OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  "I--I walk," he mumbled. "I--I take walks."

  "You--what?" she said kindly enough, but sharply, with a kind of peremptory authority that told him that she must already be growing weary and impatient of his stammering, incoherent speech, his mumbling awkwardness.

  "Oh--walk!" she cried, with an air of swift enlightenment, as if her puzzled mind had just succeeded in translating his jargon. "Oh," she said quietly, and looked at him for a moment steadily with her fixed and glacial smile, "you do."

  It seemed to him that those brief words were already pregnant with a cold indifferent dismissal: in them he seemed to feel the impregnable indifference of her cold detachment--the yawning gulf that separated her life from his. Already it seemed to him that she had turned away from him, dismissing him as not worthy even of such amused attention as she had given him. But after a moment, as she continued to look at him with her brilliant, glacial, detached, yet not unkindly smile, she continued:

  "And what do you do on these walks? Where do you go?"

  --Where? Where? Where indeed? His mind groped desperately over the whole nocturnal pattern of the city--over the lean, gaunt webbing of Manhattan with the barren angularity of its streets, the splintered, glacial soar of its terrific buildings, and the silent, frozen harshness of its streets of old brown houses, grimy brick and rusty, age-encrusted stone.

  Oh, he thought that he could tell her all that could be told, that youth could know, that any man had ever known about night and time and darkness, and about the city's dark and secret heart, and what lay buried in the dark and secret heart of all America. He thought that he could tell her all that any man could ever know about the huge, attentive secrecy of night, and of man's silent heart of buried, waiting, and intolerable desire, about the thing that waits there in the night-time in America, that lies buried at the city's secret heart of night, the mute and single tongue of man's intolerable desire, the silence of his single heart in all its overwhelming eloquence, the great tide flowing in the hearts of men, as dark and as mysterious as the great, unceasing river, the thing that waits and does not speak and is for ever silent and that knows for ever, and that has no words to say, no tongue to speak, and that unites six million celled and lonely sleepers at the heart of night and silence, in the great dark tide of the unceasing river, and of all our buried songs of hope and joy and wild desire that live for ever in the heart of night and of America.

  Yes, he thought that he could tell her all of this, but when he spoke, with thickened tongue, a numb and desperate constraint, all that he could mutter thickly was: "I--I walk."

  "But where?" she said, a trifle more sharply, still looking at him with her glacial, curious smile. "That's what I'd like to know. Where do you go? What do you see that's so interesting? What do you find that's worth staying up all night for? Where do you go when you make these expeditions?" she again demanded. "Up to Broadway?"

  "Yes," he mumbled thickly, "--sometimes--and--and sometimes--I go down town."

  "Down town?" the cool incisive inflection of the voice, the glacial grey-green of the eye bored through him like a steel-blue drill. "Downtown where? To the Battery?"

  "Y-y-yes--sometimes. . . . And--and along the East Side, too," he mumbled.

  "Where?" she cried sharply, smiling, but manifestly impatient with his mumbled, tongue-tied answers. "Oh--the East Side!" she cried again, with the air of glacial enlightenment. "--In the tenement section!"

  "Yes--yes," he stumbled on desperately, "--and along Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue--and Grand Street--and--and Delancey--and--and the Bowery--and all the docks and piers and all," he blurted out, conscious of Joel's eager, radiant smile of hopeful kindness, and the miserable clown he was making of himself.

  "But I should think you would find all that dreadfully boring." Mrs. Pierce's voice was now tinged with cool and mild surprise. "And awfully ugly, isn't it? . . . I mean, if you've got to prowl around at night, you might hunt for something a little more attractive than the East Side, couldn't you? . . . After all, we still have Riverside Drive--I suppose even that has changed a great deal, but in my childhood it was quite a lovely place. Or the Park?" she said, a little more kindly and persuasively. "If you want to take a walk before going to bed, why, wouldn't it be better to take it in the Park--where you could see an occasional tree or a little grass? . . . Or even Fifth Avenue and around Washington Square--that used to be quite pleasant? But the East Side! Heavens! My dear boy, what on earth do you ever find in a place like that to interest you?"

  He was absolutely speechless, congealed, actually terrified by the haughty magnificence, the glacial and almost inhuman detachment, of her person. His mouth gaped, he gulped, his lips quivered and made soundless efforts for a moment, and then he stammered:

  "You--you find--you find--p-p-p-people there," he said.

  "People?" Again her thin eyebrows arched in fine surprise. "But of course you find people there! You find people everywhere you go. . . . Only," she added, "I shouldn't think you'd find many people anywhere at two o'clock in the morning. I should think most of them would be in bed--even on the East Side."

  "They--they stay up late over there."

  "But why?" she now cried with a good-natured but frank impatience. "That's just what I'm trying to find out! . . . What's it all about? What's all the shooting for?" she said humorously, repeating a phrase which was in current use at that time. "--What's the big attraction? What do they find to do that's so interesting that it can keep them out of bed half through the night? . . . Really," she cried, "if it's so amusing as all that, I think I'll go and have a look myself. What do they do?" she again insisted. "That's what I want to know."

  "They--they sit around and talk."

  "But where? Where?" she now cried with frank despair. "My dear boy, that's what I want you to tell me."

  "Oh, in--in lunch-rooms--and restaurants--and speak-easies--and--and places like that."

  "Yes," she nodded with an air of satisfaction. "Good. At least, we have that settled. And you go to these places, too--and sit around--and watch--and listen to them. Is that it?"

  "Yes," he said helplessly, nodding, her words suddenly making all this restless and unceasing explanation of the night seem reasonless, foolish, pitifully absurd, "sometimes."

  "And what kind of people do you find in those places?" she said curiously. "I've often wondered what kind of people go there."

  Kind? He stared at her foolishly with gaping jaw, and gaped and muttered wordlessly, and could not find a word to say to her. Kind? Great God! what word could ever shape them, what phrase could ever utter the huge swarm and impact of just one moment, out of all those million swarming memories of kaleidoscopic night! Kind? Great God! the kind of all the earth, the kind of the whole world, the unnumbered, nameless, swarming, and illimitable kind that make all living! Kind? The mongrel compost of a hundred races--the Jews, the Irish, the Italians, and the niggers, the Swedes, the Germans, the Lithuanians and the Poles, the Russians, Czechs, and Greeks, the Syrians, Turks and Armenians, the nameless hodge-podge of the Balkans, as well as Chinese, Japs, and dapper little Filipinos--a hundred tongues, a thousand tribes, unnumbered colonies of life, all poured in through the lean gateways of the sea, all poured in upon that rock of life, to join the countless freightage of that ship of living stone, all nurtured and sustained upon the city's strong breast,--a thousand kinds, a single substance, all fused and joined there at the heart of the night, all moving with that central, secret and dynamic energy, all wrought and woven in, with all their swarming variousness, into the great web of America--with all its clamour, naked struggle, blind and brutal strife, with all its violence, ignorance, and cruelty, and with its terror, joy, and mystery, its undying hope, its everlasting life.

  All he could do was gape and mumble foolishly again, and stammer finally: "There--there are all kinds, I guess," and plunge on desperately, "and then--and then--there are the wharves and piers and docks--the Battery and the City Hall--and then--and then," he stumbl
ed on, "--the Bridge--the Bridge is good."

  "The Bridge?" Again the pencilled brows of arched surprise, the glacial curiosity. "What bridge?"

  What bridge? Great God! the only bridge, the bridge of power, life and joy, the bridge that was a span, a cry, an ecstasy--that was America. What bridge? The bridge whose wing-like sweep that was like space and joy and ecstasy was mixed like music in his blood, would beat like flight and joy and triumph through the conduits of his life for ever. What bridge? The bridge whereon at night he had walked and stood and watched a thousand times, until every fabric of its soaring web was inwrought in his memory, and every stone of its twin terrific arches was in his heart, and every living sinew of its million cabled nerves had throbbed and pulsed in his own spirit like his soul's anatomy.

  "The--the Brooklyn Bridge," he mumbled. "The--the Bridge is good."

  "Good? How do you mean--good?" The glacial and amused inquiry pierced his consciousness again with confusion, numb paralysis of speech, and incoherence. And at this moment Joel, seeing his agonizing embarrassment, came to his rescue with the exquisite, radiant kindliness that was the constant evidence of his fine character.

  "Um. Yes," he could hear Joel whispering in a thoughtful and convinced way. "He's dead right about it, Mums. I've gone with him once or twice--and the Bridge is good! . . . And the East Side has good things in it, too," he whispered generously. "I saw some good bits there--street corners, a store front, alleys--there's good colour--I'd like to go back some time and paint it."

  For the first time Mrs. Pierce broke into a robust, free and hearty laugh.

  "Joel!" she cried. "You can get the most insane notions in your head of any boy I ever knew! If I didn't watch you, I believe you'd be painting ash-cans! . . . My dear boy," she said, laughing, "you'd better stick to what you're doing. I don't think you've had much experience with low-life--if that's what you want I'll find plenty of it for you right here in Rhinekill or on the farm. . . . If you want low-life," here she paused and laughed heartily again, "go down to Granny's tomorrow and paint the expression of those nine maids of hers when she tells them she's decided to bob their hair because it fits in so nicely with the new decoration--Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah!"--Mrs. Pierce cast back her head and laughed again, a full free hearty laugh of robust humour in which Joel joined enthusiastically, almost suddenly, with a face radiant with glee--"I'd just like to be there when she tells them, that'll be low-life enough," she said.

  "Simply incredible!" Joel whispered, his face still radiant with its gleeful merriment.

  "But no," his mother went on more casually, and with humorous tolerance. "--You finish what you're doing first--finish those screens you're doing for Madge Telfair--then we'll talk about low-life. . . . But I hardly think your talent lies in that direction," she said good-humouredly but with an ironically knowing smile. "I haven't seen your mother all these years without finding out something about your abilities--and I hardly think they lie in that direction. So you must stick to what you're doing for the present--and if there's any low-life to be done, just let me do the choosing. . . . Well, then, good night," she said quietly, kindly, and good-naturedly to the young man, as she turned to go upstairs. "Joel has told me so much about your nocturnal habits that I was curious to meet you and find out what you did. I'm glad to get the mystery cleared up. . . . I suppose," she said, with an idle and detached curiosity, "that when one is all alone and knows no one in the city, he is driven to do almost anything for amusement. . . . Where are you from?" she said curiously.

  "From--from the South," he answered.

  "Oh," she stared at him a moment longer with her cold, fixed smile. "Yes," she said. "I can see you are. I thought so. . . . Well, children," she said with an air of finality, "you can burn the candle at both ends if that's what you want to do--go out and bay the moon if you like--but not too near the house," she said good-naturedly. "Your mother's going to bed. . . . Joel," she said quietly, "you'll be in to see me, of course, before you turn in."

  "Yes, Mums," he whispered, eager, radiant, his tall, thin figure bent forward reverentially as he looked up at her, his eyebrows arching with their characteristic expression of fine surprise.--"But of course!" he said.

  "Very well," she said quietly. "And now good night to all of you."

  Turning, she went swiftly up the stairs, a tall, magnificently haughty figure of a woman, holding rustling and luxurious skirts.

  "And now," Joel whispered, when his mother had departed, "I'll show you your room--and how to find the kitchen--and tell you anything you want to know--and after that," he whispered, laughing and stroking his head, "you can do as you please, stay up as long as you like--but I'm going to bed."

  With these words he took his guest's valise and started up the stairs. The young man followed him: he had been given a room on the second floor on the river side of the house. It was a magnificent spacious room so richly, softly carpeted that the foot sank down with velvety firmness to a noiseless tread. The quality of the room was the quality of the whole house--a kind of château-like grandeur and solidity, combined with the warmth, comfort and simplicity of a country house. Joel pressed buttons, flooding the great room with light. The wide and snowy covers of the great bed had been drawn back for the night. It was a bed fit for a king, and long and spacious enough for a man of seven feet: it waited there with a kind of still embrace, a silent and yet animate invitation that was eloquent with the promise of a strange and sweet repose.

  Joel opened the door of the bathroom--it was a miracle of shining tile and creamy porcelain and gleaming silver and heavy, robe-like towels. Then Joel raised the shades, drew the curtains apart and opened the window: the fragrance of the night came in slowly, sustaining gauzy curtains on its breath of coolness like a cloud of gossamer. And through the opened window was revealed anew the haunting loneliness of that enchanted landscape: the vast sweep of velvet-rounded lawn that slept in moonlight, and the sleeping and moon-haunted woods below and to each side, and down below them in the distance the great wink and scallop-dance and dark unceasing mystery of the lovely and immortal river--a landscape such as one might see in dreams, in dreams for ever haunted by the thought of home.

  The feeling of happiness that filled the youth was so grand, so wonderful and so overpowering that he could not speak. It seemed that all his life he had dreamed of one day finding such a life as this, and now that he had found it, it seemed to him that all he had dreamed was but a poor and shabby counterfeit of this reality--all he had imaged as a boy in his unceasing visions of the shining city, and of the glamorous men and women, the fortunate, good, and happy life that he would find there, seemed nothing but a shadowy and dim prefigurement of the radiant miracle of this actuality.

  It was not merely the wealth, the luxury and the comfort of the scene that filled his heart with a sense of joy and victory. Far more than this, it was the feeling that this life of wealth, and luxury and comfort was so beautiful and right and good. At the moment it seemed to him to be the life for which all men on the earth are seeking, about which all men living dream, toward which all the myriads of the earth aspire; and the thing, above all, which made this life seem so beautiful and good was the conviction that filled him at that moment of its essential incorruptible righteousness. It seemed to him to be the most wonderful and beautiful life on earth, not only because it existed for the comfort and the soul-enrichment of its choice few, but because it stood there as a beacon and a legend in the hearts of all men living--a symbol of what all life on earth should be, a promise of what every man on earth should have.

  In that blind surge of youth and joy, the magic of that unbelievable discovery, he could not estimate the strange and bitter chance of destiny, nor ravel out that grievous web, that dense perplexity. He could not see how men had groped and toiled and mined, and grown blind and bent and grey, deep in the dark bowels of the earth, to wreak this moonlight loveliness upon a hill; nor know how men had sweated and women worked, how youth had struck its fire and
grown old, how hope and faith and even love had died, how many nameless lives had laboured, grieved, and come to nought in order that this fragile image of compacted night, this priceless distillation of its rare and chosen loveliness, should blossom to a flower of moonlight beauty on a hill.

  Joel took him downstairs to the kitchen before saying good night. They crossed the hall and passed through the great dining-room. It was also a noble gleaming room of white, as grand and spacious as a room in a château, but warm, and familiar, comforting as home. Then they passed through a service corridor that connected the kitchen and the pantry with the dining-room, and instantly he found himself in another part of this enchanted world--the part that cooked and served and with viewless grace, and magic stealth and instancy--performed the labours of this enchanted house.

  It was such a kitchen as he had never seen before--a kitchen such as he had never dreamed possible. In its space, its order, its astounding cleanliness, it had the beauty of a great machine--a machine of tremendous power, fabulous richness and complexity--which in its ordered magnificence, its vast readiness, had the clear and glittering precision of a geometric pattern. Even the stove--a vast hooded range as large as those in a great restaurant--glittered with the groomed perfection of a racing motor. There was, as well, an enormous electric stove that was polished like a silver ornament, the pots and pans were hung in gleaming rows, in vast but orderly profusion ranging from great copper kettles big enough to roast an ox to little pans and skillets just large enough to poach an egg, but all hung there in regimented order, instant readiness, shining like mirrors, scrubbed and polished into gleaming discs, the battered cleanliness of well-used copper, seasoned iron and heavy steel.