-way.”
“Put another in its place.”
“Well, I won’t. And I won’t have the bricks painted either.”
“Yes, but you went and did the windows--“
“She did them herself,” says Clara.