You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Wolfe

  So with Libya Hill:

  One does not know at just what moment it began, but one suspects that it began at some time long past in the lone, still watches of the night, when all the people lay waiting in their beds in darkness. Waiting for what? They did not know. They only hoped that it would happen--some thrilling and impossible fulfilment, some glorious enrichment and release of their pent lives, some ultimate escape from their own tedium.

  But it did not come.

  Meanwhile, the stiff boughs creaked in the cold bleakness of the corner lights, and the whole town waited, imprisoned in its tedium.

  And sometimes, in furtive hallways, doors opened and closed, there was a padding of swift, naked feet, the stealthy rattling of brass casters, and behind old battered shades, upon the edge of Nigger-town, the dull and fetid quickenings of lust.

  Sometimes, in grimy stews of night's asylumage, an oath, a blow, a fight.

  Sometimes, through the still air, a shot, the letting of nocturnal blood.

  And always, through broken winds, the sounds of shifting engines in the station yards, far off, along the river's edge--and suddenly the thunder of great wheels, the tolling of the bell, the loneliness of the whistle cry wailed back, receding towards the North, and towards the hope, the promise, and the memory of the world unfound.

  Meanwhile, the boughs creaked bleakly in stiff light, ten thousand men were waiting in the darkness, far off a dog howled, and the Court-House bell struck three.

  No answer? Impossible?...Then let those--if such there be--who have not waited in the darkness, find answers of their own.

  But if speech could frame what spirit utters, if tongue could tell what the lone heart knows, there would be answers somewhat other than those which are shaped by the lean pickets of rusty facts. There would be answers of men waiting, who have not spoken yet.

  * * *

  Below the starred immensity of mountain night old Rumford Bland, he that is called "The Judge", strokes his sunken jaws reflectively as he stands at the darkened window of his front office and looks out with sightless eyes upon the ruined town. It is cool and sweet to-night, the myriad promises of life are lyric in the air. Gem-strewn in viewless linkage on the hills the lights make a bracelet for the town. The blind man knows that they are there, although he cannot see them. He strokes his sunken jaws reflectively and smiles his ghostly smile.

  It is so cool and sweet to-night, and spring has come. There never was a year like this, they say, for dogwood in the hills. There are so many thrilling, secret things upon the air to-night--a burst of laughter, and young voices, faint, half-broken, and the music of a dance--how could one know that when the blind man smiles and stroke's his sunken jaws reflectively, he is looking out upon a ruined town?

  The new Court-House and City Hall are very splendid in the dark to-night. But he has never seen them--they were built since he went blind. Their fronts are bathed, so people say, in steady, secret light just like the nation's dome at Washington. The blind man strokes his sunken jaws reflectively. Well, they should be splendid--they cost enough.

  Beneath the starred immensity of mountain night there is something stirring in the air, a rustling of young leaves. And round the grass roots there is something stirring in the earth to-night. And below the grass roots and the sod, below the dew-wet pollen of young flowers, there is something alive and stirring. The blind man strokes his sunken jaws reflectively. Aye, there below, where the eternal worm keeps vigil, there is something stirring in the earth. Down, down below, where the worm incessant through the ruined house makes stir.

  What lies there stir-less in the earth to-night, down where the worm keeps vigil?

  The blind man smiles his ghostly smile. In his eternal vigil the worm stirs, but many men are rotting in their graves to-night, and sixty-four have bullet fractures in their skulls. Ten thousand more are lying in their beds to-night, living as shells live. They, too, are dead, though yet unburied. They have been dead so long they can't remember how it was to live. And many weary nights must pass before they can join the buried dead, down where the worm keeps vigil.

  Meanwhile, the everlasting worm keeps vigil, and the blind man strokes his sunken jaws, and slowly now he shifts his sightless gaze and turns his back upon the ruined town.

  * * *

  26. The Wounded Faun

  Ten days after the failure of the bank in Libya Hill, Randy Shepperton arrived in New York. He had made up his mind suddenly, without letting George know, and the motives that brought him were mixed. For one thing, he wanted to talk to George and see if he couldn't help to get him straightened out. His letters had been so desperate that Randy was beginning to be worried about him. Then, too, Randy felt he just had to get away from Libya Hill for a few days and out of that atmosphere of doom and ruin and death. And he was free now, there was nothing to keep him from coming, so he came.

  He arrived early in the morning, a little after eight o'clock, and took a taxi from the station to the address on Twelfth Street and rang the bell. After a long interval and another ringing of the bell, the door lock clicked and he entered the dim-lit hall. The stairs were dark and the whole house seemed sunk in sleep. His footfalls rang out upon the silence. The air had a close, dead smell compounded of many elements, among which he could distinguish the dusty emanations of old wood and worn plankings and the ghostly reminders of many meals long since eaten. The light was out on the second-floor landing and the gloom was Stygian, so he groped along the wall until he found the door and rapped loudly with his knuckles.

  In a moment the door was almost jerked off its hinges, and George, his hair dishevelled, his eyes red with sleep, an old bathrobe flung hastily over his pyjamas, stood framed in the opening, blinking out into the darkness. Randy was a little taken back by the change in his appearance in the six months since he had last seen him. His face, which had always had a youthful and even childish quality, had grown older and sterner. The lines had deepened. And now his heavy lip stuck out at his caller with a menacing challenge, and his whole pug-nosed countenance had a bulldog look of grim truculence.

  When Randy recovered from his first surprise he cried out heartily:

  "Now wait a minute! Wait a minute! Don't shoot! I'm not that fellow at all!"

  At the unexpected sound of the familiar voice George looked startled, then his face broke into a broad smile of incredulity and delight. "Well, I'll be damned!" he cried, and with that he seized hold of Randy, wrung him vigorously by the hand, almost dragged him into the room, and then held him off at arm's length while he grinned his pleasure and amazement.

  "That's better," said Randy in a tone of mock relief. "I was afraid it might be permanent."

  They now clapped each other on the back and exchanged those boisterous and half-insulting epithets with which two men who have been old friends like to greet each other when they meet. Then, almost at once, George asked Randy eagerly about the bank. Randy told him. George listened intently to the shocking details of the catastrophe. It was even worse than he had supposed, and he kept firing questions at Randy. At last Randy said:

  "Well, that's just about the whole story. I've told you all I know. But come, we can talk about that later. What I want to know is--how the hell are you? You're not cracking up, too, are you? Your last letters made me a little uneasy about you."

  In their joy at seeing one another again and their eagerness to talk, they had both remained standing by the door. But now, as Randy put his casual finger on George's sore spot, George winced and began to pace back and forth in an agitated way without answering.

  Randy saw that he looked tired. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he had not slept well, and his unshaved face made him look haggard. The old bathrobe he was wearing had all the buttons missing, and the corded rope that belonged to it was also gone and George had lashed a frayed necktie round the middle to hold the thing together. This remarkable garment added to his general appearance of weariness and exhaustion. His features as he strode about the room h
ad the contracted intensity of nervous strain, and as he looked up quickly Randy saw the worry and apprehension in his eyes.

  Suddenly he paused and faced Randy squarely, and with a grim set to his jaws said:

  "All right, let me have it! What are they saying now?"

  "Who? What is who saying?"

  "The people back home. That's what you meant, isn't it? From what they've written me and said to my face, I can imagine what they're saying behind my back. Let's have it and get it over with. What are they saying now?"

  "Why," said Randy, "I don't know that they're saying anything. Oh, they said plenty at first--just the kind of thing they wrote you. But since the bank failed I don't think I've heard your name mentioned. They've got too much real trouble to worry about now."

  George looked incredulous, and then relieved. For a moment he studied the floor and said nothing. But as his sense of relief spread its soothing balm upon his agitated spirit he looked up and smiled broadly at his friend, and then, realising for the first time that Randy was standing there with his back against the door, he suddenly remembered his duties as a host and burst out impulsively and warmly:

  "God, Randy, I'm glad to see you! I can't get over it! Sit down. Sit down! Can't you find a chair somewhere? For Christ's sake, where are all the chairs in this dump?"

  With that he went over to a chair that was piled high with manuscript and books, brushed these things off unceremoniously on to the floor, and shoved the chair across the room towards his friend.

  He apologised now for the coldness of the place, explaining unnecessarily that the door-bell had got him out of bed, and telling Randy to keep his overcoat on and that it would be warmer in a little while. Then he vanished through a doorway into a noisome cubby-hole, turned on a faucet, and came back with a coffee-pot full of water. This he proceeded to pour into the spout of the radiator that stood below a window. When this was done, he got down on his hands and knees, peered about underneath, struck a match, turned some sort of valve, and applied the flame. There was an immediate blast, and pretty soon the water began to rattle and gurgle in the pipes.

  "It's gas," he said, as he clambered to his feet. "That's the worst thing about this place--it gives me headaches when I have to spend long hours working here."

  While this operation had been going on, Randy took a look round. The room, which was really two large rooms thrown together when the sliding-doors that joined them were pushed into the wall, as now, seemed as big as a barn. The windows at the front gave on to the street, and those at the rear looked out over some bleak little squares of backyard fences to another row of buildings. The first impression Randy got was one of staleness: the whole apartment had that unmistakable look and feeling of a place where someone has lived and where something has been finished so utterly that there is no going back to it. It was not merely the disorder everywhere--the books strewn around, the immense piles of manuscript, the haphazard scattering of stray socks, shirts and collars, old shoes, and unpressed trousers inside out. It was not even the dirty cup and saucer filled with old cigarette-butts, all of them stained with rancid coffee, which was set down in the vast and untidy litter of the table. It was just that life had gone out of all these things--they were finished--all as cold and tired and stale as the old dirty cup and the exhausted butts.

  George was living in the midst of this dreary waste with a kind of exasperated and unhappy transciency. Randy saw that he had caught him on the wing, in that limbo of waiting between work which is one of the most tormenting periods a writer can know. He was through with one thing, and yet not really ready to settle down in earnest to another. He was in a state of furious but exhausted ferment. But it was not merely that he was going through a period of gestation before going on with his next book. Randy realised that the reception of his first, the savagery of the attack against him in Libya Hill, the knowledge that he had done something more than write a book--that he had also torn up violently by the roots all those ties of friendship and sentiment that bind a man to home--all of this, Randy felt, had so bewildered and overwhelmed him that now he was caught up in the maelstrom of the conflict which he had himself produced. He was not ready to do another piece of work because his energies were still being absorbed and used up by the repercussions of the first.

  Moreover, as Randy looked round the room and his eye took in the various objects that contributed to its incredible chaos, he saw, in a dusty corner, a small green smock or apron, wrinkled as though it had been thrown aside with a gesture of weary finality, and beside it, half-folded inwards, a single small and rather muddy overshoe. The layer of dust upon them showed that they had lain there for months. These were the only poignant ghosts, and Randy knew that something which had been there in that room had gone out of it for ever--that George was done with it.

  Randy saw how it was with George, and felt that almost any decisive act would be good for him. So now he said:

  "For God's sake, George, why don't you pack up and clear out of all this? You're through with it--it's finished--it'll only take you a day or two to wind the whole thing up. So pull yourself together and get out. Move away somewhere--anywhere--just to enjoy the luxury of waking up in the morning and finding none of this round you."

  "I know," said George, going over to a sagging couch and tossing back the pile of foul-looking bedclothes that covered it and flinging himself down wearily. "I've thought of it," he said.

  Randy did not press the point. He knew it would be no use. George would have to work round to it in his own way and in his own good time.

  George shaved and dressed, and they went out for breakfast. Then they returned and talked all morning, and were finally interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

  George answered it. Randy could tell by the sounds which came from the transmitter that the caller was female, garrulous, and unmistakably Southern. George did nothing for a while but blurt out polite banalities:

  "Well now, that's fine...I certainly do appreciate it...That's mighty nice of you...Well now, I'm certainly glad you called. I hope you will remember me to all of them." Then he was silent, listening intently, and Randy gathered from the contraction of his face that the conversation had now reached another stage. In a moment he said slowly, in a somewhat puzzled tone: "Oh, he is?...He did?...Well"--somewhat indefinitely--"that's mighty nice of him...Yes, I'll remember...Thank you very much...Good-bye."

  He hung up the receiver and grinned wearily.

  "That," he said, "was one of the I-just-called-you-up-to-tell-you-that- I've-read-it-all-every-word-of-it-and-I-think-it's-perfectly-grand people--another lady from the South." As he went on his voice unconsciously dropped into burlesque as he tried to imitate the unction of a certain type of Southern female whose words drip molasses mixed with venom:

  "'Why, I'll declayah, we're all just so proud of yew-w! I'm just simply thrilled to daith! It's the most wondaful thing I evah read! Why it is! Why, I nevah dreamed that anyone could have such a wondaful command of lang-widge!'"

  "But don't you like it just a little?" asked Randy. "Even if it's laid on with a trowel, you must get some satisfaction from it."

  "God!" George said wearily, and came back and fell upon the couch. "If you only knew! That's only one out of a thousand! That telephone there"--he jerked a thumb towards it--"has played a tune for months now! I know them all--I've got 'em classified! I can tell by the tone of the voice the moment they speak whether it's going to be type B or group X."

  "So the author is already growing jaded? He's already bored with his first taste of fame?"

  "Fame?"--disgustedly. "That's not fame--that's just plain damn rag-picking!"

  "Then you don't think the woman was sincere?"

  "Yes"--his face and tone were bitter now--"she had all the sincerity of a carrion crow. She'll go back and tell them that she talked to me, and by the time she's finished with me she'll have a story that every old hag in town can lick her chops and cackle over for the next six months."

 
; It sounded so unreasonable and unjust that Randy spoke up quickly:

  "Don't you think you're being unfair?"

  George's head was down dejectedly and he did not even look up; with his hands plunged in his trouser pockets he just snorted something unintelligible but scornful beneath his breath.

  It annoyed and disappointed Randy to see him acting so much like a spoiled brat, so he said:

  "Look here! It's about time you grew up and learned some sense It seems to me you're being pretty arrogant. Do you think you can afford to be? I doubt if you or any man can go through life successfully playing the spoiled genius."

  Again he muttered something in a sullen tone.

  "Maybe that woman was a fool," Randy went on. "Well, a lot of people are. And maybe she hasn't got sense enough to understand what you wrote in the way you think it should be understood. But what of it? She gave the best she had. It seems to me that instead of sneering at her now, you could be grateful."

  George raised his head: "You heard the conversation, then?"

  "No, only what you told me."

  "All right, then--you didn't get the whole story. I wouldn't mind if she'd just called up to gush about the book, but, look here!"--he leaned towards Randy very earnestly and tapped him on the knee. "I don't want you to get the idea that I'm just a conceited fool. I've lived through and found out about something these last few months that most people never have the chance to know. I give you my solemn word for it, that woman didn't call up because she liked my book and wanted to tell me so. She called up," he cried bitterly, "to pry round, and to find out what she could about me, and to pick my bones."