OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  "By what?"

  "By saying you needn't detain me any longer?"

  "You got what you wanted, didn't you?"

  "You mean the money?"

  "Yes."

  Starwick looked quietly at him a moment longer, then thrust the little roll of banknotes back into his hand.

  "Take it," he said.

  For a moment the other could not speak. A murderous fury choked him: he ground his teeth together, and clenched his fist, he felt a moment's almost insane desire to grip that soft throat with his strangling hand and beat the face into a bloody jelly with his fist.

  "Why, God-damn you--" he grated between clenched teeth. "Goddamn you for a--!" He turned away, saying harshly: "To hell with you! . . . I'm through!"

  He began to walk away across the Square at a savage stride. He heard footsteps following him: near the corner of the Rue St. Honoré Starwick caught up with him and said doggedly:

  "No, but I'm going with you! . . . I really must, you know!" His voice rose and became high, almost womanish, with his passionate declaration: "If there's anything between you and me that has to be settled before you go away, you can't leave it like this . . . we've got to have it out, you know . . . we really must!"

  The other youth stood stock-still for a moment. Every atom of him--blood, bone, the beating of his heart, the substance of his flesh--seemed to congeal in a paralysis of cold murder. He licked his dry lips and said thickly:

  "Have it out!"--The blood swarmed through him in a choking flood, it seemed instantly to rush down through his hands and to fill him with a savage, rending strength, the curse was torn from him in a bestial cry and snarling:

  "Have it out! Why, you damned rascal, we'll have it out, all right! We'll have it out, you dirty little fairy--" The foul word was out at last, in one blind expletive of murderous hate, and suddenly that tortured, impossibly tangled web of hatred, failure, and despair found its release. He reached out, caught Starwick by the throat and collar of his shirt, and endowed with that immense, incalculable strength which hatred and the sudden lust to kill can give a man, he lifted the slight figure from the ground as if it were a bundle of rags and sticks, and slammed it back against the façade of a building with such brutal violence that Starwick's head bounced and rattled on the stone. The blow knocked Starwick senseless: his hat went flying from his head, his cane fell from his grasp and rattled on the pavement with a hard, lean clatter. For a moment, his eyes rolled back and forth with the wooden, weighted movement of a doll's. Then, as Eugene released his grip, his legs buckled at the knees, his eyes closed and his head sagged, and he began to slump down towards the pavement, his back sliding all the time against the wall.

  He would have fallen if Eugene had not caught him, held him, propped him up against the wall, until he could recover. And at that moment, Eugene felt an instant, overwhelming revulsion of shame, despair, and sick horror, such as he had never known before. For a moment all the blood seemed to have drained out of his heart and left it a dead shell. He thought he had killed Starwick--broken his neck or fractured his skull: even in death--or unconsciousness--Starwick's frail body retained its languorous dignity and grace. His head dropped heavily to one side, the buckling weight of the unconscious figure slumped in a movement of terrible and beautiful repose--the same movement that one sees in a great painting of Christ lowered from the cross, as if, indeed, the whole rhythm, balance and design of that art which Starwick had observed with such impassioned mimicry had left its image indelibly upon his own life, so that, even in death or senselessness, his body would portray it.

  At that moment the measure of ruin and defeat which the other young man felt was overwhelming. It seemed to him that if he had deliberately contrived to crown a ruinous career by the most shameful and calamitous act of all, he could not have been guilty of a worse crime than the one he had just committed. It was not merely the desperate, sickening terror in his heart when he thought that Starwick might be dead--that he had killed him. It was even more than this, a sense of profanation, a sense of having done something so foul and abominable that he could never recover from it, never wash its taint out of his blood. There are some people who possess such a natural dignity of person--such a strange and rare inviolability of flesh and spirit--that any familiarity, any insult, above all any act of violence upon them, is unthinkable. If such an insult be intended, if such violence be done, the act returns a thousandfold upon the one who does it: his own blow returns to deal a terrible revenge; he will relive his crime a thousand times in all the shame and terror of inexpiable memory.

  Starwick was such a person: he had this quality of personal inviolability more than anyone the other youth had ever known. And now, as he stood there holding Starwick propped against the wall, calling him by name, shaking him and pleading with him to recover consciousness, his feeling of shame, despair, and bitter ruinous defeat was abysmal, irremediable. It seemed to him that he could have done nothing which would more have emphasized his enemy's superiority and his own defeat than this thing which he had done. And the feeling that Starwick would always beat him, always take from him the thing he wanted most, that by no means could he ever match the other youth in any way, gain even the most trifling victory, was now overpowering in its horror. With a sick and bitter heart of misery, he cursed the wretched folly of his act. He would willingly have cut off his hand--the hand that gave the blow--if by so doing he could undo his act, but he knew that it was now too late, and with a feeling of blind terror he reflected that this knowledge of his defeat and fear was now Starwick's also, and that as long as Starwick lived, he would always know about it, and realize from this alone the full measure of his victory. And this feeling of shame, horror, and abysmal, inexpiable regret persisted even after, with a feeling of sick relief, he saw Starwick's eyes flutter, open, and after a moment of vague, confused bewilderment, look at him with a quiet consciousness.

  Nevertheless, his feeling of relief was unspeakable. He bent, picked up Starwick's hat and cane, and gave them to him, saying quietly:

  "I'm sorry, Frank."

  Starwick put on his hat and took the cane in his hand.

  "It doesn't matter. If that's the way you felt, you had to do it," he said in a quiet, toneless and inflexible voice. "But now, before we leave each other, we must see this through. We've got to bring this thing into the open, find out what it is. That must be done, you know!" His voice had risen with an accent of inflexible resolve, an accent which the other had heard before, and which he knew no fear of death or violence or any desperate consequence could ever alter by a jot. "I've got to understand what this thing is before I leave you," Starwick said. "That must be done."

  "All right!" Eugene said blindly, desperately. "Come on, then!"

  And together, they strode along in silence, along the empty pavements of the Rue St. Honoré, past shuttered shops, and old, silent buildings which seemed to abide there and attend upon the anguish of tormented youth with all the infinite, cruel, and impassive silence of dark time, the unspeakable chronicle of foregone centuries, the unspeakable anguish, grief, and desperation of a million vanished, nameless, and forgotten lives.

  And thus, in bitter shame and silence and despair, the demented, drunken, carnal, and kaleidoscopic circuit of the night began.

  LXXXIX

  About ten o'clock the next morning someone knocked at Eugene's door, and Starwick walked in. Without referring to the night before, Starwick immediately, in his casual and abrupt way, said:

  "Look. Elinor and Ann are here: they came in this morning."

  "Where are they?" Excitement, sharp and sudden as an electric shock, shot through him. "Here? Downstairs?"

  "No: they've gone shopping. I'm meeting them at Prunier's for lunch. Ann said she might come by to see you later on."

  "Before lunch?"

  "Ace," said Starwick. "Look," he said again, in his casual, mannered tone, "I don't suppose you'd care to come to lunch with us?"

  "Thanks," Eugene answered
stiffly, "but I can't. I've got another engagement."

  Starwick's face flushed crimson with the agonizing shyness and embarrassment which the effort cost him. He leaned upon his cane and looked out of the window as he spoke.

  "Then, look," he said, "Elinor asks to be remembered to you." He was silent a moment, and then continued with painful difficulty: "We're all going to the Louvre after lunch: I want to see the Cimabue once more before we leave."

  "When are you leaving?"

  "Tomorrow," Starwick said. "--Look!" he spoke carefully, looking out of the window, "we're leaving the Louvre at four o'clock. . . . I thought . . . if you were going to be over that way. . . . I think Elinor would like to see you before she goes. . . . We'll be there at the main entrance." The anguish which the effort had cost him was apparent: he kept looking away out of the window, leaning on his cane, and for a moment his ruddy face was contorted by the old, bestial grimace of inarticulate pain and grief which the other had noticed the first time they had met, in Cambridge, years before. Then Starwick, without glancing at Eugene, turned towards the door. For a moment he stood, back turned, idly tapping with his cane against the wall.

  "It would be nice if you could meet us there. If not--"

  He turned, and for the last time in life the two young men looked squarely at one another, and each let the other see, without evasion or constraint, the image of his soul. Henceforth, each might glimpse from time to time some shadow-flicker of the other's life, the destiny of each would curiously be interwoven through twinings of dark chance and tragic circumstance, but they would never see each other face to face again.

  Now, looking steadily at him before he spoke, and with the deep conviction of his spirit, the true image of his life, apparent in his face, his eyes, his tone and manner, Starwick said:

  "If I don't see you again, good-bye, Eugene." He was silent for a moment and, the colour flaming in his face from the depth and earnestness of his feeling, he said quietly: "It was good to have known you. I shall never forget you."

  "Nor I you, Frank," the other said. "No matter what has happened--how we feel about each other now--you had a place in my life that no one else has ever had."

  "And what was that?" said Starwick.

  "I think it was that you were young--my own age--and that you were my friend. Last night after--after that thing happened," he went on, his own face flushing with the pain of memory, "I thought back over all the time since I have known you. And for the first time I realized that you were the first and only person of my own age that I could call my friend. You were my one true friend--the one I always turned to, believed in with unquestioning devotion. You were the only real friend that I ever had. Now something else has happened. You have taken from me something that I wanted, you have taken it without knowing that you took it, and it will always be like this. You were my brother and my friend--"

  "And now?" said Starwick quietly.

  "You are my mortal enemy. Good-bye."

  "Good-bye, Eugene," said Starwick sadly. "But let me tell you this before I go. Whatever it was I took from you, it was something that I did not want or wish to take. And I would give it back again if I could."

  "Oh, fortunate and favoured Starwick," the other jeered. "To be so rich--to have such gifts and not to know he has them--to be for ever victorious, and to be so meek and mild."

  "And I will tell you this as well," Starwick continued. "Whatever anguish and suffering this mad hunger, this impossible desire, has caused you, however fortunate or favoured you may think I am, I would give my whole life if I could change places with you for an hour--know for an hour an atom of your anguish and your hunger and your hope. . . . Oh, to feel so, suffer so, and live so!--however mistaken you may be! . . . To have come lusty, young, and living into this world . . . not to have come, like me, still-born from your mother's womb--never to know the dead heart and the passionless passion--the cold brain and the cold hopelessness of hope--to be wild, mad, furious, and tormented--but to have belief, to live in anguish, but to live--and not to die." . . . He turned and opened the door. I would give all I have and all you think I have, for just one hour of it. You call me fortunate and happy. You are the most fortunate and happy man I ever knew. Good-bye, Eugene."

  "Good-bye, Frank. Good-bye, my enemy."

  "And good-bye, my friend," said Starwick. He went out, and the door closed behind him.

  Eugene was waiting for them at four o'clock that afternoon when they came out from the Louvre. As he saw them coming down the steps together he felt a sudden, blind rush of affection for all of them, and saw that all of them were fine people. Elinor came towards him instantly, and spoke to him warmly, kindly, and sincerely, without a trace of mannerism or affectation or concealed spitefulness. Starwick stood by quietly while he talked to Elinor: Ann looked on sullenly and dumbly and thrust her hands in the pockets of her fur jacket. In the dull, grey light they looked like handsome, first-rate, dignified people, who had nothing mean or petty in them and with whom nothing but a spacious, high and generous kind of life was possible. By comparison, the Frenchmen coming from the museum and streaming past them looked squalid and provincial; and the Americans and other foreigners had a shabby, dull, inferior look. For a moment the bitter and passionate enigma of life pierced him with desperation and wild hope. What was wrong with life? What got into people such as these to taint their essential quality, to twist and warp and mutilate their genuine and higher purposes? What were these perverse and evil demons of cruelty and destructiveness, of anguish, error and confusion that got into them, that seemed to goad them on, with a wicked and ruinous obstinacy, deliberately to do the things they did not want to do--the things that were so shamefully unworthy of their true character and their real desire?

  It was maddening because it was so ruinous, so wasteful and so useless; and because it was inexplicable. As these three wonderful, rare and even beautiful people stood there saying to him good-bye, every movement, look, and word they uttered was eloquent with the quiet but passionate and impregnable conviction of the human faith. Their quiet, serious, and affectionate eyes, their gestures, their plain, clear, and yet affectionate speech, even the instinctive tenderness that they felt towards one another which seemed to join them with a unity of living warmth and was evident in the way they stood, glanced at each other, or in swift, instinctive gestures--all this with a radiant, clear, and naked loveliness seemed to speak out of them in words no one could misunderstand, to say:

  "Always there comes a moment such as this when, poised here upon the ledge of furious strife, we stand and look; the marsh-veil shifts from the enfevered swamp, the phantoms are dispersed like painted smoke, and standing here together, friend, we all see clear again, our souls are tranquil and our hearts are quiet--and we have what we have, we know what we know, we are what we are."

  It seemed to him that all these people now had come to such a moment that this clear peace and knowledge rested in their hearts and spoke out of their eyes; it seemed to him that all his life, for years, since he had first gone to the dark North and known cities--since he had first known Starwick--was now a phantasmal nightmare--a kaleidoscope of blind, furious days, and drunken and diverted nights, the measureless sea-depth of incalculable memory, an atom lost and battered in a world of monstrous shapes, and deafened in a word of senseless, stupefying war and movement and blind fury. And it seemed to him now that for the first time he--and all of them--had come to a moment of clarity and repose, and that for the first time their hearts saw and spoke the truth that lies buried in all men, that all men know.

  Elinor had taken him by the hand and was saying quietly:

  "I am sorry that you will not go with us. We have had a strange and hard and desperate time together, but that is over now, Eugene: we have all been full of pain and trouble, and all of us are sorry for the things we've done. I want you to know that we all love you, and will always think of you with friendship, as our friend, and will hope that you are happy, and will rejoice in yo
ur success as if it were our own. . . . And now, good-bye, my dear; try to think of us always as we think of you--with love and kindness. Do not forget us; always remember us with a good memory, the way we shall remember you. . . . Perhaps"--for a moment her face was touched with her gay, rueful smile--"perhaps when I'm an old Boston lady with a cat, a parrot, and a canary, you will come to see me. I will be a nice old lady, then--but also I will be a ruined old lady--for they don't forget--not in a lifetime, not in Boston--and this time, darling, I have gone too far. So I shan't have many callers, I shall leave them all alone--and if you're not too rich, too famous, and too proper by that time, perhaps you'll come to see me. . . . Now, good-bye."

  "Good-bye, Elinor," he said. "And good luck to you."

  "Look," said Starwick quietly, "we're going on--Elinor and I . . . I thought . . . if you're not doing anything else . . . perhaps you and Ann might have dinner together."

  "I'm--I'm not," he stammered, looking at Ann, "but maybe you . . ."

  "No," she muttered, staring sullenly and miserably at the ground. "I'm not either."

  "Then," Starwick said, "we'll see you later, Ann. . . . And good-bye, Eugene."

  "Good-bye, Frank."

  They shook hands together for the last time, and Starwick and Elinor turned and walked away. Thus, with such brief and casual words, the bond of friendship--all of the faith, belief and passionate avowal of their youth--was for ever broken. They saw each other once thereafter: by chance their lives would have strange crossings; but they never spoke to each other again.

  They waited in awkward silence for a moment until they saw Starwick and Elinor get into a taxi and drive off. Then they walked away together across the great quadrangle of the Louvre. A haze of bluish mist, soft, smoky as a veil, hung in the air across the vista'd sweep of the Tuileries and the Place de la Concorde. The little taxis drilled across the great space between the vast wings of the Louvre and through the arches, filling the air with wasp-like drone and menace, the shrill excitement of their tootling horns. And through that veil of bluish haze the vast mysterious voice of Paris reached their ears: it was a sound immense and murmurous as time, fused of the strident clamours of its four million subjects, and yet, strangely muted, seductive, sensuous, cruel and thrilling, filled with life and death. The mysterious fragrance of that life filled Eugene with the potent intoxication of its magic. He drew the pungent smoky air into his lungs, and it seemed freighted with the subtle incense of the great city's hope and secret promise, with grief and joy and terror, with a wild and nameless hunger, with intolerable desire. It numbed his entrails and his loins with sensual prescience, and it made his heart beat hard and fast; his breath came quickly: it was mixed into the pulses of his blood and gave to grief and joy and sorrow the wild mixed anguish beating in his heart, its single magic, its impalpable desire.