OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  They walked slowly across the great Louvre court and through the gigantic masonries of the arch into the Rue de Rivoli. The street was swarming with its dense web of afternoon: the sensuous complications of its life and traffic, the vast honeycomb of business and desire; the street was jammed with its brilliant snarl of motors, with shout and horn and cry, and with the throbbing menace of machinery, and on the other side, beneath arched colonnades, the crowd was swarming in unceasing flow.

  They crossed the street and made their way through a thronging maze into the Place de la Comédie Française, and found a table on the terrace of La Régence. The pleasant old café was gay with all its chattering groups of afternoon, and yet, after the great boil and fury of the streets, it was strangely calm, detached, and pleasant, too. The little separate verandahs of its terrace, the tables and the old settees and walls, gave the café an incredibly familiar and intimate quality, as if one were seated in a pleasant booth that looked out on life, a box in an old theatre whose stage was the whole world.

  In one of the friendly booth-like verandahs of this pleasant old café they found a table in a corner, seats against the wall, and sat down and gave their order to the waiter. Then, for some time, as they drank their brandy, they looked out at the flashing pulsations of the street, and did not speak.

  Presently Ann, without looking at him, in her level, curt, and almost grimly toneless speech, said:

  "What did you and Frank do last night?"

  Excitement caught him; his pulse beat faster; he glanced quickly at her, and said:

  "Oh, nothing. We went out to eat, walked round a bit: that was all."

  "Out all night?" she said curtly.

  "No. I turned in early. I was home by twelve o'clock."

  "What happened to Frank?"

  He looked at her sharply, startled. "Happened? What do you mean--'what happened to him?'"

  "What did he do when you went home?"

  "How should I know? He went back to the studio, I suppose. Why do you want to know?"

  She made no answer for a moment, but sat looking sullenly into the street. When she spoke again, she did not look at him, her voice was level, hard, and cold, quietly, grimly inflectionless.

  "Do you think it's a very manly thing for a big hulking fellow like you to jump on a boy Frank's size?"

  Hot fury choked him, passed before his vision in a blinding flood. He ground his teeth, rocked gently back and forth, and said in a small, stopped voice:

  "Oh, so he told you, did he? He had to come whining to you about it, did he? The damned little . . . !"

  "He told us nothing," she said curtly. "Frank's not that kind; he doesn't whine. Only, we couldn't help noticing a lump on the back of his head the size of a goose egg, and it didn't take me long to figure out the rest." She turned and looked at him with a straight, unrelenting stare, and then said harshly:

  "It was a wonderful thing to do, wasn't it? I suppose you think that settles everything. You can be proud of yourself now, can't you?"

  The thin fine blade of cruel jealousy pierced him suddenly and was twisted in his heart. In a voice trembling with all the sweltering anguish and defeat that packed his overladen heart, he sneered in bitter parody:

  "Come now, Frankie, dear!--Did bad naughty mans crack little Frankie's precious head?--There, there, dearie!--Mamma kiss and make it well . . . let nice big nursey-worsey kiss-um and make-um well!--Next time Frankie-pankie goes for a walk, big Boston nursey Ann will go wiv-ems, won't she, pet, to see that wuff, wuff man leave poor little Frankie be."

  She reddened angrily, and said:

  "No one's trying to be Frankie's nurse. He doesn't need it, and he doesn't want it. Only, I think it's a rotten shame that a big hulking lout like you should have no more decency than to maul around as fine a person as Frank is. You ought to be ashamed of yourself; it was a rotten thing to do!"

  "Why, you bitch!" he said slowly, in a low, strangled tone. "You nice, neat, eighteen-carat jewel of a snobby Boston bitch!--Go back to Boston where you came from!" he snarled. "That's where you belong; that's all you're worth. . . . So I'm a big, hulking lout, am I? And that damned little affected æsthete's the finest person that you ever knew!--Why, God-damn the lot of you for the cheap, lying, fakey Boston bitches that you are!--with your 'he's a swell person, he really is, you know,'--'Oh, grand! Oh, swell! Oh, fine!'" he jeered incoherently. "Why, damn you, who do you think you are, anyway?--that you think I'm going to stand for any more of your snobby Boston backwash!--So I'm a big, hulking lout, am I?"--the words rankled bitterly in his memory. "And dear, darling little Francis is too fine, too fine--oh, dearie me, now, yes--to have his precious little head cracked up against a wall by the likes of me. . . . Why, damn you, Ann!" he said in a grating voice, "what are you, anyway, but a damned dull lummox of a girl from Boston? Who the hell do you think you are, anyway, that I should sit here and take your snobby backwash and play second fiddle while two cheap Boston women praise Starwick up to the skies all day long and tell me what a great genius he is and how much finer than anyone else that ever lived? By God, it is to laugh!" he raved incoherently, blind with pain and passion, hindering his own progress by his foolish words of wounded pride. "--To see the damned affected æsthete get it all! You're not worth it! You're not worth it!" he cried bitterly. "--You call me a big hulking lout--and I feel more, know more, see more, have more life and power and understanding in me in a minute than the whole crowd of you will ever have--why, I'm so much better than the rest of you that--that--that--there's no comparison!" he said lamely; and concluded: "Oh, you're not worth it! You're not worth it, Ann! Why should I get down on my knees to you this way, and worship you, and beg you for just one word of love and mercy--when you call me a big, hulking lout--and you are nothing but a rich, dull Boston snob--and you're not worth it!" he cried desperately. "Why has it got to be like this, when you're not worth it, Ann?"

  Her face flushed, and in a moment, laughing her short and angry laugh, she said:

  "God! I can see this is going to be a pleasant evening, with you raving like a crazy man and passing out your compliments already." She looked at him with bitter eyes, and said sarcastically: "You say such nice things to people, don't you? Oh, charming! Charming! Simply delightful!" She laughed her sudden angry laugh again. "God! I'll never forget some of the nice things that you said to me!"

  And already tortured by remorse and shame, the huge, indefinable swelter of anguish in his heart, he caught her hand, and pleaded miserably, humbly.

  "Oh, I know! I know!--I'm sorry, Ann, and I'll do better--so help me, God, I will!"

  "Then why must you carry on like this?" she said. "Why do you curse and revile me and say such things about Francis, who is one of the finest people that ever lived and who has never said a word against you?"

  "Oh, I know!" he groaned miserably, and smote his brow. "--I don't mean to--it just gets the best of me--Ann, Ann! I love you so!"

  "Yes," she muttered, "a funny kind of love, when you can say such things to me!"

  "And when I hear you praise up Starwick, it all comes back to me--and Christ! Christ!--why did it have to be this way? Why did it have to be Starwick that you--?"

  She got up, her face flaring with anger and resentment.

  "Come on!" she said curtly. "If you can't behave yourself--if you're starting in on that--I'm not going to stay--"

  "Don't go! Don't go!" he whispered, grabbing her hand and holding it in a kind of dumb anguish. "You said you'd stay! It's just for a few hours longer--oh, don't go and leave me, Ann! I'm sorry! I promise I'll do better. It's only when I think of it--oh, don't go, Ann! Please don't go! I try not to talk about it, but it gets the best of me! I'll be all right now. I'll not talk about it any more--if you won't go. It you'll just stay with me a little longer--it will be all right. I swear that everything will be all right if you don't go."

  She stood straight and rigid, her hands clenched convulsively at her sides, her eyes shot with tears of anger and bewilderment.
She made a sudden baffled movement of frustration and despair, and cried bitterly:

  "God! What is it all about? Why can't people be happy, anyway?"

  They made a furious circuit of the night. They went back to all the old places--to the places they had been to with Elinor and Starwick. They went to Le Rat Mort, to Le Coq et l'Ane, to Le Moulin Rouge, to Le Bal Tabarin, to La Bolée, to the Jockey Club, to the Dome and the Rotonde,--even to the Bal Bullier. They went to the big night resorts and to the little ones, to great café's and little bars, to dive and stew and joint and hole, to places frequented exclusively by the rich and fashionable--the foreigners, the wealthy French, the tourists, the expatriates--and to other places where the rich and fashionable went to peer down into the cauldrons of the lower depths at all those creatures who inhabited the great swamp of the night--the thieves, the prostitutes, the rogues, the pimps, the lesbians and the pederasts--the human excrement, the damned and evil swarm of sourceless evil that crawled outward from the rat-holes of the dark, lived for a period in the night's huge blaze of livid radiance, and then were gone, vanished, melted away as by an evil magic into that trackless labyrinth from which they came.

  Where had it gone? That other world of just six weeks before, with all its nocturnal and unholy magic, now seemed farther off and stranger than a dream. It was impossible to believe that these shabby places of garish light, and tarnished gold, and tawdry mirrors, were the same resorts that had glowed in all their hot and close perfumes just six weeks before, had burned there in the train of night like some evil, secret and unholy temple of desire. It was all worn off now: cheap as Coney Island, tawdry, tarnished as the last year's trappings of a circus, bedraggled, shabby as a harlot's painted face at noon. All of its sinister and intoxicating magic had turned dull and pitiably sordid: its people were pathetic, and its music dead--serving only to recall the splendid evil people and the haunting music of six weeks before.

  And they saw now that this was just the way it was, the way it had always been. Places, people, music--they were just the same. All that had changed had been themselves. And all through the night they went from place to place, drinking, watching, dancing, doing just the things they had always done, but it was no good--it had all gone stale--it would never be any good again. They sat there sullenly, like people at a waning carnival, haunted by the ghosts of memory and departure. The memory of Elinor and Starwick--and particularly of Starwick--haunted each place they went to like a death's-head at a feast. And again Eugene was filled with the old, choking, baffled, and inchoate anger, the sense of irretrievable and certain defeat: Starwick in absence was even more triumphantly alive than if he had been there--he alone, by the strange, rare quality in him, had been able to give magic to this sordid carnival, and now that he was gone, the magic had gone, too.

  The night passed in a kaleidoscope of baffled fury, of frenzied search and frustrate desire. All night they hustled back and forth between the two blazing poles of Montmartre and Montparnasse: later he was to remember everything like the exploded fragments of a nightmare--a vision of dark, silent streets, old shuttered houses, the straight slant and downward plunge out of Montmartre--the sudden blaze of lights at crossings, boulevards, in cafés, night-clubs, bars and avenues, the cool plunge and shock of air along dark streets again, the taxi's shrill horn tootling at space, empty reckless corners, the planted stems of light across the Seine, the bridges and the sounding arches and dark streets, the steep slant of the hill, the livid glare of night and all the night's scarred faces over again.

  They did not know why they stayed, why they hung on, why they continued grimly at this barren hunt. But something held them there together: they could not say good-bye and part. Ann hung on sullenly, angrily, in a kind of stubborn silence, saying little, ordering brandy at the bars and cafés, champagne in the night resorts, drinking little herself, sitting by him in a sullen, angry silence while he drank.

  He was like a maddened animal: he raved, stormed, shouted, cursed, implored, entreated, reviled her and made love to her at once--there was no sense, or reason, or coherence in anything he said: it came out of him in one tortured expletive, the urge of the baffled touch, that conflict of blind love and hate and speechless agony, in his tormented spirit:

  "Oh, Ann! . . . You lovely bitch! . . . You big, dark, dumb, lovely, sullen Boston bitch! . . . Oh, you bitch! You bitch!" he groaned, and seizing her hand, he caught it to him and said desperately, "Ann, Ann, I love you! . . . You're the greatest . . . grandest . . . best . . . most beautiful girl that ever lived . . . Ann! Look at me--you big, ox-dumb brute. . . . Oh, you bitch. . . . You Boston bitch. . . . Will it never come out of you? . . . Won't you ever let it come? . . . Can't it be thawed, melted, shaken loose? . . . Oh, you dumb, dark, sullen, lovely bitch . . . is there nothing there? . . . is this all you are? . . . Oh, Ann, you sweet, dumb wretch if you only knew how much I love you--"

  "God!" she cried, with her quick, short and angry laugh that gave her face its sudden, radiant tenderness, its indescribable loveliness and purity, "--God! But you're the gallant lover, aren't you? First you love me, then you hate me, then I'm a dumb, sullen Boston bitch, and then a wretch and then the grandest and most beautiful girl that ever lived! God, you're wonderful, you are!" She laughed bitterly. "You say such charming things."

  "Oh, you bitch!" he groaned miserably. "You big, sweet, dumb, and lovely bitch--Ann, Ann, for God's sake, speak to me, talk to me!" He seized her hand and shook it frantically. "Say just one word to show me you're alive--that you've got one single atom of life and love and beauty in you. Ann, Ann,--look at me! In God's name, tell me, what are you? Is there nothing there? Have you nothing in you? For Christ's sake, try to say a single, living word--for Christ's sake, try to show me that you're worth it, that it's not all death and codfish, Boston, Back Bay, and cold fishes' blood"--he raved on incoherently.

  "Oh! Boston and cold fishes' blood, my eye!" she muttered, with an angry flush in her face.

  "And you?--What are you?" he jeered. "For God's sake, what kind of woman are you? I never heard you speak a word that a child of ten could not have spoken. I never heard you say a thing that ought to be remembered. The only things I know about you are that you are a Boston spinstress--thirty--no longer very young--a few grey hairs already on your head--comfortably secure on dead investments--over here on a spree--away from father and the family and The Boston Evening Transcript--but never losing them: always knowing that you will return to them--in God's name, woman, is that all you are?"

  She laughed her sudden, short and angry laugh, and yet there was no rancour in it.

  "That's what Frank would call a brief but masterly description, isn't it? I suppose I should be grateful." She looked at him with quiet eyes, and said simply: "What of it? Even if what you say is true, what of it? As you say, I'm just a dull, ordinary kind of person, and until you and Francis came along no one thought me anything else or thought any the less of me for being like that. Listen"--her voice was hard and straight and sullen--"what do you expect people to be, anyway? Do you think it's fair and decent to talk about how beautiful I am when I'm not beautiful, and then to turn and curse me because I'm just an ordinary girl?" She was silent a moment, with an angry flush upon her face, and then she said: "As for my intellect, I went to Bryn Mawr, and I got through without flunking, with a C average. That's about the kind of brain I've got." She turned and looked at him with straight, angry eyes, now shut a little with tears.

  "What of it?" she said. "You say that I am dull and dumb and ordinary--well, I never pretended to be anything else. You know, we all can't be great geniuses, like you and Francis," she said, and suddenly her eyes were wet, and tears began to trickle down across her flushed face. "I'm just what I am, I've never pretended to be any different--if you think I'm dull and stupid and ordinary, you have no right to insult me like this.--Come on, I'm going home."--She started to get up, he seized her, pulled her to him.

  "Oh, you bitch! . . . You big, dumb, lovely bitch!
. . . Oh, Ann, Ann, you sweet devil, how I love you--I can never let you go--oh, Goddamn you, Ann--"

  It ended at last, at daybreak in a bistro near Les Halles, where they had often gone at dawn with Elinor and Starwick for rolls and chocolate or coffee. Outside they could hear the nightly roar and rumble of the market, the cries of the vendors, and smell all the sweet smells of earth and morning, of first light, health, and joy, and day beginning.

  When they left the bistro full light had come, and they at length had fallen silent. They realized that it was useless, hopeless, and impossible, that nothing could be said.

  He left her at the gate outside the studio. She pressed the bell, the gate swung open, and for a moment before she left him she stood looking at him with a flushed, angry face, wet angry eyes--a look of dumb, sullen misery that tore at his heart, and for which he had no word.

  "Good-bye," she said, "if I don't see you again--" She paused and clenched her fists together at her side, closed her eyes, tears spurted out, and in a choking voice she cried out: