You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Wolfe

  It baffled time, it turned reality to phantasmal shapes. One could behold her as she was to-night, here in New York, this freckled, laughing image of happy innocence--and before ten days had made their round one might come upon her again in the corruptest gatherings of Paris, drugged fathoms deep in opium, foul-bodied and filth-bespattered, cloying in the embraces of a gutter rat, so deeply rooted in the cesspool that it seemed she must have been bred on sewage and had never known any other life.

  Since her first marriage and divorce, she had been married twice again. The second marriage had lasted only twenty hours, and had been annulled. The third had ended when her husband shot himself.

  And before and after that, and in between, and in and out, and during it and later on, and now and then, and here and there, and at home and abroad, and on the seven seas, and across the length and breadth of the five continents, and yesterday and to-morrow and for ever--could it be said of her that she had been promiscuous? No, that could not be said of her. For she had been as free as air, and one does not qualify the general atmosphere with such a paltry adjective as "promiscuous". She had just slept with everybody--with white, black, yellow, pink, green, or purple--but she had never been promiscuous.

  It was, in romantic letters, a period that celebrated the lady who was lost, the lovely creature in the green hat who was "never let off anything". Her story was a familiar one: she was the ill-starred heroine of fate, a martyr to calamitous mischance, whose ruin had been brought about through tragic circumstances which she could not control, and for which she was not responsible.

  Amy Carleton had her apologists who tried to cast her in this role. The stories told about her "start upon the downward path" were numerous. One touching version dated the beginning of the end from the time when, an innocent and fun-loving girl of eighteen, she had, in a moment of daring, lighted a cigarette at a dinner party in Southampton, attended by a large number of eminent dowagers. The girl's downfall, according to this tale, had been brought about by this thoughtless and harmless little act. From that moment on--so the story went--the verdict of the dowagers was "thumbs down" on Amy. The evil tongues began to wag, scandal began to grow, her reputation was torn to shreds. Then, in desperation, the unhappy child did go astray: she took to drink, from drink to lovers, from lovers to opium, from opium to--everything.

  All this, of course, was just romantic nonsense. She was the victim of a tragic doom indeed, but she herself had fashioned it. With her the fault, as with dear Brutus, lay not in her stars, but in herself. For, having been endowed with so many rare and precious things that most men lack--wealth, beauty, charm, intelligence, and vital energy--she lacked the will, the toughness, to resist. So, having almost all, but lacking this, she was the slave to her advantages. Her wealth had set a premium on every whim, and no one had ever taught her to say no.

  In this she was the child of her own time. Her life expressed itself in terms of speed, sensational change, and violent movement, in a feverish tempo that never drew from its own energies exhaustion or surcease, but mounted constantly to insane excess. She had been everywhere and "seen everything"--in the way one might see things from the windows of an express train travelling eighty miles an hour. And, having quickly exhausted the conventional kaleidoscope of things to be seen, she had long since turned to an investigation of things more bizarre and sinister and hidden. Here, too, her wealth and powerful connections opened doors to her which were closed to other people.

  So, now, she possessed an intimate and extensive acquaintance among the most sophisticated and decadent groups in "Society", in all the great cities of the world. And her cult of the unusual had led to an exploration of the most shadowy border lines of life. She had an acquaintanceship among the underworld of New York, London, Paris, and Berlin which the police might have envied. And even with the police her wealth had secured for her dangerous privileges. In some way, known only to persons who control great power, financial or political, she had obtained a police card and was privileged to a reckless licence in the operation of her low-slung racing car. Although she was near-sighted, she drove it at murderous speed through the seething highways of Manhattan, and as it flashed by she always got the courtesy of a police salute. All this in spite of the fact that she had demolished one car and killed a young man who had been driving with her, and in spite of the further fact that the police knew her as one who had been present at a drinking party at which one of the chieftains of the underworld had been slain.

  It seemed, therefore, that her wealth and power and feverish energy could get her anything she wanted in any country of the world. People had once said: "What on earth is Amy going to do next!" But now they said: "What on earth is there left for her to do?" If life is to be expressed solely in terms of velocity and sensation, it seemed there was nothing left for her to do. Nothing but more speed, more change, more violence, more sensation--until the end. And the end? The end could only be destruction, and the mark of destruction was already apparent upon her. It was written in her eyes--in her tormented, splintered, and exploded vision. She had tried everything in life--except living. And she could never try that now because she had so long ago, and so irrevocably, lost the way. So there was nothing left for her to do except to die.

  "If only"--people would think regretfully, as Mrs. Jack now thought as she looked at that elfin head--"oh, if only things had turned out differently for her!"--and then would seek back desperately through the labyrinthine scheme to find the clue to her disorder, saying: "Here--or here--or here--it happened here, you see!--If Only--!"

  If only men were so much clay, as they are blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling! If they only were!

  "I mean!...You know!..." With these words, so indicative of her undefined enthusiasm and inchoate thought, Amy jerked the cigarette away from her lips, laughed hoarsely and eagerly, and turned to her companions as if fairly burning with a desire to communicate to them something that filled her with exuberant elation. "I mean!" she cried again--"when you compare it with the stuff they're doing nowadays!--I mean!--there's simply no comparison!" Laughing jubilantly, as if the thought behind these splintered phrases must be perfectly clear to everyone, she drew furiously upon her cigarette again and jerked it from her lips.

  The group of, young people of which Amy was the radiant centre, and which included not only the young Japanese who was her current lover but also the young Jew who had been his most recent predecessor, had moved over towards the portrait of Mrs. Jack above the mantel, and were looking up at it. The portrait deserved the praise that was now being heaped upon it. It was one of the best examples of Henry Mallows' early work.

  "When you look at it and think how long ago that was!"--cried Amy jubilantly, gesturing towards the picture with rapid thrusts of her cigarette--"and how beautiful she was then!--and how beautiful she is now!" she cried exultantly, laughed hoarsely, then cast her grey-green eyes round her in a glance of feverish exasperation--"I mean!"--she cried again, and drew impatiently on her cigarette--"there's simply no comparison!" Then, realising that she had not said what she had wanted to say, she went on: "Oh, I mean!"--she said in a tone almost of desperation and tossed her cigarette angrily away into the blazing fire--"the whole thing's obvious!" she muttered, leaving everyone more bewildered than before. With a sudden and impulsive movement she turned towards Stephen Hook, who was still leaning with his elbow on one corner of the mantel, and demanded: "How long has it been, Steve?...I mean!--it's been twenty years ago, hasn't it?"

  "Oh, quite all of that," Hook answered in his cold, bored voice. In his agitation and embarrassment he moved still farther away until he almost had his back turned upon the group. "It's been nearer thirty, I should think," he tossed back over his shoulder, and then with an air of casual indifference he gave the date. "I should think it was done in nineteen-one or two--wasn't it, Esther?" he said, turning to Mrs. Jack, who had now approached the group. "Around nineteen-one, wasn't it?"

  "What's that?" said Mrs. Jack, and the
n went on immediately, "Oh, the picture! No, Steve. It was done in nineteen"--she checked herself so swiftly that it was not apparent to anyone but Hook--"in nineteen-six." She saw just the trace of a smile upon his pale, bored face and gave him a quick, warning little look, but he just murmured:

  "Oh...I had forgotten it was as late as that."

  As a matter of fact, he knew the exact date, even to the month and day, when it had been finished. And, still musing on the vagaries of the sex, he thought: "Why will they be so stupid! She must understand that to anyone who knows the least thing about Mallows' life the date is as familiar as the fourth of July!"

  "Of course," Mrs. Jack was saying rapidly, "I was just a child when it was made. I couldn't have been more than eighteen at the time--if I was that."

  "Which would make you not more than forty-one now," thought Hook cynically--"if you are that! Well, my dear, you were twenty when he painted you--and you had been married for more than two years...Why do they do it!" he thought impatiently, and with a feeling of sharp annoyance. He looked at her and caught a quick expression--startled, almost pleading--in her eyes. He followed her glance, and saw the awkward figure of George Webber standing ill at ease in the doorway leading from the dining-room. "Ah! It's this boy!" he thought. "She's told him then that--" and, suddenly, remembering her pleading look, he was touched with pity. Aloud, however, he merely murmured indifferently:

  "Oh, yes, you couldn't have been very old."

  "And God!" exclaimed Mrs. Jack, "but I was beautiful!"

  She spoke the words with such innocent delight that they lost any trace of objectionable vanity they might have had, and people smiled at her affectionately. Amy Carleton, with a hasty little laugh, said impulsively:

  "Oh, Esther! Honestly, you're the most...1 But I mean!"--she cried impatiently, with a toss of her dark head, as if answering some invisible antagonist--"she is!"

  "In all your days," said Mrs. Jack, her face suffused with laughter, "you never saw the like of me! I was just like peaches and cream. I'd have knocked your eye out!"

  "But, darling! You do now!" cried Amy. "What I mean to say is--darling, you're the most...! Isn't she, Steve?" She laughed uncertainly, turning to Hook with feverish eagerness.

  And he, seeing the ruin, the loss, the desperation in her splintered eves, was sick with horror and with pity. He looked at her disdainfully, with weary, lidded eyes, said: "What?" quite freezingly, and then turned away, saying with an accent of boredom: "Oh."

  Beside him was the smiling face of Mrs. Jack, and, above, the portrait of the lovely girl that she had been. And the anguish and the mystery of time stabbed through him.

  "My God, here she is!" he thought. "Still featured like a child, still beautiful, still loving someone--a boy!--almost as lovely now as she was then when Mallows was a boy!"

  1901! Ah, Time! The figures reeled in a drunken dance and he rubbed his hand before his eyes. In 1901! How many centuries ago was that? How many lives and deaths and floods, how many million days and nights of love, of hate, of anguish and of fear, of guilt, of hope, of disillusion and defeat here in the geologic aeons of this monstrous catacomb, this riddled isle!--In 1901! Good God! It was the very Prehistoric Age of Man! Why, all that had happened several million years ago! Since then so much had begun and ended and been forgotten--so many untold lives of truth, of youth, of old age, so much blood and sweat and agony had gone below the bridge--why, he himself had lived through at least a hundred lives of it. Yes, he had lived and died through so many births and deaths and dark oblivions of it, had striven, fought, and hoped, and been destroyed through so many centuries of it, that even memory had failed--the sense of time had been wiped out--and all of it now seemed to have happened in a timeless dream. 1901! Looked at from here and now, it was a kind of Grand Canyon of the human nerves and bones and blood and brain and flesh and words and thought, all timeless now, all congealed, all solidified in an unchanging stratum there impossibly below, mixed into a general geologic layer with all the bonnets, bustles, and old songs, the straw hats and the derbies, the clatter of forgotten hooves, the thunder of forgotten wheels upon forgotten cobbles--all merged together now with the skeletons of lost ideas in a single stratum of the sunken world--while she----

  --She! Why, surely she had been a part of it with him!

  She had turned to speak to another group, and he could hear her saying:

  "Oh yes, I knew Jack Reed. He used to come to Mabel Dodge's place. We were great friends...That was when Alfred Stieglitz had started his salon----"

  Ah, all these names! Had he not been with these as well? Or, was it but another shape, a seeming, in this phantasmal shadow-show of time? Had he not been beside her at the launching of the ship? Had they not been captives together among Thracian faces? Had he not lighted tapers to the tent when she had come to charm remission from the lord of Macedon?--All these were ghosts--save she! And she--devouring child of time--had of this whole huge company of ghosts alone remained immortal and herself, had shed off the chrysalis of all these her former selves as if each life that she had lived was nothing but an outworn garment, and now stood here--here! Good God!--upon the burnt-out candle-end of time--with her jolly face of noon, as if she had just heard of this brave new world on Saturday--and would see if all of it was really true to-morrow!

  Mrs. Jack had turned back once more at the sound of Amy's voice and had bent forward to listen to the girl's disjointed exclamations as if, by giving more concentrated attention, she could make sense of what the girl was trying to say.

  "I mean!...You know!...But Esther! Darling, you're the most...! It's the most...! I mean, when I look at both of you, I simply can't"--cried Amy with hoarse elation, her lovely face all sunning over with light--"Oh, what I mean to say is"--she cried, then shook her head strongly, tossed another cigarette away impatiently, and cried with the expiration of a long sigh--"Gosh!"

  Poor child! Poor child! Hook turned pompously away to hide the naked anguish in his eyes. So soon to grow, to go, to be consumed and die like all of us! She was, he felt, like him, too prone to live her life upon the single instant, never saving out anything as a prudent remnant for the hour of peril or the day of ruin--too prone to use it all, to give it all, burning herself out like last night's moths upon a cluster of hard light!

  Poor child! Poor child! So quick and short and temporal, both you and I, thought Hook--the children of a younger kind! While these! He looked about him at the sensual volutes of strong nostrils curved with scornful mirth. These others of this ancient chemistry--unmothed, re-born, and venturesome, yet wisely mindful of the flame--these others shall endure! Ah, Time!

  Poor child!

  * * *

  16. A Moment of Decision

  George Webber had helped himself generously to the sumptuous feast so temptingly laid out in the dining-room, and now, his hunger sated, he had been standing for a few minutes in the doorway surveying the brilliant scene in the great living-room. He was trying to make up his mind whether to plunge boldly in and find somebody to talk to, or whether to put off the ordeal a little longer by lingering over the food. He thought with regret that there were still a few dishes that he had not even tasted. He had already eaten so much, however, that he knew he could not make a convincing show of taking more, so there seemed to be nothing for it but to screw up his courage and make the best of the situation.

  He had just reached this conclusion, with a feeling of "Now you're in for it!"--when he caught a glimpse of Stephen Hook, whom he knew and liked, and with a great sense of relief he started towards him. Hook was leaning on the mantel, talking with a handsome woman. He saw George coming and extended his soft, plump hand sideways, saying casually:

  "Oh. How are you?...Look." His tone, as always when he did something that was prompted by the generous and sensitive warmth of his spirit, was deliberately indifferent and masked with an air of heavy boredom. "Have you a telephone? I was trying to get you the other day. Can't you come and have lunch with me some time
?"

  As a matter of fact, this idea had never occurred to him until that moment. Webber knew that he had thought of it in an instant reflex of sympathy to put him at his ease, to make him feel less desperately shipwrecked in these glittering, sophisticated tides, to give him something "to hold on to". Ever since he had first met Hook and had seen his desperate shyness and the naked terror in his eyes, he had understood the kind of man he was. He had never been deceived by the show of aloof weariness or the elaborately mannered speech. Beneath these disguises he had felt the integrity, the generosity, the nobility, the aspiration in the man's tortured soul. So, now, with profound gratitude, he reached out and shook his hand, feeling as he did so like a bewildered swimmer seizing on the one thing that could sustain him in these disturbing and unfathomed currents which were edged somehow with menace. He stammered out a hasty greeting, said he would be delighted to go to lunch with him some time--any time--any time at all; and he took a place beside Hook as though he meant to stay there for the rest of the evening.

  Hook talked to him a little while in his casual way and introduced the woman. George tried to engage her in conversation, but, instead of answering his remarks, she just looked at him coolly and said nothing. Embarrassed by this behaviour, George looked round him as if searching for someone, and in a final effort to say something, to give some show of ease and purpose which he did not feel, he blurted out:

  "Have--have you seen Esther anywhere about?"

  As he said the words he knew how stiff and clumsy they sounded, and how absurd, too, for Mrs. Jack, as anyone could see, was standing talking to some of the guests not ten feet away. And the woman, as if she had been waiting for just such an opening, now answered him at once. Turning to him with a bright, superior smile, she said with cool unfriendliness: