by Thomas Wolfe
He waited until his wife came back before entering the crowded living room. She entered first and for a moment Levenson remained standing in the door, slowly and insolently turning upon the combined assemblage the small-pox battery of his bubonic face. The look of scorn and revulsion upon his astounding features was now so eloquent in its violence that people turned and stared at him appalled. If he had chosen that moment to break into a loud and sneering laugh and say: “So! It has come to this, hey? I have taken all this trouble to get here—and this—ha, ha, ha,—is what I find.”—His contempt could not have been more explicit than it now seemed to be, and few people would have been surprised.
In a moment, however, his wife, feeling his absence and sensing from the lull that had descended upon the gathering that something was amiss, turned quickly, saw him, and gave him a quiet, quick, and warning look. This swift warning glance of his small guardian angel toned him down at once. He immediately composed himself, came into the room, and began to greet people in a natural tone of voice. Then he spoke to Mrs. Jack with the quiet affection of an old and valued friend.
“Esther, I’m sorry that we’re late,” he said, “We stopped in to look at your new show. I wanted to see your set.”
“Oh, did you see it, Saul?” she cried, clapping her hand to her ear and bending forward a little to hear better as her rosy face flushed deeper with excitement and interest: “Did you like it? Hah?”
For a moment his face was again distempered by its old look of arrogance and scorn:
“Oh, I suppose it will pass very well as an example of La Jack in one of her better moments. Of course, nothing anyone could do could hurt a piece of tripe like that play anyway. So I suppose it doesn’t matter much what the set is like. If they haven’t got sense enough to come to me in the first place it doesn’t matter who designs it.”
She was not annoyed. She had known him too long. She knew too much about him. She laughed and said: “God! You hate yourself don’t you?”—At the same time taking him in—the whole discolored pamphlet of his face—in one swift glance, thinking a trifle cynically, but good-humoredly and utterly without rancour:
“That fellow thinks he’s hell, doesn’t he? And, my God!”—for a moment as she looked at the polychromia of his astounding face the old swift impulse to explosive and incredulous mirth rose up in her and almost choked her—“What a face! Would anyone believe it! It’s—it’s—it’s like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tale!”—she thought, and then immediately, with a swift and overwhelming sense of pity: “Poor Saul! Poor thing!”
More quietly now, her face still flushed with laughter, her wise eyes twinkling shrewdly and good-naturedly, she looked at him and said: “Well, Saul, I’ll tell you something. No one’s ever going to get a swelled head from staying around you.”
“Don’t listen to him, Esther,” Levenson’s wife said quietly. “He’s crazy about your set—he told me so. And I thought it was beautiful,” she added simply.
Levenson’s voice, when he spoke again, was also quiet, his face and manner had lost all their former arrogance and there was now no doubt whatever about his complete and utter seriousness.
“Esther,” he said, “you are one of the best designers in the world! The set tonight was lovely. At your best,” he said. “There’s no one else who can touch you.”
Mrs. Jack’s face now really did flush deeply with happiness and joy. A wave of warm swift feeling, of gratefulness and affection, filled her being: “How generous and good!” she thought. “What a fine high man he really is!”
When she answered him her voice too was quiet, the voice of a person talking to an old friend at such a moment, stripped free of mirth or any playful pleasantry, when there is nothing but plain speech to say:
“Well, Saul,” she said. “You know the saying: ‘Praise from Sir Topas is praise indeed.’ That’s the way I feel now.”
He turned away from her, having resumed his former manner, saying arrogantly and disdainfully as he did so: “Not that there’s not room for a lot of improvement! And when I think you’re lousy—as you frequently are—I’ll tell you so!”
She laughed richly: “I’ll bet you will.”—And then her rosy little face, twinkling with good humor, she raised her hands, palms upward, Jewishly, shrugged her shoulders, and said plaintively: “I vont even have to esk”—a comicality that so delighted her by its quick spontaneity that she shook hysterically with helpless appreciation of her own humor, putting a handkerchief to her mouth and saying quickly: “I know—but it was funny, wasn’t it!”—although no one said it wasn’t.
Levenson grinned a little, then moved away and joined the crowd. He could be seen moving from group to group, his amazing patchwork of a face arrogantly contorted in the full and swarthy volutes of dark oriental scorn.
Anyone who might have been present on this famous evening, would undoubtedly have noted, among the crowd of brilliant and distinguished people, most of whom seemed to know one another with the familiarity of long acquaintanceship, a weird little group, which seemed to be marooned, to be sorrowfully enisled there in the crowd in the lonely isolation of a lepers’ colony, and which provided the most bizarre and disturbing touch to an otherwise distinguished gathering.
This was a man named Krock, a sculptor, his wife, who had been a girlhood friend of Mrs. Jack’s, and who was the reason for their being present, and his mistress, a young, buxom, and fullblown whore.
It was an astounding and unhappy little party. Krock was a Germanic kind of man with a carnal face, a little blond goatee that tufted out of the deep hollow below his sensual mouth and an unpleasant habit of moistening his full red lips and rubbing his hands, tenderly along his heavy thighs, at the same time, murmuring intimately as he did so that he had varicose veins and that his legs were very tired, and couldn’t “they” go off quietly somewhere to another room away from all this noise and sit down—this last remark being made invariably to any attractive woman that he met as he eased gently toward her with a straddling movement.
His wife looked like someone who had been struck by lightning. She was a blown shell of a woman with a fragile face—a wisp of life with sunken, brightly staring eyes. And the mistress, whom he introduced as his “model,” was like something out of one of the drawings of Felician Rops. She had carnal lips, eyes and lashes that had been weirdly stained with some nocturnal dye, and blondish hair combed down and cut in a straight bang across her forehead. She was a bold featured and bold figured girl with full outstanding breasts, and although she was dressed in a street costume, her blouse was low. It was a shocking little group, strange mixture of flaunting carnality and frail surrender, of Madonna and of Mary Magdalene, of the Twentieth Century and the Moulin Rouge.
And although such liaisons were certainly not unknown to this gathering, although such carnal triangles were familiar to them all, and the forms even present here tonight, of conventional concealment had been here so ruthlessly violated, the naked fact was here so ruthlessly revealed, that the other people at the party evidently felt the circumstance a little shocking and perhaps, like sinners gone to church, enjoyed the luxury of feeling virtuous.
The little group was somewhat isolated—a fact which seemed to trouble the painter and his mistress not at all—and from time to time people would glance at them with speculative looks—at the wife with wonder and commiseration, at the man and the young woman with distaste and a kind of cynical amusement.
The carnal history of the whole group was written with such brutal nakedness that men would stare at them for a moment heavily, then turn away with a short ejaculative laugh that summed up everything, and women, after staring at them with a curiosity mixed of wonder and repulsion, would turn away, saying with a kind of helpless and astounded laugh: “Isn’t it the most?—” It was only when people looked at the frail and tragic-looking wife that their expressions would soften into kindly interest. Men looked at her with quiet sympathy, and women with a more active and aroused compassion woul
d say involuntarily:
“The poor thing!”
Well, here they were then, three dozen of the highest and the best, with shimmer of silk, and ripple of laughter, with the tumultuous babel of fine voices, with tinkle of ice in shell-thin glasses, and with silvern clatter, in thronging webs of beauty, wit and loveliness—as much passion, joy, and hope, and fear, as much triumph and defeat, as much anguish and despair and victory, as much sin, viciousness, cruelty and pride, as much base intrigue and ignoble striving, as much unnoble aspiration as flesh and blood can know, or as a room can hold—enough, God knows, to people hell, inhabit heaven, or fill out the universe—were all here, now, miraculously composed, in magic interweft—at Jack’s!
PIGGY LOGAN’S CIRCUS
• • •
The hour had now arrived for Mr. Piggy Logan and his celebrated circus of wire dolls. As he made his appearance there was a flurry of excited interest in the brilliant throng. People in the dining room crowded to the door, holding tinkling glasses or plates loaded with tempting victuals in their hands, even old Jake Abramson deserted for the moment his painstaking circuit of the loaded table, and appeared in the doorway gnawing coarsely at a chicken leg: an old man with loose teeth patiently worrying a bone.
Mr. Piggy Logan was now attired for the performance. His costume was a simple yet an extraordinary one. He wore a thick blue sweater with a turtle roll neck of the kind in favor with college heroes thirty years ago. And on this sweater—God knows why—was sewn an enormous “Y.” He wore an old white pair of canvas trousers, a pair of tennis sneakers, and a pair of battered knee pads which were formerly in favor with professional wrestlers. On his head he wore a battered football helmet, the straps securely fastened underneath his round and heavy jowls. And thus arrayed, he now made his appearance, staggering between his two enormous cases.
The crowd scattered, made way for him, and regarded him with awe. Mr. Logan grunted forward with his two enormous valises, which at length he dropped with a floorshaking thump, and breathed an audible sigh of relief. He immediately pushed back the big sofa which obstructed his view of the premises, began to push back all chairs and tables and any other objects of furniture which might obstruct his free view, pushed back the carpet and then ruthlessly began to take books from the shelves and dump them on the floor. He looted a half dozen shelves in various parts of the room and then fastened up in the vacant spaces big circus posters which he had procured somewhere and which in addition to the familiar paraphernalia of tigers, lions, elephants, clowns, and trapeze performers, bore such descriptive legends as “Barnum & Bailey—May 7th and 8th,” “Ringling Brothers—July 31st,” and so on.
The gathering watched him curiously as he went about this labor of methodical destruction. When he had finished he came back to his valises, and began to take out a great variety of objects. There were little miniature circus rings made of rounded strips of tin or copper which fitted neatly together. There were trapezes and flying swings made of wire. And in addition there were a great variety of figures made of wire designed to represent the animals and performers of a circus. There were clowns and trapeze performers, acrobats and tumblers, bareback lady riders and wire horses. There was almost everything, in fact, that one could think of, or that a circus would need. And all of it was made of wire, and Mr. Logan’s celebrated dolls.
It took him a good time to set all this up for he was evidently of a patient turn of mind, and although his little figures were constructed of wire only, he would not be content until he had fairly represented the paraphernalia of a good sized circus. He got down upon his kneepads and for some time he was extremely busy with his work. He set up his wire trapezes and his wire rings. He set up his little wire figures of elephants, lions, tigers, horses, camels, and the other personnel of the circus menagerie. He set out his little wire figures of the circus performers, and he even set up a little sign that said “Main Entrance.”
It was some time before he had finished his patient labors. Meanwhile, the people who had been invited regarded him curiously for a time, then resumed the rapid clatter of their talk with one another.
At length Mr. Logan was ready and signified his willingness to begin by a gesture to his hostess. She made a sign to her guests that asked for silence and attention. At the same moment, the doorbell rang and a host of new and uninvited guests were ushered in by Molly. Mrs. Jack looked somewhat bewildered. The new arrivals, who had not been invited were, for the most part, young people and obviously they belonged to Mr. Piggy Logan’s “social set.” The young women had that subtle yet unmistakable appearance of having gone to Miss Spence’s School for Girls and the young men, by the same token, seemed to have gone to Yale and Harvard and one was also sure that some of them were members of the Racquet Club and were now connected with a firm of “investment brokers” in downtown New York.
In addition, there was with them a large well-kept somewhat decayed looking lady of advanced middle age. She had evidently been a society beauty in her palmy days, but now she was a picture of corrupted elegance: everything about her, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, and throat were somewhat blown, full and loose, like something that has been elegantly kept but is decayed. In addition, she had large bright eyes and a throaty and indifferent voice: it was a picture of corrupted wealth—what Amy Van Leer might look like twenty years from now, if she were careful and survived. One felt unpleasantly that she had lived too long in Europe, and preferred the Riviera, and that there was somewhere in the offing something with dark liquid eyes, a little moustache, and pomaded hair—something quite young and private and obscene—and kept.
This lady was accompanied by a gentleman past sixty, faultlessly attired in evening dress, as were all the others, and with a cropped moustache and artificial teeth, which were revealed occasionally when the clipped cachinnation of his speech was broken and he paused to lick his thin lips lecherously, and to stutter out—“What—what.” Both of these people looked remarkably like some of the characters portrayed by Mr. Henry James, if Mr. Henry James had written of them in a slightly later period of decay.
All these people streamed in noisily and vociferously, headed by an elegant young gentleman in a white tie and tails whose name, curiously, was Hen Walters, and who was evidently Mr. Logan’s bosom friend.
Mrs. Jack looked rather overwhelmed at this invasion, but was dutifully murmuring greetings and welcome when all the new people swarmed right past her ignoring her completely, and stormed into the room shouting vociferous gaieties at Mr. Logan. He greeted them from his kneepads with a fond and foolish grin, waved at them and beckoned them to a position along one wall with a spacious gesture of his thick hand. They swarmed in and took the place. They paid absolutely no attention to any of the other invited guests, except for a greeting here and there to Amy Van Leer who apparently they considered one of them, even though a fallen angel.
There was even an interlude of contact here. Amy came over and joined her people for a moment. Her golden head could be seen sunning out of the chattering group; she seemed to know them all: the debutantes and the young men were polite but crisply detached. One could see that they had all heard of her, and had been warned. Some of the young people drew away after the formalities of greeting and eyed her curiously as one would look, and rather furtively, at a famous scarlet woman who was once a member of the flock. It was a look that said as plain as words could do: “So this is she?—the Dread Medusa or the Fallen Angel we have heard so much about?”
One or two of the other people were more unreserved and natural. Hen Walters greeted her quite cordially: he said, “Oh, hello, Amy,” in a voice that constantly suggested he was burbling with suppressed fun, and was just about to break into a burbling laugh. Some of his friends professed to like it, and thought his laugh a quite infectious and engaging one. But it was really not a pleasant voice: it was too moist and yolky and it seemed to circulate around a nodule of fat phlegm. He was, to use a phrase by which Mrs. Jack had already mentally des
cribed him, “A lowdy-dow-young man.” As such, in his own “set,” he was a privileged character, an Original.
He was one of the impoverished young men of the high plutocracy, whose family, however, is a “good” one and whose social standing high. His friends described it in this way: “Of course he’s frightfully poor! He has nothing.”—In Mr. Walters’ case “nothing” was seven thousand dollars every year.—“But he’s most amusing. You’ve simply got to meet Hen Walters: you’ll adore him.”
Cast in this role, Mr. Walters was the generating force of much hilariousness:—the list of his accomplishments was a most impressive one. He was, for example, the first one to organize a party on roller skates around Central Park; he was the originator of the famous “busman’s dinner”—a gustatory expedition that began in Greenwich Village and that then jumped course by course—by taxi, trolley, or by bus—all over town. And although this repast was calculated to wreak havoc with the nervous system and the digestive tract, it was carried out from soup to nuts, and was the great sensation of the year.
In addition to all these other contributions to sophisticated gaiety, Mr. Walters owned a Ford of such ancient vintage that it threatened to fall to pieces every time it hit a bump. The Ford was famous everywhere through “Society”: Mr. Walters drove it everywhere hilariously, and it was his custom to appear at the most grandiose receptions—the coming-out of a famous deb, a dinner or a dance—clad in full evening dress, with “tails” and a silk hat, in his decrepit Ford, insinuating this rusty rattletrap among the purring lanes of sleek Rolls Royces with as much aplomb as if it were the President’s car.
