Snopes: The Hamlet, the Town, the Mansion

by William Faulkner

  “I cant,” she said.

  “You said that before,” I said. “You cant what?”

  “The schools,” she said. “The ones you … the catalogues. From outside Jefferson, outside Mississippi.”

  “I’m glad you cant,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to decide alone. That’s why I wanted to see you: to help you pick the right one.”

  “But I cant,” she said. “Dont you understand? I cant.”

  Then I—yes, I—stopped talking. “All right,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “I cant go to any of them. I’m going to stay in Jefferson. I’m going to the Academy next year.” Oh yes, I stopped talking now. It wasn’t what the Academy was that mattered. It wasn’t even that the Academy was in Jefferson that mattered. It was Jefferson itself which was the mortal foe since Jefferson was Snopes.

  “I see,” I said. “All right. I’ll talk to her myself.”

  “No,” she said. “No. I dont want to go away.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We must. It’s too important. It’s too important for even you to see now. Come on. We’ll go home now and talk to your mother—” already turning. But already she had caught at me, grasping my wrist and forearm with both hands, until I stopped. Then she let go and just stood there in the high heels and the silk stockings and the hat that was a little too old for her or maybe I was not used to her in a hat or maybe the hat just reminded me of the one other time I ever saw her in a hat which was that fiasco of a Sunday dinner at home two years ago which was the first time I compelled, forced her to do something because she didn’t know how to refuse; whereupon I said suddenly: “Of course I dont really need to ask you this, but maybe we’d better just for the record. You dont really want to stay in Jefferson, do you? You really do want to go up East to school?” then almost immediately said: “All right, I take that back. I cant ask you that; I cant ask you to say outright you want to go against your mother.—All right,” I said, “you dont want to be there yourself when I talk to her: is that it?” Then I said: “Look at me,” and she did, with the eyes that were not blue or gray either but hyacinthine, the two of us standing there in the middle of that quiet block in full view of at least twenty discreet window-shades; looking at me even while she said, breathed, again:

  “No. No.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s walk again,” and she did so, docile enough. “She knows you came to meet me this afternoon because of course she gave you my telephone message.—All right,” I said. “I’ll come to your house in the morning then, after you’ve left for school. But it’s all right; you dont need to tell her. You dont need to tell her anything—say anything—” Not even No No again, since she had said nothing else since I saw her and was still saying it even in the way she walked and said nothing. Because now I knew why the clothes, the scent, the makeup which belonged on her no more than the hat did. It was desperation, not to defend the ingratitude but at least to palliate the rudeness of it: the mother who said Certainly, meet him by all means. Tell him I am quite competent to plan my daughter’s education, and we’ll both thank him to keep his nose out of it; the poor desperate child herself covering, trying to hide the baseness of the one and the shame of the other behind the placentae of worms and the urine and vomit of cats and cancerous whales. “I’ll come tomorrow morning, after you’ve gone to school,” I said. “I know. I know. But it’s got too important now for either of us to stop.”

  So the next morning: who—I—had thought yesterday to have seen the last of lurking. But I had to be sure. And there was Ratliff.

  “What?” he said. “You’re going to see Eula because Eula wont let her leave Jefferson to go to school? You’re wrong.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m wrong. I dont want to do it either. I’m not that brave—offering to tell anybody, let alone a woman, how to raise her child. But somebody’s got to. She’s got to get away from here. Away for good from all the very air that ever heard or felt breathed the name of Snopes—”

  “But wait, I tell you! Wait!” he said. “Because you’re wrong—”

  p height="0em" width="1em" align="justify">But I couldn’t wait. Anyway, I didn’t. I mean, I just deferred, marked time until at least nine oclock. Because even on a hot Mississippi May morning, when people begin to get up more or less with the sun, not so much in self-defense as to balance off as much as possible of the day against the hours between noon and four, a housewife would demand a little time to prepare (her house and herself or perhaps most of all and simply, her soul) for a male caller not only uninvited but already unwelome. But she was prepared, self, house and soul too; if her soul was ever in her life unready for anything that just wore pants or maybe if any woman’s soul ever needed pre-readying and pre-arming against anything in pants just named Gavin Stevens, passing through the little rented (still looking rented even though the owner or somebody had painted it) gate up the short rented walk toward the little rented veranda and onto it, my hand already lifted to knock before I saw her through the screen, standing there quite still in the little hallway watching me.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Come in,” and now with no screen between us still watching me. No: just looking at me, not brazenly, not with welcome, not with anything. Then she turned, the hair, where all the other women in Jefferson, even Maggie, had bobbed theirs now, still one heavy careless yellow bun at the back of her head, the dress which was not a morning gown nor a hostess gown nor even a house dress but just a simple cotton dress that was simply a dress and which, although she was thirty-five now—yes: thirty-six now by Ratliff’s counting from that splendid fall like that one when she first crossed the Square that day sixteen years ago, appeared not so much as snatching in desperate haste to hide them but rather to spring in suppliance and adulation to the moving limbs, the very flowing of the fabric’s laving folds crying Evoe! Evoe!

  Oh yes, it was a sitting room, exactly like the hall and both of them exactly like something else I had seen somewhere but didn’t have time to remember. Because she said, “Will you have some coffee?” and I saw that too: the service (not silver but the stuff the advertisements dont tell you is better than silver but simply newer. New: implying that silver is quite all right and even proper for people still thrall to gaslight and the horse-and-buggy) on a low table, with two chairs already drawn up and I thought I have lost even if she had met me wearing a barrel or a feed sack. Then I thought So it really is serious, since this—the coffee, the low table, the two intimate chairs was an assault not on the glands nor even just the stomach but on the civilized soul or at least the soul which believes it thirsts to be civilised.

  “Thank you,” I said and waited and then sat too. “Only, do you mind if I wonder why? We dont need an armistice, since I have already been disarmed.”

  “You came to fight then,” she said, pouring.

  “How can I without a weapon?” I said, watching: the bent head with the careless, almost untidy bun of hair, the arm, the hand which could have rocked a warrior-hero’s cradle or even caught up its father’s fallen sword, pouring the trivial (it would probably not even be very good coffee) fluid from the trivial spurious synthetic urn—this, in that room, that house; and suddenly I knew where I had seen the room and hallway before. In a photograph, the from say Town and Country labelled American Interior, reproduced in color in a wholesale furniture catalogue, with the added legend: This is neither a Copy nor a Reproduction. It is our own Model scaled to your individual Requirements. “Thank you,” I said. “No cream. Just sugar.—Only it doesn’t look like you.”

  “What?” she said.

  “This room. Your house.” And that was why I didn’t even believe at first that I had heard her.

  “It wasn’t me. It was my husband.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “My husband chose this furniture.”

  “Flem?” I said, cried. “Flem Snopes?”—and she looking at me now, not startled, amazed: not anything or if anything, just waiting for my uproar
to reach its end: nor was it only from McCarron that Linda got the eyes, but only the hair from him. “Flem Snopes!” I said. “Flem Snopes!”

  “Yes. We went to Memphis. He knew exactly what he wanted. No, that’s wrong. He didn’t know yet. He only knew he wanted, had to have. Or does that make any sense to you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Terribly. You went to Memphis.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That was why: to find somebody who could tell him what he had to have. He already knew which store he was going to. The first thing he said was, ‘When a man dont intend to buy anything from you, how much do you charge him just to talk?’ Because he was not trading now, you see. When you’re on a trade, for land or stock or whatever it is, both of you may trade or both of you may not, it all depends; you dont have to buy it or sell it; when you stop trading and part, neither of you may be any different from when you began. But not this time. This was something he had to have and knew he had to have: he just didn’t know what it was and so he would not only have to depend on the man who owned it to tell him what he wanted, he would even have to depend on the man selling it not to cheat him on the price or the value of it because he wouldn’t know that either: only that he had to have it. Do you understand that too?”

  “All right,” I said. “Yes. And then?”

  “It had to be exactly what it was, for exactly what he was. That was when the man began to say, ‘Yes, I think I see. You started out as a clerk in a country store. Then you moved to town and ran a café. Now you’re vice president of your bank. A man who came that far in that short time is not going to stop just there, and why shouldn’t everybody that enters his home know it, see it? Yes, I know what you want.’ And Flem said No. ‘Not expensive,’ the man said. ‘Successful.’ and Flem said No. ‘All right,’ the man said. ‘Antique then,’ and took us into a room and showed us what he meant. ‘I can take this piece here for instance and make it look still older.’ And Flem said, ‘Why?’ and the man said, ‘For background. Your grandfather.’ And Flem said, ‘I had a grandfather because everybody had. I dont know who he was but I know that whoever he was he never owned enough furniture for a room, let alone a house. Besides, I dont aim to fool anybody. Only a fool would try to fool smart people, and anybody that needs to fool fools is already one.’ And that was when the man said wait while he telephoned. And we did, it was not long before a woman came in. She was his wife. She said to me: ‘What are your ideas?’ and I said, ‘I dont care,’ and she said ‘What?’ and I said it again and then she looked at Flem and I watched them looking at one another, a good while. Then she said, not loud like her husband, quite quiet: ‘I know,’ and now it was Flem that said, ‘Wait. How much will it cost?’ and she said, ‘You’re a trader. I’ll make a trade with you. I’ll bring the stuff down to Jefferson and put it in your house myself. If you like it, you buy it. If you dont like it, I’ll load it back up and move it back here and it wont cost you a cent.’ ”

  “All right,” I said. “And then?”

  “That’s all,” she said. “Your coffee’s cold. I’ll get another cup—” and began to rise until I stopped her.

  “When was this?” I said.

  “Four years ago,” she said. “When he bought this house.”

  “Bought the house?” I said. “Four years ago? That’s when he became vice president of the bank!”

  “Yes,” she said. “The day before it was announced. I’ll get another cup.”

  “I dont want coffee,” I said, sitting there saying Flem Snopes Flem Snopes until I said, cried: “I dont want anything! I’m afraid!” until I finally said “What?” and she repeated:

  “Will you have a cigarette?” and I saw that too: a synthetic metal box also and there should have been a synthetic matching lighter but what she had taken from the same box with the cigarette was a kitchen match. “Linda says you smoke a corncob pipe. Smoke it if you want to.”

  “No,” I said again. “Not anything.—But Flem Snopes,” I said. “Flem Snopes.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s not me that wont let her go away from Jefferson to school.”

  “But why?” I said. “Why? When she’s not even his—he’s not even her—I’m sorry. But you can see how urgent, how we dont even have time for.…”

  “Politeness?” she said. Nor did I make that move either: just sitting there watching while she leaned and scratched the match on the sole of her side-turned slipper and lit the cigarette.

  “For anything,” I said. “For anything except her. Ratliff tried to tell me this this morning, but I wouldn’t listen. So maybe that’s what you were telling me a moment ago when I wouldn’t or didn’t listen? The furniture. That day in the store. Didn’t know what he wanted because what he wanted didn’t matter, wasn’t important: only that he did want it, did need it, must have it, intended to have it no matter what cost or who lost or who anguished or grieved. To be exactly what he needed to exactly fit exactly what he was going to be tomorrow after it was announced: a vice president’s wife and child along with the rest of the vice president’s furniture in the vice president’s house? Is that what you tried to tell me?”

  “Something like that,” she said.

  “Just something like that,” I said. “Because that’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. We wont mention the money because everybody who ever saw that bow tie would know he wouldn’t pay out his own money to send his own child a sleeper-ticket distance to school, let alone another man’s ba—” and stopped. But not she, smoking, watching the burning tip of cigarette.

  “Say it,” she said. “Bastard.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Why?” she said.

  “I’m trying,” I said. “Maybe I could, if only you were. Looked like you were. Or even like you were trying to be.”

  “Go on,” she said. ‘Not the money.”

  “Because he—you—could get that from Uncle Will probably, not to mention taking it from me as a scholarship. Or is that it? He cant even bear to see the money of even a mortal enemy like old man Will Varner probably is to him wasted on sending a child out of the state to school when he pays taxes every year to support the Mississippi ones?”

  “Go on,” she said again. “Not the money.”

  “So it is that furniture catalogue picture after all, scaled in cheap color from the Charleston or Richmond or Long Island or Boston photograph, down to that one which Flem Snopes holds imperative that the people of Yoknapatawpha County must have of him. While he was just owner of a back-alley café it was all right for all Frenchman’s Bend (and all Jefferson and the rest of the county too after Ratliff and a few others like him got through with it) to know the child who bore his name was really a—”

  “Bastard,” she said again.

  “All right,” I said. But even then I didn’t say it: “—and even when he sold the café for a nice profit and was superintendent of the power-plant, it still wouldn’t have mattered. And even after that when he held no public position but was simply a private usurer and property-grabber quietly minding his own business; not to mention the fact that ten or twelve years had now passed, by which time he could even begin to trust Jefferson to have enough tenderness for a twelve- or thirteen-year-old female child not to upset her life with that useless and gratuitous information. But now he is vice president of a bank and now a meddling outsider is persuading the child to go away to school, to spend at least the three months until the Christmas holidays among none of whose fathers owe him money and so might keep their mouths shut, any one of whom might reveal the fact which at all costs he must now keep secret. So that’s it,” I said, and still she wasn’t looking at me: just smoking quietly and steadily while she watched the slow curl and rise of the smoke. “So it’s you, after all,” I said. “He forbade her to leave Jefferson, and blackmailed you into supporting him by threatening you with what he himself is afraid of: that he himself will tell her of her mother’s shame and her own illegitimacy. Well, that’s a blade with three edges. Ask
your father for the money, or take it from me, and get her away from Jefferson or I’ll tell her myself who she is or is not.”

  “Do you think she will believe you?” she said.

  “What?” I said. “Believe me? Believe me? Even without a mirror to look into, nothing to compare with and need to repudiate from, since all she needed was just to live with him for the seventeen years which she has. What more could she want than to believe me, believe anyone, a chance to believe anyone compassionate enough to assure her she’s not his child? What are you talking about? What more could she ask than the right to love the mother who by means of love saved her from being a Snopes? And if that were not enough, what more could anybody want than this, that most never have the chance to be, not one in ten million have the right to be, deserve to be: not just a love child but one of the elect to share cousinhood with the world’s immortal love-children—fruit of that brave virgin passion not just capable but doomed to count the earth itself well lost for love, which down all the long record of man the weak and impotent and terrified and sleepless that the rest of the human race calls its poets, have dreamed and anguished and exulted and amazed over—” and she watching me now, not smoking: just holding the poised cigarette while the last blue vapor faded, watching me through it.

  “You dont know very much about women, do you?” she said. “Women aren’t interested in poets’ dreams. They are interested in facts. It doesn’t even matter whether the facts are true or not, as long as they match the other facts without leaving a rough seam. She wouldn’t even believe you. She wouldn’t even believe him if he were to tell her. She would just hate you both—you most of all because you started it.”