You Can't Go Home Again

by Thomas Wolfe

"Sure!" cried the waiter, a little irritably. "That's where it all takes place! That's what I'm telling you!"

  He paused and looked searchingly at George, who finally asked, with just the proper note of hesitant thoughtfulness, why the lover had had to climb up so far.

  "Why," said the waiter impatiently, "because the dame's old man wouldn't let him in! That was the only way the guy could get to her! The old man shut her up way up there at the top of the house because he didn't want the dame to get married!...But then," he went on triumphantly, "the old man dies, see? He dies and leaves all his dough to this dame--and then she ups and marries this guy!"

  Dramatically, with triumph written in his face, the waiter paused to let this startling news soak into the consciousness of his listener. Then he continued:

  "They lived together for a while--the dame's in love with him--and for a year or two they're sitting pretty. But then the guy begins to drink--he's a booze hound, see?--only she don't know it--she's been able to hold him down for a year or two after they get married...Then he begins to step out again...The first thing you know he's staying out all night and running round with a lot of hot blondes, see?...Well, then, you see what's coming now, don't you?" said the waiter quickly and eagerly.

  George had no notion, but he nodded his head wisely.

  "Well, that's what happens," said the waiter. "The first thing you know the guy ups and leaves the dame and takes with him a lot of her dough and joolry...He just disappears--just like the earth had opened and swallowed him up!" the waiter declared, evidently pleased with his poetic simile. "He leaves her cold, and the poor dame's almost out of her head. She does everything--she hires detectives--she offers rewards--she puts ads in the paper begging him to come back...But it's no use--she can't find him--the guy's lost...Well, then," the waiter continued, "three years go by while the poor dame sits and eats her heart out about this guy...And then"--here he paused impressively, and it was evident that he was now approaching the crisis--"then she has an idea!" He paused again, briefly, to allow this extraordinary accomplishment on the part of his heroine to be given due consideration, and in a moment, very simply and quietly, he concluded: "She opens up a night club."

  The waiter fell silent now, and stood at ease with his hands clasped quietly before him, with the modest air of a man who has given his all and is reasonably assured it is enough. It now became compellingly apparent that his listener was supposed to make some appropriate comment, and that the narrator could not continue with his tale until this word had been given. So George mustered his failing strength, moistened his dry lips with the end of his tongue, and finally said in a halting voice:

  "In--in Armenia?"

  The waiter now took the question, and the manner of its utterance, as signs of his listener's paralyzed surprise. He nodded his head victoriously and cried:

  "Sure! You see, the dame's idea is this--she knows the guy's a booze hound and that sooner or later he'll come to a place where there's lots of bar-flies and fast women. That kind always hang together--sure they do!...So she opens up this joint--she sinks a lot of dough in it--it's the swellest joint they got over there. And then she puts this ad in the paper."

  George was not sure that he had heard aright, but the waiter was looking at him with an expression of such exuberant elation that he took a chance and said:

  "What ad?"

  "Why," said the waiter, "this come-on ad that I was telling you about. You see, that's the big idea--that's the plan the dame dopes out to get him back. So she puts this ad in the paper saying that any man who comes to her joint the next day will be given a ten-dollar gold piece and all the liquor he can drink. She figures that will bring him. She knows the guy is probably down and out by this time and when he reads this ad he'll show up...And that's just what happens. When she comes down next morning she finds a line twelve blocks long outside, and sure enough, here's this guy the first one in the line. Well, she pulls him out of the line and tells the cashier to give all the rest of 'em their booze and their ten bucks, but she tells this guy he ain't gonna get nothing. 'What's the reason I ain't?' he says--you see, the dame is wearing a heavy veil so he don't recognise her. Well, she tells him she thinks there's something phoney about him--gives him the old line, you know--tells him to come upstairs with her so she can talk to him and find out if he's O.K...Do you get it?"

  George nodded vaguely. "And then what?" he said.

  "Why," the waiter cried, "she gets him up there--and then"--he leaned forward again with fingers resting on the table, and his voice sank to an awed whisper--"she--takes--off--her--veil!"

  There was a reverential silence as the waiter, still leaning forward with his fingers arched upon the table, regarded his listener with bright eyes and a strange little smile. Then he straightened up slowly, stood erect, still smiling quietly, and a long, low sigh like the coming on of evening came from his lips, and he was still. The silence drew itself out until it became painful, and at length George squirmed wretchedly in his chair and asked:

  "And then--then what?"

  The waiter was plainly taken aback. He stared in frank astonishment, stunned speechless by the realisation that anybody could be stupid.

  "Why"--he finally managed to say with an expression of utter disillusion--"that's all! Don't you see? That's all there is! The dame takes off her veil--he recognises her--and there you are!...She's found him!...She's got him back!...They're together again!...That's the story!" He was hurt, impatient, almost angry as he went on: "Why, anybody ought to be able to see----"

  "Good night, Joe."

  The last waitress was just going out and had spoken to the waiter as she passed the table. She was a blonde, slender girl, neatly dressed Her voice was quiet and full of the casual familiarity of her daily work and association; it was a pleasant voice, and it was a little tired. Her face, as she paused a moment, was etched in light and shadow, and there were little pools of violet beneath her clear grey eyes. Her face had the masklike fragility and loveliness, the almost hair-drawn fine-MSS, that one often sees in young people who have lived in the great city and who have never had wholly enough of anything except work and their own hard youth. One felt instantly sorry for the girl, because one knew that her face would not long be what it was now.

  The waiter, interrupted in the flood of his impassioned argument, had been alittle startled by the casual intrusion of the girl's low voice turned towards her. When he saw who it was, his manner changed at once, and his own seamed face softened a little with instinctive and unconscious friendliness.

  "Oh, hello, Billie. Good night, kid."

  She went out, and the sound of her brisk little heels clacked away on the hard pavement. For a moment more the waiter continued to look after her, and then, turning back to his sole remaining customer with a queer, indefinable little smile hovering in the hard lines about his mouth, he said very quietly and casually, in the tone men use to speak of things done and known and irrecoverable:

  "Did you see that kid?...She came in here about two years ago and got a job. I don't know where she came from, but it was some little hick town somewhere. She'd been a chorus girl--a hoofer in some cheap road show--until her legs gave out...You find a lot of 'em in this game--the business is full of 'em...Well, she worked here for about a year, and then she began going with a cheap gigolo who used to come in here. You know the kind--you can smell 'em a mile off--they stink. I could've told her! But, hell, what's the use? They won't listen to you--you only get yourself in dutch all round--they got to find out for themselves--you can't teach 'em. So I left it alone--that's the only way...Well, six or eight months ago, some of the girls found out she was pregnant. The boss let her out. He's not a bad guy--but, hell, what can you expect? You can't keep 'em round a place like this when they're in that condition, can you?...She had the kid three months ago, and then she got her job back. I understand she's put the kid in a home somewhere. I've never seen it, but they say it's a swell kid, and Billie's crazy about it--goes out there to see it
every Sunday...She's a swell kid, too."

  The waiter was silent for a moment, and there was a far-off look of tragic but tranquil contemplation in his eyes. Then, quietly, wearily, he said:

  "Hell, if I could tell you what goes on here every day--the things you see and hear--the people you meet and all that happens. Jesus, I get sick and tired of it. Sometimes I'm so fed up with the whole thing that I don't care if I never see the joint again. Sometimes I get to thinking how swell it would be not to have to spend your whole life waiting on a lot of mugs--just standing round and waiting on 'em and watching 'em come in and out...and feeling sorry for some little kid who's fallen for some dope you wouldn't wipe your feet on...and wondering just how long it'll be before she gets the works...Jesus, I'm fed up with it!"

  Again he was silent. His eyes looked off into the distance, and his face was set in that expression of mildly cynical regret and acceptance that one often notices in people who have seen much of life, and experienced its hard and seamy side, and who know that there is very little they can do or say. At last he sighed deeply, shook himself, threw off the mood, and resumed his normal manner.

  "Gee, Mr. Webber," he said with a return of his former eagerness, "it must be great to be able to write books and stories--to have the gift of gab--all that flow of language--to go anywhere you like--to work when you want to! Now, take that story I was telling you about," he said earnestly. "I never had no education--but if I could only get some guy like you to help me--to write it down the way it ought to be--honest, Mr. Webber, it's a great chance for somebody--there's a fortune in it--I'd go fifty-fifty!" His voice was pleading now. "A guy I knew one time, he told it to me--and me and him are the only two that knows it. The guy was an Armenian, like I said, and the whole thing happened over there...There'd be a gold mine in it if I only knew how to do it."

  It was long after midnight, and the round disc of the moon was sinking westward over the cold, deserted streets of slumbering Manhattan.

  The party was in full swing now.

  The gold and marble ballroom of the great hotel had been converted into a sylvan fairyland. In the centre a fountain of classic nymphs and fauns sent up its lighted sprays of water, and here and there about the floor were rustic arbors with climbing roses trailing over them, heavy with scented blossoms. Flowering hot-house trees in tubs were banked round the walls, the shining marble pillars were wreathed about with vines and garlands, and overhead gay lanterns had been strung to illuminate the scene with their gentle glow. The whole effect was that of an open clearing in a forest glade upon Midsummer Night where Queen Titania had come to hold her court and revels.

  It was a rare, exotic spectacle, a proper setting for the wealthy, carefree youth for whom it had been planned. The air was heavy with the fragrance of rich perfumes, and vibrant with the throbbing, pulsing rhythms of sensuous music. Upon the polished floor a hundred lovely girls in brilliant evening gowns danced languidly in the close embrace of pink-cheeked boys from Yale and Harvard, their lithe young figures accentuated smartly by the black and white of faultless tailoring.

  This was the coming-out party of a fabulously rich young lady, and the like of it had not been seen since the days before the market crashed. The papers had been full of it for weeks. It was said that her father had lost millions in the debacle, but it was apparent that he still had a few paltry dollars left. So now he was doing the right thing, the expected thing, the necessary and inescapable thing, for his beautiful young daughter, who would one day inherit all that these ruinous times had left him of his hard-earned savings. To-night she was being "presented to Society" (whose members had known her since her birth), and all "Society" was there.

  And from this night on, the girl's smiling face would turn up with monotonous regularity in all the rotogravure sections of the Sunday papers, and daily the nation would be kept posted on all the momentous trivia of her life--what she ate, what she wore, where she went, who went with her, what night clubs had been honoured by her presence, what fortunate young gentleman had been seen accompanying her to what race track, and what benefits she had sponsored and poured tea for. For one whole year, from now until another beautiful and rich young lady from next season's crop of beautiful and rich young ladies was chosen by the newspaper photographers to succeed her as America's leading debutante, this gay and care-free creature would be for Americans very much what a royal princess is for Englishmen, and for very much the same reason--because she was her father's daughter, and because her father was one of the rulers of America. Millions would read about her every move and envy her, and thousands would copy her as far as their means would let them. They would buy cheap imitations of her costly dresses, hats, and underclothes, would smoke the same cigarettes, use the same lipsticks, eat the same soups, sleep on the same mattresses that she had allowed herself to be pictured wearing, smoking, using, eating, and sleeping on in the handsome coloured advertisements on the back covers of magazines--and they would do it, knowing full well that the rich young lady had set these fashions for a price--was she not her father's daughter?--all, of course, for the sake of sweet charity and commerce.

  Outside the great hotel, on the Avenue in front of it and on all the side streets in the near vicinity, sleek black limousines were parked. In some of them the chauffeurs slouched dozing behind their wheels. Others had turned on their inside lights and sat there reading the pages of the tabloids. But most of them had left their cars and were knotted together in little groups, smoking, talking, idling the time away until their services should be needed again.

  On the pavement near the entrance of the hotel, beside the huge marquee which offered shelter from the wind, the largest group of them, neat in their liveried uniforms, had gathered in debate. They were discussing politics and theories of international economy, and the chief disputants were a plump Frenchman with a waxed moustache, whose sentiments were decidedly revolutionary, and an American, a little man with corky legs, a tough, seamed face, the beady eyes of a bird, and the quick, impatient movements of the city. As George Webber came abreast of them, brought thither by the simple chance of his nightly wanderings, the argument had reached its furious climax, and he stopped a while to listen.

  The scene, the situation, and the contrast between the two principal debaters made the whole affair seem utterly grotesque. The plump Frenchman, his cheeks glowing with the cold and his own excitement, was dancing about in a frenzy, talking and gesticulating volubly. He would lean forward with thumb and forefinger uplifted and closed daintily in a descriptive circle--a gesture that eloquently expressed the man's conviction that the case he had been presenting for immediate and bloody world revolution was complete, logical, unshakable, and beyond appeal. When any of the others interposed an objection, he would only grow more violent and inflamed.

  At last his little English began to break down under the strain imposed upon it. The air about him fairly rang with objurgations, expletives, impassioned cries of "Mais oui!...Absolument!...C'est la vérité!"--and with laughs of maddened exasperation, as if the knowledge that anyone could be so obtuse as not to see it as he saw it was more than he could endure.

  "Mais non! Mais non!" he would shout. "Vous avez tort!...Mais c'est stupide!" he would cry, throwing his plump arms up in a gesture of defeat, and turning away as if he could stand it no longer and was departing--only to return immediately and begin all over again.

  Meanwhile, the chief target of this deluge, the little American with the corky legs and the birdy eyes, let him go on. He just leaned up against the building, took an occasional puff at his cigarette, and gave the Frenchman a steady look of cynical impassivity. At last he broke in to say:

  "O.K...O.K., Frenchy...When you get through spoutin', maybe I'll have somethin' to say."

  "Seulement un mot!" replied the Frenchman, out of breath. "One vord!" he cried impressively, drawing himself up to his full five feet three and holding one finger in the air as if he were about to deliver Holy Writ--"I 'ave to say one vord more!"


  "O.K.! O.K.!" said the corky little American with cynical weariness. "Only don't take more than an hour and a half to say it!"

  Just then another chauffeur, obviously a German, with bright blue eyes and a nut-cracker face, rejoined the group with an air of elated discovery.

  "Noos! I got noos for you!" he said. "I haf been mit a drifer who hass in Rooshia liffed, and he says that conditions there far worser are----"

  "Non! Non!" the Frenchman shouted, red in the face with anger and protest. "Pas vrai!...Ce n'est par possible!"

  "Oh, for Christ's sake," the American said, tossing his cigarette away with a gesture of impatience and disgust. "Why don't you guys wake up? This ain't Russia! You're in America! The trouble with you guys," he went on, "is that you've been over there all your life where you ain't been used to nothin'--and just as soon as you get over here where you can live like a human bein' you want to tear it all down."

  At this, others broke in, and the heated and confused dialogue became more furious than ever. But the talk just went round and round in circles.

  George walked away into the night.

  The lives of men who have to live in our great cities are often tragically lonely. In many more ways than one, these dwellers in the hive are modern counterparts of Tantalus. They are starving to death in the midst of abundance. The crystal stream flows near the lips but always falls away when they try to drink of it. The vine, rich-weighted with its golden fruit, bends down, comes near, but springs back when they reach to touch it.

  Melville, at the beginning of his great fable, Moby Dick, tells how the city people of his time would, on every occasion that was afforded them, go down to the dock, to the very edges of the wharf, and stand there looking out to sea. In the great city of to-day, however, there is no sea to look out to, or, if there is, it is so far away, so inaccessible, walled in behind such infinite ramifications of stone and steel, that the effort to get to it is disheartening. So now, when the city man looks out, he looks out on nothing but crowded vacancy.