The roar of the wind became in his ears the thunder of a huge struck harp resounding with primordial music. The music faded, retreated, swept over him. The blizzard was lessening; now he could see the black shapes of houses. Suddenly they were no longer mere houses; they were emotions projected to him over the white banks of snow. They had a separate being, separate personalities, and he stared at them, blinking the flakes from his eyes. Why, he had felt this way when he was a kid, and he had forgotten!
There was a thick and crowding exultation in his throat, a pounding in his chest. He was remembering; he was re-experiencing. He stared at the houses, at the shrouded trees, and felt their individual and distinct beings in his own body, which was no longer aware of the cold.
There had been a time, he remembered, when all things, whether a teacup or a chair, a fork or a table, a curtain or a bed, a tree or a cloud, a blade of grass or a stairway—all things, in fact on which his eye had rested even momentarily—had possessed, for him, an emotion, an actual personality of being. It was not so much their texture, their appearance, their reality in time or place, their color or the lack of it, which had so impinged on his consciousness. Rather, it was their intense projection of themselves into his own consciousness, an individual projection, acute and sentient, personal and intense, which had always so enthralled him. And he had forgotten this joy, this glorious participation in all visible matter, his instinctive, childish knowledge that all objects, in becoming form, had become life!
Now he remembered that once a spoon or a glass of water had not been, as they were to others, merely insensate objects. Perhaps, in his boyhood (and this he now believed) he had unconsciously endowed all things with the magical intensity of his own imagination, childish and fundamental, just as primitive peoples had endowed trees, rocks, waters, with personal spirits, beautiful or malign, dull or poignant. (But again, perhaps the eye and the heart of childhood were more keen, more discerning, than the cataract-covered vision and the scarred sensitivities of manhood.)
However it had been, the object’s beauty or ugliness, smoothness or roughness, had inspired liking or hatred in him, as a personality in itself, without reference to what it actually was. It had been an individual to him, endowed with a distinct if vague consciousness. When an object had broken in a careless hand, whether it was a lamp or a drinking-glass, a dish or a plate, he had felt loss in himself, a physical hurt. Something which had existed had died, been destroyed. Once Maybelle had accidentally smashed a teacup. The teacup had mysteriously been his friend, for it had been a jolly creature, wide and round, with a foolish curved handle. It was in no way distinguished: in fact, Maybelle had bought it in a cheap store, and she possessed better cups which she had brought from England. But it had been Frank’s friend from the moment he had seen it, and he had loved it for its individual being, the emotion it had imparted to him.
He remembered that he had particularly hated a pair of draperies of his mother’s. They were of red cotton, and red had always been his favorite color, so it was not the hue by which he was repelled. But he had thought the curtains arrogant and of a rough temper, and they, quite acutely, had not liked the little boy. He had felt their dislike, just as he had felt the dislike certain doors had for him. His father’s footstool had resented him, while one of Francis’ pipes had liked him in a stolid fashion. A certain house on Normal Avenue hated him, though it was not unlike the others on the street. He literally had believed that when he came down the street the house gathered its dormer windows together like clenched fists and threatened him over the frowning roof of the verandah. Its steps sneered at him openly.
Wistaria vines on his grandmother’s porch had liked him, and had nodded their purple heads at him in greeting, but the sidewalk in front of her house was his enemy. It was not so much that its cracks and depressions formed a snarling face as the fact that its very surface, gravelled, gray-colored and slightly tilted, appeared to project to him a malefic emotion of its own, whereas its brother and adjoining sections, almost identical, only stared at him blankly.
He remembered, as he huddled in his coat against the lessening wind, that a certain picket fence was smug and knowing, and grinned at him in a cunning way. But a small fir tree on a dusty lawn had stared at him wistfully, so that he had never passed it without touching it furtively with a tender hand. When he would go on, he knew that it watched him go, like a little forlorn dog, untended and homeless. Its look and sadness hurt him.
His mother had had a bowl of cheap glass, multicolored, which she had bought for twenty-five cents. The prevailing color was a kind of gelid brown, flecked with yellow, russet-red and dull amber. There it had been, on the kitchen table, so ugly, yet satisfied with itself, as if it were a lustre bowl of great price! Frank had detested it. When he was alone, he would lean over it and mutter through his teeth: “You’re only a cheap old bowl, and just pretending you’re so darn much!” But the bowl would glisten complacently, and ignore him, or maybe it would flash a little in the sunlight, as if it shrugged nastily and thought his opinion too unimportant for consideration.
Absorbed in his memories, absorbed in his renewed prescience and awareness, Frank stood in the snow, his back against the tree. He thought: I am alive! I’m really alive. I didn’t know I was dead, all these years.
He felt his enormous loneliness, and it was like a benediction. He felt his loneliness, and his oneness with everything in and about him, so that the loneliness was participation. And then he saw that the storm had abruptly stopped, was passing. The sky overhead was still ashen-purple, but only a few desultory flakes of snow fell from it. The groaning in the trees had subsided to a restless mutter.
He looked at the west, as he had looked when he had been a child, and felt a sudden wild lifting in himself. The wrack of clouds was leaving the western heavens, racing before some high, unfelt wind. And now these heavens were a clear pale blue, cold and limitless. Frank’s attention was caught and held by a curious cloud formation, such as he had never seen before. A great pillar of cloud, seemingly having its heavy base on the earth, rose like a shaft of white stone against the blue sky, smooth, vast, tapering, a veritable monument, crowned with gold. He could not believe it was real, fashioned as it was by the giant hands of the wind, a “Cleopatra’s needle” of vapor, possessing the quality and the sculpture of marble.
He saw it, and then he knew again, after so many years, that sweet, mystic anticipation, falling like sudden swift light on the spirit, that moment of glory when the heart expects, prays, urges, that something will be revealed, will descend, will expand, emerge from the invisible into the visible, will surely—surely—soar, leap, into all-embracing, all-explaining, beautiful reality, will become a pure, ecstatic joy, a revelation known by the soul from a hundred millennia before, and demanded by the body, which still did not know. That tranquil yet rapturous anticipation! That knowledge, guessed, previously known, half-forgotten, daily becoming less remembered, suddenly on the verge of being, complete and seen and shining, as once it had been remembered!
He watched and waited, alone there in the cold desert of Linwood Avenue. The tower of whiteness crowned with gold stood there, an awesome monument to what he instinctively knew existed. Then, moment by moment, it dissolved, drifted, expanded into mist, became a mound of nothingness, began to drift away.
He knew the sick spiritual disappointment then, as he had known it a thousand times before, the grief, the loss and the universal desolation, the darkness of mind because of the passing of what had almost been revealed, and then had not been revealed.
But he was not left empty. The exultation was still there, quieter now, yet luminously shining, as if, though the glory had passed, its memory remained as a sweet consolation and solemn promise.
He went on down the street. He looked at his father’s watch, which he had not sold after all. It was three o’clock. He would eat his dinner at Louis’, then go to see his mother and grandmother. All at once he wanted to see Mr. Farley, to talk
to him.
CHAPTER 40
Louis’ Restaurant was almost completely empty, snow was heaped outside nearly to the wide glass windows, the interior warm yet possessing a curious frontier quality because of the weather. Frank stamped his feet, felt the warmth flowing over his numbed flesh. He smiled at the headwaiter, who came to meet him eagerly. He took Frank’s coat, shook it free from a shower of snow, hung it up. He remarked on the passing of the storm, and gave Frank his favorite table to one side.
Frank looked about him, still excited. Now the walls of the restaurant were no longer just walls, but friendly personalities who were glad to see him. Now the round white tables were jocund and placid, the chairs, with their chintz covers, stout little young persons waiting for friends. The plate of bread and rolls on his own table was crustily amiable, and the silverware winked at him in a holiday mood. Even the menu in his hand was intimate, and he felt its texture with pleasure.
He saw the few diners, the shaded lights overhead, the gray blankness of the windows, and felt the carpet under his feet, the menu in his hand, the fit of his collar and tie. Everything had a depth, three dimensions, a patina, a color. Only last week he had sat in a photograph, flat, without depth, without meaning. Now everything was significant, a pattern, projecting its personality, absorbing his own personality in return, fusing them together to give him this sense of participation and joyous reality.
His excitement, as he ate, became enhanced rather than lessened. His mind teemed. A dozen plots for novels raced through his imagination. Nothing was too worthless, too insignificant, nothing too small, to demand projection through the written word. That old waiter, now; his life story might be profound. That elderly couple, moderately well-dressed, munching, smiling at each other, had dignity, and any tale of their lives would have deep meaning and drama. The young woman cashier at the desk, with her buns and rolls of taffy-colored hair, her cascades of ruffles at wrist and throat, could probably give him material for a dozen short stories. Every human being, those passing by the windows, the cook and his assistants in the kitchen, were individual human souls of tragedy and purport and importance. Through them breathed an intense purpose; their lives were part of a great whole, mystical and complete.
His awareness became an almost overpowering emotion. He was conscious that he was no longer afraid, no longer anxious and tense. He thought briefly of the morning’s débâcle, and smiled to himself. If Miss Woods told him to leave, he would be sorry, of course, but the matter would be unimportant. There were dozens of other rooming houses; hers was not unique. Besides, he had told that old hag off, and that was an immense satisfaction. He wondered why he had ever catered to her, tried to please her. Mortification made his face hot, but this, curiously, only excited him further.
As for his job, if it vanished in a week or two, as it most probably would, there were other jobs. Even jobs did not matter. He had recovered something priceless: the ability to think and feel. All at once he was impatient to go back to his room and begin to write. Now the thought of writing was a joy. Words, phrases, sentences, full of color and vitality, rushed through his imagination in a burning stream.
He thought of Irving Schultz, and he said to himself: I’ll talk to Irving. How could I have missed it, that he is great and heroic? Perhaps he’ll be my friend. I can talk to him! He’ll understand what I am saying.
I am free, he thought, and the very sound of the words in his mind held him hushed and taut, as if he had come upon a miracle.
I’ll write to Paul. I’ll write in such a way that he can’t fail to understand. Maybe I’ll get a job near him, and we can be together again. Yes, yes, everything is possible now!
The golden river of his thoughts became a teeming flood, overflowing cold dark banks with its exuberant currents and swelling streams. He saw them brightening under a golden sky, until heaven and earth lay before him, flowing together in an ineffable glory. He heard voices in the light, singing, calling voices, and each had a story to tell. The waiter laid his favorite dessert on the table—bread pudding with a rich sauce—but he held his spoon suspended over it while he stared before him, his eyes heavy with entrancement. He saw marble stairs rising swiftly out of the golden river of his imagination, and he mounted them. Voices and light became one, and now they had a single tale to relate, a novel which moved, like music, from chord to chord, as in a symphony. He had it now! It was beautiful; it was rounded; there was no part which was not perfect. Step by gold-splashed marble step, he rose, and each step was a part of his story.
He would write of the physician who had been one of Christ’s disciples, Luke, the subtle Greek, the man who had come from nothing into immortality. Behind him, white porticoes in a violet mist, voices raised in lofty dialectics, a world sinking into insignificance, becoming a desert of words in which everything was sterile. Luke, a young man, yes, most certainly, a young man, dark-faced, faintly smiling, learned, full of the gestures of decadence and attenuation, an elegant young man who told nothing about himself, but whose eyes hinted at cynicism and despair. His hands would be the hands of a physician, strong yet calm, but now empty. Had he seen Rome? Yes, of course, he had seen Rome, and all its splendor, and he knew now that it had been a disintegrating splendor like murals painted on crumbling walls. Where had he encountered that young Jew who, by a glance of his eye, could melt men’s souls and re-impart to them a knowledge they had forgotten? He, Frank, must reread his Bible. But, if he remembered rightly, the story of Luke was dim, untold. Yet he knew! He knew it in his heart; he knew Luke as if he were Frank Clair’s own flesh and thought.
What had he thought when he had first seen that young Jew, so travel-stained, so ragged, so tired, and yet with such incandescent flesh? What did he think, this Grecian Luke, when he had first listened to the words that had convulsed a world of decadent lost men, despairing and stricken with every ill of the spirit? Now Frank saw that world; its sounds and its tumult were in his ears. Out of that chaos of pride and lust, slavery and death, banners and fury and grandeur, conquest and majesty, out of that Roman universe of triumph and ostentation and power, Luke had wandered to this sandy and barren Jerusalem, which was filled with hopeless but unconquered Jews. Had Luke been a slave who had fled the Roman world, and sought hiding here, beneath these dusty palms, along the shores of this dead sea, within these noisy and fetid streets? Had he thought to find a new philosophy among these red rocks, these scorpion-filled paths? Luke, the sophisticated and elegant Greek, tired as only a man of thought and learning can be tired when he is sick of his world: what had come to him when he had seen the miserable Jewish rabble congregating about this even more miserable young Jew whose voice was like a trumpet suddenly raised amid hubbub? At what moment had the rabble parted, so that the young Jew could be seen clearly by Luke, who had halted, idly and wearily, on their outskirts? Had Jesus spoken then? Had He smiled? Had He known instantly that this alien Greek must be His? Had He called, lifted His hand? Or had that look been enough to enslave, to awaken, that poetic and polished soul, so dusty and sickened? What had transpired when their eyes met, grave and smiling?
Meaning, tremendous, shaking, powerful, must have flashed between them. Luke had known! He had stood there under the blazing cataract of light which had poured down from the heavens upon this red and fruitless earth, and he had known. He stood as if he would never move again, for he had seen God. Had he bent, in a gesture of ceremony, and removed his worn sandals, as Moses had removed his shoes, knowing this was holy ground? Yes, Frank could see him do that, bending his flat scholar’s body, extending his thin and graceful hand, his austere profile darkening with his own shadow. And then he had stood, simply and with dignity, his bare feet in the dust, his eyes gazing upon Jesus with pride and humility, with understanding and peace and joy. All his shallow philosophy, his epigrammatic wisdom, his artistry and weary decadence, had become as nothing, a corruption which he had shed with his sandals.
All at once, Frank could not wait to be back in his ro
om, writing this wondrous tale. But perhaps this ought to be a play! Frank, in the very act of rising, fell back in his chair. A play in three acts, six scenes, written in fervent and stately blank verse. There was Luke, talking idly with a group of bearded Jewish elders, near the steps of the threatened temple. The elders listened courteously, and with curious attention, but with impatience. Behind them, in the hot scarlet sunset, rose the temple, and throngs passed with laden asses, and women with striped headdresses of yellow and white, blue and red. Luke stood there, smiling faintly and with superior indulgence as he said:
“If men were in this hour to lose their sight,
All beauty and all life would cease to be.
In man’s small iris, vague, confused and dim,
Are held the gods, all wisdom, and the suns.”
Frank could see the elders shaking their old heads and lifting their faces with dignity as they denied. One spoke of the objectivity of God, in rebuttal, spoke of great and shining universes which man had never seen and which existed apart from him. Measure after measure flowed through Frank’s mind; he listened to them enthralled. How could he ever put down on paper the beauty and majesty of these words? He must hurry, hurry back to his room and try to capture even a faint echo of them!
He stood up. The waiter came hurrying with the bill. Frank glanced at him, then paused. What had happened to his eyes? Had they recovered from a strange myopia, that the waiter’s face should now be so clear and vivid, so minutely etched with old wrinkles? This waiter was an old familiar; he knew Frank by name. He had talked often, and haltingly, to this frequent customer. Yet Frank, with a kind of wonder, could not remember a single conversation, a single phrase. Why?
There Was a Time Page 35
