by Nella Larsen
“Here’s Irene now,” Dave Freeland announced, and told her that, having only just missed her, they had concluded that she had fainted or something like that, and were on the way to find out about her. Felise, she saw, was holding on to his arm, all the insolent nonchalance gone out of her, and the golden brown of her handsome face changed to a queer mauve color.
Irene made no indication that she had heard Freeland but went straight to Brian. His face looked aged and altered, and his lips were purple and trembling. She had a great longing to comfort him, to charm away his suffering and horror. But she was helpless, having so completely lost control of his mind and heart.
She stammered: “Is she—is she—?”
It was Felise who answered. “Instantly, we think.”
Irene struggled against the sob of thankfulness that rose in her throat. Choked down, it turned to a whimper, like a hurt child’s. Someone laid a hand on her shoulder in a soothing gesture. Brian wrapped his coat about her. She began to cry rackingly, her entire body heaving with convulsive sobs. He made a slight perfunctory attempt to comfort her.
“There, there, Irene. You mustn’t. You’ll make yourself sick. She’s—” His voice broke suddenly.
As from a long distance she heard Ralph Hazelton’s voice saying: “I was looking right at her. She just tumbled over and was gone before you could say ‘Jack Robinson.’ Fainted, I guess. Lord! It was quick. Quickest thing I ever saw in all my life.”
“It’s impossible, I tell you! Absolutely impossible!”
It was Brian who spoke in that frenzied hoarse voice, which Irene had never heard before. Her knees quaked under her.
Dave Freeland said: “Just a minute, Brian. Irene was there beside her. Let’s hear what she has to say.”
She had a moment of stark craven fear. “Oh, God,” she thought, prayed, “help me.”
A strange man, official and authoritative, addressed her. “You’re sure she fell? Her husband didn’t give her a shove or anything like that, as Dr. Redfield seems to think?”
For the first time she was aware that Bellew was not in the little group shivering in the small hallway. What did that mean? As she began to work it out in her numbed mind, she was shaken with another hideous trembling. Not that! Oh, not that!
“No, no!” she protested. “I’m quite certain that he didn’t. I was there, too. As close as he was. She just fell, before anybody could stop her. I—”
Her quaking knees gave way under her. She moaned and sank down, moaned again. Through the great heaviness that submerged and drowned her she was dimly conscious of strong arms lifting her up. Then everything was dark.
Centuries after, she heard the strange man saying: “Death by misadventure, I’m inclined to believe. Let’s go up and have another look at that window.”
Nella Larsen—A Chronology
April 13, 1891 Born
1898 First trip to Denmark
1908–1909 Second trip to Denmark
1912–1915 Nursing Degree, Lincoln Hospital and Home
1915–1917 Works as a nurse at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee Alabama
1918 New York City Department of Health
May 3, 1919 Marries Elmer S. Imes
1919 “Three Scandinavian Games,” The Brownies’ Book (June); “Danish Fun,” The Brownies’ Book (July) Both published under the name Nella Larsen Imes
1921–1926 Librarian, New York City Public Library (Harlem Branch)
1926 “The Wrong Man,” Young’s Magazine (January); “Freedom,” Young’s Magazine (April) Published under pseudonym, Allen Semi
1928 Quicksand
Awarded Bronze Award for Literature
(Harmon Foundation)
1929 Passing
1930 “Sanctuary,” Forum (January) Accused of plagiarism
1930–1931 Guggenheim Fellowship in Europe Working on Mirage
1932 Nashville, with Elmer
August 30, 1933 Divorces Elmer Imes
September 11, 1941 Elmer Imes dies
February 14, 1944 Appointed Chief Nurse at Gouverneur Hospital, New York City
September 1954 Night Supervisor at Gouverneur Hospital
1962 Supervisor of Nurses, Metropolitan Hospital, New York City
September 12, 1963 Retires from nursing
March 30, 1964 Discovered dead in her apartment
Charles R. Larson is Professor of Literature at American University in Washington, D.C., where he pioneered courses in non-Western literature. In addition to several novels, his critical works include: The Emergence of African Fiction (1972), American Indian Fiction (1978), Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen (1993), and The Ordeal of the African Writer (2001).
Marita Golden is the author of four novels, most recently The Edge of Heaven. She has also written Saving Our Sons: Raising Black Children in a Turbulent World; edited Wild Women Don’t Wear No Blues: Black Women and White Women Writers on Men, Love and Sex; and coedited Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race. Executive Director of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, Marita Golden is also on the faculty of the M.F.A. Graduate Creative Writing Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives in Mitchellville, Maryland, with her husband and son.
Anchor Books Edition, November 2001
Introduction copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Larson
Foreword by Marita Golden copyright © 1992 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and PanAmerican Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published as two separate works, Quicksand and Passing by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., respectively in 1928 and 1929. This edition with a new introduction was first published in the United States in an edited single volume as An Intimation of Things Distant by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1992.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data is on file.
eISBN: 978-0-307-75716-6
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