OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  As Mr. Pierce sat there with his air of quiet and urbane authority, studying the menu with a little frowning smile through the lenses of a pince-nez that dangled fashionably and casually from a black silk cord when he was not using it, the boy felt an indescribable sense of wealth and power and prosperous ease. It seemed to him that everything in the world was his for the asking, and the suave service of the waiter, hovering over Mr. Pierce with poised pencil and an attitude of devoted respect, the rich designs of snowy linen, the heavy silver, the thick carpets, the handsome women and distinguished-looking men, all added to this feeling of wealth and happiness.

  Mr. Pierce kept studying the menu with an air of good-natured seriousness, quizzing his son from time to time with gruff but genial banter:

  "Joel," he would say, "what do you want? Have you any preference of your own or will you leave it to me to decide?"

  "Gosh!" Joel answered in his soft, eager tone. "I don't care, Pups. Whatever you say goes with me! You know, it's all the same to me, anyway. I can eat anything you order. Only," he added laughing, "I'd prefer it if there's no meat. I'd like it much better if you ordered vegetables."

  Mr. Pierce knocked the pince-nez from his nose, and turning to Eugene with an air of agreeable confidence, said:

  "What's wrong with a boy who takes no more interest in his food than that? Can you make it out? It strikes me as the most astonishing thing," he went on in a gruff, distinguished way, "to see a healthy young man who has no interest in his belly. Really Joel," he went on, turning to his son and regarding him with a kind of quizzical but good-humoured sarcasm, "I'd feel so much better about you if you only liked food more. It's really tragic to see a boy of your age deliberately throwing away one of the greatest pleasures in life. Don't you think so?" he demanded, turning to the other boy again with his air of friendly confidence. "Or have you turned vegetarian, too?"

  "Gosh, no!" Joel said, laughing his hushed eager, immensely agreeable laugh. "He'll agree with every word you say, Pups. He likes food even more than you do."

  "Then I'm glad to hear it!" said Mr. Pierce approvingly. "I had begun to fear that this younger generation had gone utterly to hell. But if the symptoms are only local--" he frowned humorously at his son for a moment--"perhaps it's not as bad as I thought."

  "You and Pups should get along together beautifully," said Joel to Eugene. "He loves to eat--he's a wonderful cook--you should come up to Rhinekill sometime and let him cook one of his meals for you."

  The ordering of the meal proceeded in this agreeable fashion. Mr. Pierce ordered liberally: small pink-fleshed clams, cold, pungent and exciting in their perfect shells, a thick pea soup with little squares of toast-crust floating in it, young chicken, plump and tender, grilled so succulently that it seemed to melt away the moment that one put it in his mouth, asparagus and potatoes, and a salad of crisp lettuce, beautifully mixed, "fatigued," in a big salad bowl, iced coffee, and a dessert of ripe Camembert and salted crackers. Mr. Pierce and Eugene ate heartily and with obvious relish, but Joel, in spite of all their protests and his father's bantering ridicule, which he took with the beautiful laughing good-nature which was one of the finest traits of his character, stuck to his vegetable diet with the gentle doggedness that was also characteristic of him.

  Later, when they had finished dinner, they drove uptown in a taxi-cab and went to one of the summer musical shows near Broadway, where an English revue was appearing. The comic actress, Beatrice Lillie, was the star of the performance. Eugene had never heard of her before, but it was evident from the fashionable and "smart" look of the audience, and the way in which Joel and other people greeted every word and gesture, that the actress was "all the rage," one of those persons who, in addition to their native talent, have some special quality that for a time makes them the darling of the cult-adepts of the world of fashion.

  The revue was a clever and amusing one, but it also had a stylish quality of fashionable smartness that was more and more beginning to mark the productions of the theatre and the responses of the audience. Thus, in later years, when one had almost completely forgotten the scenes of the revue and its songs and jokes, one could still remember it for the brilliant picture of the life it evoked. And the image of that life was implied rather than portrayed. The revue was one of those productions which people were beginning to "wear" as they "wore" books or plays or a dress: people went to the revue more because it was "the thing to do," the thing that everyone was talking about, than because they had a genuine desire to go, more because they had been told that it was "amusing" than from any deep conviction that they would find it so.

  Thus, not only in the jokes and songs and scenes of the revue, but in the laughter and applause with which the fashionable audience greeted them, there was a quality that was somewhat strained and metallic--a new and disagreeable mirth that was coming into man's life, which seemed to have its sources not in the warm human earth and blood of humour, but to proceed from something sterile, sour and acrid in his soul. In this hard and essentially lifeless merriment there was evident the desire to wound and mock and injure. And this desire came more from fear, a need to divert attention from one's own nakedness and insecurity by an attack upon a common target, than from any real cruelty or scornful hardihood of the soul.

  This fear and insecurity were evident even in the fashionable and sophisticated audience which had come to this theatre to see the smart revue. In the interval between the acts, the people streamed up the gangways and out into the lobby, and everywhere one looked, the hostile fear and insecurity of the people were apparent. For the most part the audience was fashionably dressed, the men in evening dress, the women in expensive evening gowns, that revealed their long white arms, the velvet perfection of their breasts and long backs. It would have been difficult to find a more assured, sophisticated and wealthy-looking group of people, but in spite of this air of complete worldly assurance, their unhappiness and fear were painfully evident. Their bodies seemed to throw off and to fill the air with a feverish electric tension, the texture of their thousand voices rising all together in a braided clamour was almost hysterically high, and remembering suddenly the quiet murmurous drone of voices in a theatre twenty years before, the glamorous spell of enchantment and happiness that surrounded even the performances of some travelling company in its one-night appearance in a little town, one felt poignantly again that something old and pleasant had gone out of life, that something dissonant, painful and unwholesome had changed man's rhythm, spread a poisonous infection through the human chemistries.

  One also saw, or rather powerfully felt, among these fashionable and worldly-looking men of the great city, something jaded, puny, sterile, horribly weary; a quality as if their vital energies had been depleted in an unnatural way, as if they were emptied out, dried up, sapped of their juice, and could keep going now only by a kind of lifeless dynamism, a dry electric energy which paced them to the tempo of the city's furious life, which would not let them go until it had burned them hollow to a dry grey shell.

  By contrast, the vivid loveliness of the women was astonishing. The differences that distinguished these women from these men, in colouring, in the velvety texture of the skin, in the sparkling eyes, red mouths, voluptuously seductive bodies and general healthiness and glowing elasticity of figure, were so great that one was reminded of those insect species whose females are wonderfully and fatally superior in strength and beauty to their drab mates, and who finally devour them. And yet, even in the faces and figures of these lovely women, the mutilation of that hard, metallic, blunted-out stamp was also evident: one noticed that the general quality of the tone of all these mixed and intermingled voices was feminine rather than masculine, and that the feminine voice was even more assertive, arrogant and incisive in its naked penetration than the voices of the men.

  In fact, even as the two young men stood in one corner of the lobby, surveying the keyed pulsations of this brilliant scene, a woman's voice could be heard, speaking with an arrog
ant and dogmatic assertiveness that instantly quenched denial and left no room for disagreement, however mild:

  "Yes! I think she is very charming, and very clever, and terribly, terribly amusing. The dancing is very bad; they simply don't know how to train a chorus. As for the songs, I thought that one she sings about Queen Mary's hats was awfully funny; the rest are only fair. Of course, the decor is abominable--but what can you expect? That man who sings the song with her is rather good--the other one, the awful little Cockney thing, is simply horrible! Where do they ever find these people, anyway? . . . No! No!" she said harshly and arrogantly at this point as one of the men put in a mild, low-voiced, and apologetic interjection of his own, "I do not agree with you! I absolutely do not agree with you: you are absolutely wrong! The nursemaid scene is decidedly the best thing in the show! The restaurant scene is very dull, and very cheap, and terribly, terribly vulgar! And it is very stupid of you not to see it!"--And having delivered herself with womanly modesty of these tolerant and generous observations, the lady turned, saw Joel, and instantly addressed him, speaking to him in the same arrogant and assertive tones she had used before, and blurting her words out through lips that she kept perfectly straight and that scarcely seemed to move or open as she spoke.

  "Joel!" she cried. "What on earth are you doing here? . . . I thought you were at Rhinekill or in Maine? . . . And where's your mother? . . . Did she come down too? . . . No? Too bad!" she said harshly. "I want very much to see her. . . . Yes, I shall be in Newport the week-end after next. . . . Yes, yes," she went on with metallic harshness, "--with Alice Mortimer. . . . Is she going, too? . . . Good; then I shall see her!--My God, no! . . . We're not staying here. . . . We motored in to see the show. . . . No, no. . . . I've been staying at Sands Point. . . . Jerry's at Southampton. . . . But God, no! . . . A whole summer in this hell-hole! . . . The man's mad! . . . How d'ya do?" she said curtly and harshly, throwing a cold look and a curt nod towards Eugene as Joel whispered at his name, and instantly dismissing him. . . . "But do you seriously mean you're going to spend the whole summer here? . . . Not really! . . . But, my dear child, what in heaven's name ever prompted you to do an idiotic thing like that? . . . Oh! I see!" she said coldly. "Painting, eh . . ."

  But now the bell for the curtain sounded, and after a few conventional words of parting they returned to their seats.

  LVIII

  The Hudson River joins the harbour. And then the harbour joins the sea. Always the rivers run.

  The Hudson River drinks from out the inland slowly; it is like vats that well with purple and rich wine. The Hudson River is like purple depths of evening; it is like the flames of colour on the Palisades, elves' echoes and old Dutch and Hallowe'en. It is like the Phantom Horseman, the tossed boughs, and the demented winds, and it is like the headed cider and great fires of the Dutchmen in the winter time.

  The Hudson River is like old October and tawny Indians in their camping places long ago; it is like long pipes and old tobacco; it is like cool depths and opulence; it is like the shimmer of liquid green on summer days.

  The Hudson River takes the thunder of fast trains and throws a handful of lost echoes at the hills. It is like the calls of lost men in the mountains; and it is like the country boy who is coming to the city with a feeling of glory in him. It is like the green plush smell of the Pullman cars and snowy linen; it is like the kid in upper four and the good-looking woman down below who stirs her legs slowly in starched sheets: it is the magic river. It is like coming to the city to make money, to find glory, fame and love, and a life more fortunate and happy than any we have ever known. It is like the Knickerbockers and early autumn; it is like the Rich Folks, and the River People, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Roosevelts; it is like Robert W. Chambers and the Society Folks; it is like the younger set and Hilary, and Monica, and Garth; it is like The Story Thus Far:

  The lovely Monica Delavere the beautiful but spoiled daughter of one of the richest men in the world meets at a party given at her father's Mount Kisco estate in honour of her approaching marriage to a young architect Hilary Chedester his friend Garth Montgomery a young artist just returned from years of study abroad fascinated yet repelled by his dark passionate face and his slender hands with the longer tapering fingers of the artist and goaded by something enigmatic and mocking in his eyes in a moment of mad recklessness spurred on by a twinge of jealousy at the undue attention which she thinks Hilary is bestowing on Rita Daventry an old flame she accepts a challenge from Garth to go for a mad dash across the night in his speedster their objective being his hunting lodge in the hills and a return before dawn arrived at the lodge however Garth coolly announces that his car is out of petrol and that he must phone for assistance to the nearest town somewhat disturbed and reflecting for the first time now on the possible scandal her reckless exploit may cause she enters the lodge now go on with the story:

  "Monica's red lips curved in a smile of mocking reproof. She made a moue.

  "'Hardly a place I should have chosen to spend the evening, my dear man,' she said. 'But then, perhaps it is the latest Paris fashion to take ladies to deserted places and inform them you are stranded. C'est comme ça à Paris, hein?'"

  Yes, all these things were like the Hudson River.

  And above all else, the Hudson River was like the light--oh, more than anything it was the light, the light, the tone, the texture of the magic light in which he had seen the city as a child, that made the Hudson River wonderful.

  The light was golden, deep and full with all rich golden lights of harvest; the light was golden like the flesh of women, lavish as their limbs, true, depthless, tender as their glorious eyes, fine-spun and maddening as their hair, as unutterable with desire as their fragrant nests of spicery, their deep melon-heavy breasts. The light was golden like a golden morning light that shines through ancient glass into a room of old dark brown. The light was brown, dark lavish brown hued with rich lights of gold; the light was rich brown shot with gold like the sultry and exultant fragrance of ground coffee; the light was lavish brown like old stone houses gulched in morning on a city street, brown like exultant breakfast smells that come from basement areas in the brownstone houses where the rich men lived; the light was blue, steep frontal blue, like morning underneath the frontal cliff of buildings, the light was vertical cool blue, hazed with thin morning mist, the light was blue, cold flowing harbour blue of clean cool waters rimed brightly with a dancing morning gold, fresh, half-rotten with the musty river stench, blue with the blue-black of the morning gulch and canyon of the city, blue-black with cool morning shadow as the ferry packed with its thousand small white staring faces turned one way, drove bluntly toward the rusty weathered slips.

  The light was amber-brown in vast dark chambers shuttered from young light where in great walnut beds the glorious women stirred in sensual warmth their lavish limbs. The light was brown-gold like ground coffee, merchants and the walnut houses where they lived, brown-gold like old brick buildings grimed with money and the smell of trade, brown-gold like morning in great gleaming bars of swart mahogany, the fresh wet beer-wash, lemon-rind and the smell of angostura bitters. Then full golden in the evening in the theatres, shining with full golden warmth and body on full golden figures of the women, on fat, red plush, and on rich, faded, slightly stale smell, and on the gilt sheaves and cupids and the cornucopias, on the fleshly, potent softly-golden smell of all the people; and in great restaurants the light was brighter gold, but full and round like warm onyx columns, smooth warmly tinted marble, old wine in dark rounded age-encrusted bottles, and the great blond figures of naked women on rose-clouded ceilings. Then the light was full and rich, brown-golden like great fields in autumn; it was full swelling golden light like mown fields, bronze-red picketed with fat rusty golden sheaves of corn, and governed by huge barns of red and the mellow winy fragrance of the apples.--Yes, all of this had been the tone and texture of the lights that qualified his vision of the city and the river when he was a child.
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br />   Proud, cruel, ever-changing and ephemeral city, to whom we came once when our hearts were high, our blood passionate and hot, our brain a particle of fire: infinite and mutable city, mercurial city, strange citadel of million-visaged time--Oh! endless river and eternal rock, in which the forms of life came, passed and changed intolerably before us, and to which we came, as every youth has come, with such enormous madness, and with so mad a hope--for what?

  To eat you, branch and root and tree; to devour you, golden fruit of power and love and happiness; to consume you to your sources, river and spire and rock, down to your iron roots; to entomb within our flesh for ever the huge substance of your billion-footed pavements, the intolerable web and memory of dark million-visaged time.

  And what is left now of all our madness, hunger, and desire? What have you given, incredible mirage of all our million shining hopes, to those who wanted to possess you wholly to your ultimate designs, your final sources, from whom you took the strength, the passion, and the innocence of youth?

  What have we taken from you, protean and phantasmal shape of time? What have we remembered of your million images, of your billion weavings out of accident and number, of the mindless fury of your dateless days, the brutal stupefaction of your thousand streets and pavements? What have we seen and known that is ours for ever?

  Gigantic city, we have taken nothing--not even a handful of your trampled dust--we have made no image on your iron breast and left not even the print of a heel upon your stony-hearted pavements. The possession of all things, even the air we breathed, was held from us, and the river of life and time flowed through the grasp of our hands for ever, and we held nothing for our hunger and desire except the proud and trembling moments, one by one. Over the trodden and forgotten words, the rust and dusty burials of yesterday, we were born again into a thousand lives and deaths, and we were left for ever with only the substance of our waning flesh, and the hauntings of an accidental memory, with all its various freight of great and little things which passed and vanished instantly and could never be forgotten, and of those unbidden and unfathomed wisps and fumes of memory that share the mind with all the proud dark images of love and death.