The Eighth Day

by Thornton Wilder

  “Well, get along with you,” she said.

  Ashley stood looking in silence at the grey eyes in the red face, printing her features on his memory. She brought a silk scarf out of her handbag. “This is wet. Tie it about your forehead.”

  He gave her an envelope. “Put that in the jar for the Roentgen-ray machine.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll let Mr. Bristow out for a few hours. He enjoys funerals so.—Mr. Tolland, did you ever hear of the English poet John Keats?”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “He said that life is a ‘vale of soul-making.’ He might have added that it’s a ‘vale of soul-unmaking,’ too. We go up or we go down—forward or back. I was slipping back. Maybe I have a few years more. A few stones for a little Atenas. Write me. I’ll write you and tell you how we’re getting on.—Start off, Esteban!”

  Ashley took her right hand and kissed the back of it slowly. The leave-takings of the children of faith are like first recognitions. Time does not present itself to them as an infinite succession of endings.

  Twelve days later Esteban returned to Manantiales by the new road. He brought Mrs. Wickersham a letter from Carlos Céspedes. The hay and water for the mules had been barely sufficient. Several weeks later she received another by slow coastal mail. He was leaving Tiburones the next day for the north. She received no more.

  He was drowned at sea.

  No announcement of the capture of John Ashley of Coaltown ever appeared or of his death and burial. Wellington Bristow was able to persuade the consular agent that there was something suspicious—“very fishy”—about Mrs. Wickersham’s claims to have buried the notorious fugitive. Mr. Bristow continued to search for him for years.

  III. CHICAGO

  1902–1905

  When, toward 1911, persons all over the country began asking questions about the Ashley family, it was Roger who puzzled them most. They were unable to discover any one mainspring that released and directed his energy. He exhibited no signs of ambition; he effaced himself, unsuccessfully. After the age of twenty-one he never signed an editorial in those various newspapers he was constantly buying, reshaping, and abandoning to others. He held strong views, but he was not combative. Readers recognized his voice—reasonable without being argumentative, earnest without being ponderous, and always brief. It was the voice of ethical persuasion. Finally his admirers and enemies found relief in the formula that he was “old-fashioned.” He seemed to speak for the America of one’s grandparents—of that age before the great city imposed itself. It was old-fashioned of him also to revive the art of platform eloquence. Up to the beginning of this century Americans had rejoiced in a passion for oratory—sitting rapt for hours in tents and halls and churches. In addition to the beautiful speaking voice they had inherited from their mother, Roger and Constance possessed that rarer form of eloquence that arises from an absence of self-consciousness. Roger consented to speak only on great occasions and on grave issues, yet never for longer than thirty minutes. The First World War was imminent. His views often ran counter to those of his readers and listeners. The façades of his newspaper offices were occasionally defaced and the windows broken; he was burned in effigy here and there; but—unlike his sister Constance—he was seldom insulted and reviled by members of his audience. He was old-fashioned, countrified, a little ridiculous, and compelling.

  Roger Ashley was seventeen and a half when—on foot—he entered Chicago. He was hungry, tired, dirty, unsmiling, and resolute. He looked very much a rustic and was taken to be sixteen, but he did not know this. His blue suit, which he had outgrown, shone here and there, like a mirror. Under his arm he carried a few articles of clothing wrapped in brown paper. Like his father before him he had been the young lord of a small town. He had led all his classes and captained all his teams. He had never known fear or self-consciousness. He had leapt at runaway horses, parted fighting dogs, and rushed into burning houses as though he had been singled out to do so. He had worked all summer on Mr. Bell’s farm since he was eleven and was strong. Chicago was growing fast. It was not hard to find work, poorly paid though it was. He was free to choose and he changed jobs often.

  First he had to eat. Lodging was of less importance. In summer a man can sleep in parks and under bridges. Next, he had to earn money to send his mother. Above all he had to select his lifework. Sometimes he went for days with little to eat; sometimes he deliberately took less remunerative jobs, though it reduced the sums he sent to Coaltown; but he never ceased to search for his life’s career—to explore, observe, weigh, and eliminate the professions. He didn’t want to waste any years on a wrong choice and he wanted to start preparing himself as soon as possible.

  Two other important tasks lay before him, but he was not aware of them. He must acquire an education. He must reconcile himself to the human community. He thought that education, with a little application, came of itself. He thought that the dark resentment that filled his mind and heart was the normal armor of a man who has emerged from the thoughtlessness of boyhood.

  Many years later Dr. Gillies said: “Roger Ashley entered Chicago stump-ignorant. Fifteen years later, without having put foot in a classroom, he was the best-educated man in the country. Of course, he had some advantages over the rest of us. Socially, he was a pariah. Philosophically, he had just suffered the spectacle of his family being chewed up fine by a civilized Christian community. Economically, he owned nothing—he didn’t even have an extra pair of shoes to pawn. Academically, he had never faced a professor.”

  There were a number of other advantages that Dr. Gillies failed to note.

  Roger possessed little sense of humor. There was no second Roger lodged within his head. A sense of humor judges one’s actions and the actions of others from a wider reference and a longer view and finds them incongruous. It dampens enthusiasm; it mocks hope; it pardons shortcomings; it consoles failure. It recommends moderation. This wider reference and longer view are not the gifts of any extraordinary wisdom; they are merely the condensed opinion of a given community at a given moment. Roger was a very serious young man. Further advantages and disadvantages will come to our attention in the course of this history.

  Since he entered the city hungry he immediately sought work in restaurants. He began earning his living at the bottom of the ladder of all employment; he washed dishes. There is something comical about low tasks being performed not only adequately but to perfection. Roger knew no better, having no sense of humor. The Ashleys gave all of themselves to whatever task was set before them. He was silent without being sullen, industrious without being aggressive, and, like his father, he was inventive. He gradually instituted procedures that made for speed, efficiency, and economy. The first thing he did was to place wooden boxes in the washing troughs. All the dishwashers were getting bent backs, stiff necks, chest pains, and murderous rages from leaning over ten hours a day. He was remarked. He was called into the kitchen to supervise the mechanics of delivering and removing plates. The restaurant, like Chicago, had grown too fast. In no time he was all over the place. His name was constantly in the air, “Trent, Trent! Wo ist der verfluchte Kerl?” “Trent! How can I work if there’s no goddamned fish here?” He was blamed for everything that went wrong, but he had a calming effect on the irritability of cooks and waiters. They cursed him during those terrible hours from noon to three and from six to nine, but when they themselves sat down to eat they heaped his plate. Emergencies arose and his work carried him into the dining rooms. He reorganized service tables and sideboards. His wages were raised once, but raises are not readily given to the silent and the undemanding. He left the restaurant at the end of three months. “Resigned” is too grand a word for those who receive seventy cents a day. Feeding the public had become distasteful to him. He felt there was something infantile about it. Besides, he was looking about for a night job that would give him an opportunity to explore Chicago by day. It would also, after a short rest, enable him to get work by day as well. “The E
lms” needed money and he needed a new pair of pants. Sleep is for sloths. His fellow workers at the restaurant were aghast and even wept, but he left without regret. Everybody liked him and he liked no one.

  He applied for the position of night clerk in a hotel. He was turned away from the better hotels because of his youthful appearance and his rusticity. Finally, he was given the night shift at the Carr-Bingham. He earned less money, but he was allowed to sleep in the trunk room under the eaves. He made himself tea at sunrise. He ate once a day, standing up. In any one of a dozen German saloons in the neighborhood he could help himself, for the price of a beer, to the mounds of pumpernickel, cold cuts, cheese, and pickles. The Carr-Bingham was a fourth-rate hotel. In sixth-rate hotels all is misery and vice; in a fourth-rate one there is a grain of effort and a wisp of hope. Those who are silent, self-effacing, and attentive become the recipients of confidences. He heard many life stories between ten at night and eight in the morning. From every side there was brought home to him a thing that had never come to his attention, except in the matter of Goshen: the importance of money to self-respect and, above all, to independence. It was during his first days at the Carr-Bingham that he received the letter from Sophia telling of the boarding-house at “The Elms,” about Mrs. Guilfoyle, Brother Jorgenson, and the high school teacher. He promptly went out and found a daytime job. Almost nightly one or other of the guests tried to borrow money from him. “Just fifty cents, Trent—that’s a good fellow,” “I’ll pay you back tomorrow, honestly I will.” He was no lender; he knew no greater need than his own. He appropriated a pair of shoes from the belongings of an absconding guest. He was often called upon to put drunkards to bed. On two occasions he pocketed the dollar bill or loose change that these late revelers dropped behind them on the stairs. Money, he felt, was for those who needed it. It’s a spiritless son and breadwinner who does not write his own morality. He reflected further on the matter, however, when two of his three shirts, then some money, were stolen from him. Long before he left the Carr-Bingham he decided that he would not become a hotel man. He had known a home. Night after night he was aware of the guests—the querulous breathing, the abrupt awakenings, the unrestorative sleep of the homeless.

  Dr. Gillies’s letter of recommendation was useful. He sold haberdashery all day, standing behind a narrow counter. He left the position after three weeks in order to catch up with sleep. When he announced his departure he was offered a promotion which he did not accept. He sorted cheques all day, seated at a table in a bank. He became a messenger in a law firm, an interoffice runner—the job was called that of “Indian.” He extended and even created his own usefulness. Everywhere he observed, weighed, explored, and eliminated the professions. He watched the chiefs—their hands and eyes, their relations with their subordinates, their greetings on arrival and departure. Roger had never attended a theatre, but he had played King Herod and Ahasuerus in Sunday-school pageants, and he knew that the important thing in acting is not to be natural. Apparently the more important a businessman became the more he “acted.” These men did not greet their associates in the morning; they “acted” greeting their associates in the morning. Their very smiles and frowns and clearings of the throat were calculated to convey that they were important, busy, and short of temper. It was apparent that they were somehow afraid—afraid of a non-acted word or gesture. Moreover, Roger became aware of the deformation induced by the sedentary life—the revolt of the body against the long day in the swivel chair, the sagging cheek, the paunch, the increasing fatigue in the afternoon, the strained breathing, the mounting irritation, the soda tablets, and the spittoon. Roger seldom thought of his father, but his father was serving him as the measure of a man. He had never known him to be for one moment guilty of acting. These merchants and bankers and lawyers, he asked himself, did they present a different self to their wives and children? Did they “act” being husbands and fathers? Of course, they did. He’d seen that often in Coaltown—Joel Miller’s father and George Lansing’s father, the great and late Breckenridge Lansing. John Ashley had begun the day singing loudly before his shaving mirror. He raised a joyful storm in the house. “Bathroom’s free, little doggies! Last one to breakfast is a buffalo.” His son was certain that these men did not sing in the morning. John Ashley had driven away to his office with delight and, arrived on the hill, had divided his time between office, workshop, company store, infirmary, and the shafts. Roger resolved that he would never follow a career that involved sitting down all day. In addition he gathered, in some obscure way, that a large part of all this “acting” was an attempt to make the operations of business appear more difficult than they were.

  Diversity of experience does not in itself constitute an education, though the boast is often heard that it does. Contact with the suffering of others does not in itself enlarge understanding. Luck must play a part.

  Roger was overwhelmed by the crowds of Chicago. He was oppressed by the multiplicity of human beings. On the way to work he would stop and gaze at the throngs on LaSalle Street. (During his first days he thought he was seeing the same persons walking back and forth.) All these men and women had souls, had “selves.” All were as important to themselves as he was to himself. In seventy years everyone he was looking at—and himself—would be dead, except a few old freaks. There’d be a whole new million hurrying and worrying and laughing and talking. “Get out of my way. I don’t know you. I’m busy living.”

  “Mr. Joch said that Peking in China was eight times as big as Chicago. Crowds make you think of death; death makes you think of crowds. . . . ? Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born. Trapped into life . . . ? Cemeteries must be awfully crowded: ‘Did you enjoy your trip, son?’ ‘Was it a pleasant visit, ma’am?’ . . . ? Chicago’s like a big clockshop—all those little hammers going. In the street people put on a face so that strangers won’t read their souls. A crowd is a sterner judge than a relative or a friend. The crowd is God. LaSalle Street is like hell—you’re being judged all the time. . . . ? Suicide very logical.

  “In Old Quarry Pond there were millions of minnows. Mr. Marden said that fish ate their own eggs when there were too many. War—not enough food to go round.

  “Crowds make you think of money. Everybody has some money in his pocket. Metal and paper. Represents a certain amount of work and the quality of the work. Biggest lie under the sun. Mr. Joch telling me about the Pullman strike nine years ago. . . . ?

  “Crowds make you think about how the sexes attract one another. On the street men’s eyes never quiet, every minute looking for a pretty girl. Women put blinkers on their faces; look straight ahead. Pretend they don’t see anybody. Same thing. Pull of the sexes is like a carrot hanging in front of a donkey’s nose. Keeps up his interest. Like Shakespeare says, ‘Lights fools the way to dusty death.’ . . . ?

  “Crowds make you think about religion. What did God mean by making so many? I’m not going to begin thinking about religion for five years. I don’t know where to begin. Probably just a carrot in front of your nose. Makes people feel important. Maybe Papa’s dead. But he’s not dead for Sophie and me. He’s alive in us even when we aren’t thinking about him.

  “Imagination means seeing through walls. And seeing through skulls. Eugene V. Debs in prison just a mile away. I wish I could be a fly on the wall and imagine what he thinks about people and cemeteries and lots of things.”

  At times he felt himself shrinking to a ghost, to a nobody—cold, meaningless, and alone. To recover himself he placed Sophia beside him. “Look, Sophie! Just look!”

  He decided to appraise a life in medicine. Without presenting Dr. Gillies’s letter he applied at a hospital for work as an orderly and was engaged at once. The pay was as low as the dishwasher’s, but he was given his meals and a cot in a dormitory. He swabbed out operating rooms and carried out pails of flesh. He fainted once, as did the nurse beside him. He washed the moribund and held the aged and broken in his arms while the nurses changed the sheets under them. He
had never been ill and prior to his arrival at the Carr-Bingham he had seen very little illness. The examples of it he had seen there were obviously the result of mistakes and general foolishness. It was some time before he was able to free himself of this assumption. Here, too, he was silent, willing, and tireless. The nurses came to take it for granted that he was always on duty. There is something comical, you remember, about performing a low job perfectly. This servant had no sense of proportion. In the wards after “lights out” he would return several times during the night to tend Mr. Kegan’s fistula or the unhappy Barry Hotchkiss’s strangulated hernia. His devotion to duty was mistaken for sympathy. He neglected nothing; he forgot nothing. In previous tasks he had inspired friendship; here his comings and goings were followed with love. He loved no one. When he hastened silently between the beds at three in the morning whispers arose—as on some battlefield after a hard-fought defeat—“Trent! Trent!” He was much in demand as a letter writer. (“I have only time for about twenty words, Mr. Watson.” “You already owe me for three stamps, Judge.”) He was occasionally called into the women’s wards. Mrs. Rosenzweig clutched his hand and said softly, “You are a good boy. God will reward you.” Roger wanted none of God’s recompenses. He wanted twenty dollars to send his mother.

  Every month that passed saw a reduction in the number of things that could surprise him. His contacts with his fellow orderlies enlarged his experience. Dr. Gillies had refrained from telling him that they were drawn from among the all but unemployable—men fresh from prison or absent without leave from their country’s armed forces, unfrocked priests, epileptics, pyromaniacs under surveillance, cryptographers working on Shakespeare’s plays, collectors of dolls’ clothing, weight lifters, and world reformers. The vast room was seldom quiet, for the orderlies worked in staggered shifts. Roger slept with cotton in his ears, only ostensibly because of the noise—he could have slept through battles and cyclones—but because of the conversation. The presence of woman obsessed the dormitory at all hours, resembling a cloud of gnats, invoked and repelled in cackles, guffaws, yelps, and long feverish stories.