The Eighth Day

by Thornton Wilder

  She glanced at her brother’s face. It was hard and set. His eyes were angry and sullen, but he remained silent.

  “Do you realize that Mama had no friends? She didn’t dislike Mrs. Lansing. She didn’t dislike Mrs. Gillies or Miss Doubkov. She spent hundreds—maybe thousands—of hours with them. She merely didn’t care whether they existed or not. Mama cared for only one person in the world. She adored Papa.—One day I told the Maestro that I thought that most of the heroines in opera were silly geese. He said ‘Yes, of course. Opera is about greedy possessive passion. The girls make one mistake after another. They’re little whirlpools of destruction. First they bring death down on the baritones and basses—their fathers, guardians, or brothers; then they bring it down on the tenors. Then at half past eleven they go mad, or stab themselves, or jump into a fire, or get strangled. Or they just expire. Self-centered possessive love. The women in the audience cry a little, but on the way home they’re already planning tomorrow’s dinner!’ Papa loved Mama, but he didn’t adore her. Papa was happy, but he missed something. After you left and Mama opened the boardinghouse—”

  “Sophie opened the boardinghouse!”

  “Yes, Sophie did. I should have, but I was too stupid. Well, Sophie hired Mrs. Swenson to come back and help with the housework. I used to sit for hours in the kitchen, paring potatoes and stringing beans and things like that. She’d talk. I learned some things about Papa. In the early years before that shooting—do you remember what time we had supper at “The Elms”? We had it the latest of anybody in town—at six-thirty. We all thought that Papa had to finish up things at the mine. No, Papa got through at the mine at five and then he drove all over with that old horse. He called on the miners’ families; then coming down the hill he visited homes. He’d talk. He’d repair things. He’d fix pipes and flues. He’d listen to people’s troubles. He’d lend money. He’d come driving into the barn at six-thirty exactly. But this is the point: he never told Mama about all these friends. Why? There was nothing secretive about Papa. He simply didn’t tell her because she wouldn’t be interested. She was not a noticing woman and she was not a . . . ? a sympathizing woman.”

  Roger made no answer. He paid the bill. They got on the streetcar for the long drive south and east. The cars were crowded. Czech and Hungarian and Polish families going to visit their relatives beside the steel mills; Italian families going to visit their relatives in the marketgarden area around Codington. Families going for their last autumn Sunday at the Indiana dunes. Roger stood on the platform, a great weight about his heart. A mile of sandstone houses, homes. Miles of wooden houses, homes. Then farmhouses—apple trees in the yards, swings for the children—homes, families. They descended from the car in an Italian village. There remained half a mile to walk. They turned at the corner between a Farmacía Garibaldi and a Campo Sportivo Vittorio Emanuele. Roger’s depression had lifted. He gazed about him with a faint smile on his face. Good or bad, he was on the side of homes. He was filled with the resolve to have one of his own,—damned soon, too.

  On this occasion Gianni had little attention to spare for his visitors. He was engrossed. He had fairly well mastered walking and had taken up building. Being an Ashley he wanted no assistance. His mother and uncle sat in the grape arbor with glasses of wine before them, silent under the gift of the Indian summer, gazing across the long brown plain. The crops had been garnered. The soil had been turned. The day had begun with frost; now in the somnolent heat a scarcely perceptible steam arose from the earth—a promise of renewal as compelling as those in the early days of April. Presently Gianni climbed on his mother’s lap and fell asleep.

  Roger began slowly:

  “Lily, the important thing is to be just. Even on the everyday level Mama was a remarkable mother of a family. Papa had very little money. We never knew we were poor. She worked all day, every day of her life. She was never short-tempered. She was never unfair. Even if it’s true that she felt no particular friendship for those ladies, she never said a malicious thing about them. She read us the best books; she played us the best music. But that’s only the smaller part of it. Not long ago the Maestro was talking to me after dinner in his studio. He said something like this: ‘I’m interested in your parents—yours and Lily’s—and in your ancestors. I’m interested in your childhood. I’ve taught more than a hundred young American men and women with fine voices. They’ve sung well. Some of them are now famous. But they seldom really understand what they’re singing. Your sister comes to me. I teach her things about breathing and placement and so on, but in matters of style and feeling and taste I have only to say a few words to her. Somewhere else she learned how to sing nobly. She can express grief without being sentimental. She can be angry without being coarse.’ He went on like that—oh, yes: he said, ‘She can be coquettish without being vulgar.’ He wondered where you got it. There was nothing small about Mama. Think of her walking every day to that trial. Think of her on that morning when the police came stamping into the front hall asking who rescued Papa. Mama’s big. You owe her a debt as big as the Rocky Mountains. You got a lot of fine things from Papa, too, but we’ll talk about them another time. . . . ?

  “We’ve all got to be as we were made—as the dice fall out of the cup. We don’t know what Mama’s girlhood was like. I think that Papa rescued her from some difficult situation. I think what you call her ‘adoration’ is some kind of unending gratitude, maybe.”

  “Mammi!”

  “Sì, caro. Che vuoi?”

  “Mammi, cantà!”

  “Si, tesoro.”

  Lily sang softly the melody to which he was born. He fell asleep again.

  Roger went on: “In one way, Papa was like an animal. Can you see that?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Animals don’t know they’re going to die. You didn’t see him in court every day. How many times did you call on him in the jail?”

  “Three times.”

  “It wasn’t merely being brave—for Mama and us. It was just being calm and simple about death—about life and death.”

  “I try to sing it.”

  “Look! Look at the ducks going south!”

  “Hundreds of them.” Pause. “Thousands!”

  “A long time ago I heard Dr. Gillies make a speech, a kind of speech. It was in the Illinois Tavern on New Year’s Eve of 1899. He said that evolution was going on and on. After a while—maybe millions of years—a new kind of human being will be evolved. All we see now is just a stage that humanity’s going through—possession and fear and cruelty. People will outgrow it, he said.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  He looked out over the fields. Beautiful is the earth. He mumbled something. He put out his hand and enclosed Gianni’s dusty foot.

  “I didn’t hear you, Roger.”

  “Oh, one would have to live ten thousand years to notice any change. One must feel it inside—that is, believe it.”

  Gianni awoke and wanted to go to his uncle. Roger hurled him up to the leafy roof of the arbor; he swung him between his legs; he hung him up by his heels. Gianni screamed between terror and ecstasy. Women don’t play such games. He returned, chastened, to his mother’s lap. He wasn’t sure—until next time—whether he loved his Uncle Roshi or not.

  Roger, still standing, continued to gaze at the fields. “I’ve been reading. . . . ? Fifty years ago in Bengal a hundred thousand peasants made a bare subsistence from weaving cotton. Soon the British government forbade them to do any weaving; Manchester was getting its cotton from America. So the Indians went down on all fours and groped for roots and bulbs to eat. Slow starvation, malformation, and death. The Civil War breaks out. No cotton for Manchester. Terrible times in Manchester—slow starvation, malformation, and death. After the war the routes are open again, but improvements in mechanical processes have eliminated twenty workers for every one that’s kept on. The Negroes get down on all fours and grope for roots and bulbs. Slow starvation, malnutrition, and death. . . . ? Th
e world’s getting smaller. Too many people. Nobody can manage it.”

  “Mammi, cantà!”

  Lily looked at him woefully. “What’s the answer, Roger? Can’t I have my ten children?”

  He returned to his bench. His eyes met hers without a smile. He said sadly: “I’ll let all Ashleys live.”

  Lily put her son on the ground. She knelt at Roger’s feet and clasped her hands on his knees. “Think it through for us, Roger! Find answers to all this for us. I beg you—in Papa’s name—in Gianni’s name—”

  A strange thing happened. Roger—Roger Ashley!—burst into tears. He arose and walked up and down the road.

  “Mammi, cantà!”

  Lily sang. Many times she sang the emotion that filled her on that afternoon—in Milan, in Rio, in Barcelona . . . ? in Manchester.

  Roger returned to her, smiling. “I’m going to Coaltown for Christmas,” he said.

  Roger left Chicago at noon on the twenty-third of December. He felt no elation, he even fancied he was ill. He had had little rest and no vacation in two and a half years. He was encumbered with luggage, which included his and Lily’s Christmas presents. He put them on the racks above him and settled down in a seat at the back of the car. He was never without a book. He opened Bagehot’s Lombard Street and began underlining phrases, diagramming the steps of the exposition, reading each paragraph twice. He fell asleep. Many hours later he was awakened by noise and movement in the car. The train was receiving and discharging passengers at Fort Barry. A few minutes later it moved south for a quarter of a mile to the refueling station and came to a long halt. This was where his father had been rescued two years and five months before. Most of the passengers descended from the cars and walked briskly up and down the cinder path beside the water tank and the coal sheds. There were many students on the train returning home for the holidays; they sang. The light was fading. A few snowflakes hovered in the air. Roger’s spirits revived. He scanned the faces of those who strolled by him. His attention was attracted by a tall thin girl of about his own age who had separated herself from her companions and was walking rapidly to and fro. Her eyes and complexion were dark. She wore a sealskin cap and a collar of the same fur rose above her ears. Her hands were clasped in a sealskin muff. An indefinable grace and distinction invested her. He stopped and looked across the ditch toward the clump of trees where—it was said—his father’s rescuers had given him a horse. He resumed his walk. The girl in the sealskin hat passed him twice, then stopped before him and said:

  “Roger, I want to talk to you about something.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Not here—but when we’re in Coaltown.”

  “I beg your pardon, but I don’t know who you are.”

  “I’m Félicité Lansing.”

  “Félicité! You’ve grown!”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m very glad to see you. How’s your mother?”

  “She’s well.”

  “How are you all? How’s George and Anne?”

  “They’re well. Roger, I want to talk to you about something.”

  Her manner was grave and urgent. Suddenly he remembered that Sophia had written that Félicité Lansing was “studying to be a nun.” There was something nunlike in the young woman before him: that absence of calling any attention to herself.

  “What is it you want to say, Félicité?”

  “It’s something very important about . . . ? your father and my father.”

  She looked over his shoulder, as at some woeful ordeal that must be met and surmounted.

  “Yes, Félicité. I think now we can find two seats side by side on the train.”

  “I can’t tell you about it now. I’m not ready. Maybe what I have to tell you is very terrible. I didn’t know that I’d be meeting you this way—on the train.”

  “I’ll come to your house tomorrow, or you come to my house.”

  Félicité continued to gaze, pondering, beyond him, though not in evasion of his glance; when she looked into his face it was without reservation. Roger’s heart leapt in recognition: her eyes, like her mother’s, were of slightly different colors; like her mother she had a mole on her right cheekbone.

  She said: “Until I’m sure of what I have to tell you—very sure—my mother mustn’t know it; or your mother. George came back three nights ago. He ran away from town on the night before Father was killed. He rode on freight cars, as hoboes do. He went to California and became an actor. He’s been very sick. There are many things. I have to tell you. I haven’t been able to tell them to anybody.”

  Again she gazed over his shoulder in silence. To himself Roger said: “But I know her. We must have said thousands of words to one another.”

  “I’ve read some of the essays you wrote for the paper. Miss Doubkov lent them to me. I think you’ll understand. I mean, I think you’ll help me understand.” She put out her hand. “Maybe we’ll have to be very very strong and very brave.”

  The train gave a jerk. The whistle blew. Some girls came up to Félicité shrieking: “Filly! Filly! The train’s starting. You’ll be left behind.”

  “That’s why I can’t tell you with all these girls around. It’s secret, very secret.—Listen! Miss Doubkov has a store on Main Street. I help her sometimes. I have the key. She said she’s not going to work there on Christmas Eve. Can you come there tomorrow morning at half past ten?”

  “Filly! Filly! You’ll be left behind!”

  “Yes, I can.”

  The hazel and the blue of her eyes seemed to darken. “Maybe it’s not true. Maybe it’s true and terrible. But if it’s true we must know it. The important thing is to prove to everybody that your father was innocent.”

  She quickly put her hand in his, murmured, “Tomorrow at ten-thirty,” and entered the car. Roger resumed his seat. He reopened his book, but his eyes kept returning to the sealskin cap at the far end of the car. “What a girl!” Félicité sat motionless on the aisle; her companions babbled and fluttered about her like doves. Their voices were shrill with the excitement of the coming holiday. He heard their insistent “Filly” this and “Filly” that.

  Roger said to himself: “I shall marry that girl.”

  IV. HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY

  1883

  Hoboken, New Jersey, is a town bearing a Dutch name, once largely inhabited by people of German descent. The majority of the houses were of red brick, agreeably shaded by locust and linden trees. In good weather the citizens of Hoboken enjoyed (and still enjoy) sitting on benches along the waterfront watching the ships entering and leaving New York harbor. A great deal of beer was brewed and drunk in Hoboken, but the consumption in the various beer halls was sedate and ruminative rather than boisterous. The town contained an engineering school. Most of its students came from a distance and made fun of the town and its brewers; when they wished to enjoy themselves they took the ferry to New York, where “life” was reported to abound.

  One Sunday morning in the spring of 1883 John Ashley, twenty-one years old, was sitting on a waterfront bench with Beata Kellerman, nineteen, daughter of one of the more prosperous brewers. He was wearing the new suit that he had bought for Easter. It was green—almost “bottle green.” His domed hat was brown. His new shoes were yellow and shone. He wore a high stiff collar. The lapels on his light tan overcoat were of plum-colored velvet. These were the clothes of a rich man’s son, but they were ill-chosen and suggested the country boy. At no time in his life was there anything remarkable to observe in John Ashley except his large nose, his attentive blue eyes, and his taciturnity. He was neither dark nor light, tall nor short, fat nor thin, handsome nor homely. His taciturnity did not proceed from shyness. He had no self-consciousness whatever. It sprang from his desire not to miss anything. He was constantly filled with wonder: mathematics and the laws of physics were wonderful; a day like this Sunday morning was wonderful; wonderful were the ships before him, the sea gulls, the clouds in the sky and the laws of vaporization that governed th
em; it was wonderful to be young with a long crowded life before him. Above all the girl beside him was wonderful. She would be his wife and they would have many wonderful children. Beata’s clothes also gave evidence of a rich father—from the high-buttoned shoes on her large feet to the fringed parasol in her mittened hand. Beata, however, arrested attention. She was a German version of a Greek goddess—“Junoesque,” said her drawing master—with wide-set prominent blue eyes, a splendid nose, and a full cushioned chin. Beata, too, was taciturn, but for different reasons. She had recently emerged from a life in which nothing was wonderful. She had learned to know John Ashley. For her that was wonder enough.

  On that morning Hoboken was very quiet. Not even church bells were heard, for an epidemic was at its height and the churches were closed. The disease had recurred for many years with varying symptoms and under different names. In 1883 it was called the “Maryland pneumonia.” Door after door bore the purple notice of infection and some the crêpe of mourning. Many students had been withdrawn by their parents from the Institute. John Ashley, too, had been summoned home, but had turned a deaf ear. He was the only child of doting parents in upper New York State. Idolized sons are not noted for gratitude or obedience. He had, in addition, little acquaintance with fear. He believed that illness and accident are apportioned to those who deserve them. He was now living in an empty house. The family with whom he boarded had fled the town and were making their home with relatives on a farm in Pennsylvania. Beata’s family had driven to church in New York City and would not return until evening. Beata and the servants had solemnly promised her parents that they would not leave the house during the day. She was presumably sitting in the parlor practicing a sonata by Beethoven with a brazier of smoking sulphur beside her. She was an exceptionally obedient daughter. Beata had spent her life in a prison house of many fears; from these her love for John Ashley had recently freed her. She no longer feared her mother or the mockery of her brothers and sisters or the opinion of her mother’s friends. Above all she had been freed from a fear of life itself—a confused dread of “men” and “babies,” and of an eternity of days spent in Hoboken. Within six weeks John Ashley had dispersed all these clouds. The crown of her love for him was gratitude.