The next morning we was in New York. It was early; not even seven o’clock yet. It was too early. “Likely they ain’t even finished breakfast yet,” I says.
“Breakfast hell,” Lawyer says. “They haven’t even gone to bed yet. This is New York, not Yoknapatawpha County.” So we went to the hotel where Lawyer had already engaged a room. Except it wasn’t a room, it was three of them: a parlour and two bedrooms. “We can have breakfast up here too,” he says.
“Breakfast?” I says.
“They’ll send it up here.”
“This is New York,” I says. “I can eat breakfast in the bedroom or kitchen or on the back gallery in Yoknapatawpha County.” So we went downstairs to the dining-room. Then I says, “What time do they eat breakfast then? Sundown? Or is that jest when they get up?”
“No,” he says. “We got a errand first. — No,” he says, “we got two errands.” He was looking at it again, though I will have to do him the justice to say he hadn’t mentioned it again since that first time when I got in the car back in Jefferson. And I remember how he told me once how maybe New York wasn’t made for no climate known to man but at least some weather was jest made for New York. In which case, this was sholy some of it: one of them soft blue drowsy days in the early fall when the sky itself seems like it was resting on the earth like a soft blue mist, with the tall buildings rushing up into it and then stopping, the sharp edges fading like the sunshine wasn’t jest shining on them but kind of humming, like wires singing. Then I seen it: a store, with a shop window, a entire show window with not nothing in it but one necktie.
“Wait,” I says.
“No,” he says. “It was all right as long as just railroad conductors looked at it, but you can’t face a preacher in it.”
“No,” I says, “wait.” Because I had heard about these New York side-alley stores too. “If it takes that whole show window to deserve jest one necktie, likely they will want three or four dollars for it.”
“We can’t help it now,” he says. “This is New York. Come on.”
And nothing inside neither except some gold chairs and two ladies in black dresses and a man dressed like a congressman or at least a preacher, that knowed Lawyer by active name. And then a office with a desk and a vase of flowers and a short dumpy dark woman in a dress that wouldn’t a fitted nobody, with grey-streaked hair and the handsomest dark eyes I ever seen even if they was popped a little, that kissed Lawyer and then he said to her, “Myra Allanovna, this is Vladimir Kyrilytch,” and she looked at me and said something; yes, I know it was Russian, and Lawyer saying: “Look at it. Just once if you can bear it,” and I says,
“Sholy it ain’t quite as bad as that. Of course I had ruther it was yellow and red instead of pink and green. But all the same—” and she says,
“You like yellow and red?”
“Yessum,” I says. Then I says, “In fact” before I could stop, and she says,
“Yes, tell me,” and I says,
“Nothing. I was jest thinking that if you could jest imagine a necktie and then pick it right up and put it on, I would imagine one made outen red with a bunch or maybe jest one single sunflower in the middle of it,” and she says,
“Sunflower?” and Lawyer says,
“Helianthe.” Then he says, “No, that’s wrong. Tournesol. Sonnenblume,” and she says Wait and was already gone, and now I says Wait myself.
“Even a five-dollar necktie couldn’t support all them gold chairs.”
“It’s too late now,” Lawyer says. “Take it off.” Except that when she come back, it not only never had no sunflower, it wasn’t even red. It was jest dusty. No, that was wrong; you had looked at it by that time. It looked like the outside of a peach, that you know that in a minute, providing you can keep from blinking, you will see the first beginning of when it starts to turn peach. Except that it don’t do that. It’s still jest dusted over with gold, like the back of a sunburned gal. “Yes,” Lawyer says, “send out and get him a white shirt. He never wore a white shirt before either.”
“No, never,” she says. “Always blue, not? And this blue, always? The same blue as your eyes?”
“That’s right,” I says.
“But how?” she says. “By fading them? By just washing them?”
“That’s right,” I says, “I jest washes them.”
“You mean, you wash them? Yourself?”
“He makes them himself too,” Lawyer says.
“That’s right,” I says. “I sells sewing machines. First thing I knowed I could run one too.”
“Of course,” she says. “This one for now. Tomorrow, the other one, red with sonnenblume.” Then we was outside again. I was still trying to say Wait.
“Now I got to buy two of them,” I says. “I’m trying to be serious. I mean, please try to believe I am as serious right now as ere a man in your experience. Jest exactly how much you reckon was the price on that one in that window?”
And Lawyer not even stopping, saying over his shoulder in the middle of folks pushing past and around us in both directions: “I don’t know. Her ties run up to a hundred and fifty. Say, seventy-five dollars—” It was exactly like somebody had hit me a quick light lick with the edge of his hand across the back of the neck until next I knowed I was leaning against the wall back out of the rush of folks in a fit of weak trembles with Lawyer more or less holding me up. “You all right now?” he says.
“No I ain’t,” I says. “Seventy-five dollars for a necktie? I can’t! I won’t!”
“You’re forty years old,” he says. “You should a been buying at the minimum one tie a year ever since you fell in love the first time. When was it? eleven? twelve? thirteen? Or maybe it was eight or nine, when you first went to school — provided the first-grade teacher was female of course. But even call it twenty. That’s twenty years, at one dollar a tie a year. That’s twenty dollars. Since you are not married and never will be and don’t have any kin close enough to exhaust and wear you out by taking care of you or hoping to get anything out of you, you may live another forty-five. That’s sixty-five dollars. That means you will have an Allanovna tie for only ten dollars. Nobody else in the world ever got an Allanovna tie for ten dollars.”
“I won’t!” I says. “I won’t!”
“All right. I’ll make you a present of it then.”
“I can’t do that,” I says.
“All right. You want to go back there and tell her you don’t want the tie?”
“Don’t you see I can’t do that?”
“All right,” he says. “Come on. We’re already a little late.” So when we got to this hotel we went straight to the saloon.
“We’re almost there,” I says. “Can’t you tell me yet who it’s going to be?”
“No,” he says. “This is New York. I want to have a little fun and pleasure too.” And a moment later, when I realised that Lawyer hadn’t never laid eyes on him before, I should a figgered why he had insisted so hard on me coming on this trip. Except that I remembered how in this case Lawyer wouldn’t need no help since you are bound to have some kind of affinity or outragement anyhow for the man that for twenty-five years has been as much a part and as big a part of your simple natural normal anguish of jest having to wake up again tomorrow, as this one had. So I says,
“I’ll be durned. Howdy, Hoake.” Because there he was, a little grey at the temples, with not jest a sunburned outdoors look but a rich sunburned outdoors look that never needed that-ere dark expensive-looking city suit, let alone two waiters jumping around the table where he was at, to prove it, already setting there where Lawyer had drawed him from wherever it was out west he had located him, the same as he had drawed me for this special day. No, it wasn’t Lawyer that had drawed McCarron and me from a thousand miles away and two thousand more miles apart, the three of us to meet at this moment in a New York saloon: it was that gal that done it — that gal that never had seen one of us and fur as I actively heard it to take a oath, never had said much more t
han good-morning to the other two — that gal that likely not even knowed but didn’t even care that she had inherited her maw’s fatality to draw four men anyhow to that web, that one strangling hair; drawed all four of us without even lifting her hand — her husband, her father, the man that was still trying to lay down his life for her maw if he could jest find somebody that wanted it, and what you might call a by-standing family friend — to be the supporting cast while she said “I do” outen the middle of a matrimonial production line at the City Hall before getting on a ship to go to Europe to do whatever it was she figgered she was going to do in that war. So I was the one that said, “This is Lawyer Stevens, Hoake,” with three waiters now (he was evidently that rich) bustling around helping us set down.
“What’s yours?” he says to Lawyer. “I know what V.K. wants. — Bushmill’s,” he says to the waiter. “Bring the bottle. — You’ll think you’re back home,” he says to me. “It tastes jest like that stuff Calvin Bookwright used to make — do you remember?” Now he was looking at it too. “That’s an Allanovna, isn’t it?” he says. “You’ve branched out a little since Frenchman’s Bend too, haven’t you?” Now he was looking at Lawyer. He taken his whole drink at one swallow though the waiter was already there with the bottle before he could a signalled. “Don’t worry,” he says. “You’ve got my word. I’m going to keep it.”
“You stop worrying too,” I says. “Lawyer’s already got Linda. She’s going to believe him first, no matter what anybody else might forget and try to tell her.” And we could have et dinner there too, but Lawyer says,
“This is New York. We can eat dinner in Uncle Cal Bookwright’s springhouse back home.” So we went to that dining-room. Then it was time. We went to the City Hall in a taxicab. While he was getting out, the other taxicab come up and they got out. He was not big, he jest looked big, like a football player. No: like a prize fighter. He didn’t look jest tough, and ruthless ain’t the word neither. He looked like he would beat you or maybe you would beat him but you probably wouldn’t, or he might kill you or you might kill him though you probably wouldn’t. But he wouldn’t never dicker with you, looking at you with eyes that was pale like Hub Hampton’s but they wasn’t hard: jest looking at you without no hurry and completely, missing nothing, and with already a pretty good idea beforehand of what he was going to see.
We went inside. It was a long hall, a corridor, a line of folks two and two that they would a been the last one in it except it was a line that never had no last: jest a next to the last and not that long: on to a door that said REGISTRAR and inside. That wasn’t long neither; the two taxicabs was still waiting. “So this is Grinnich Village,” I says. The door give right off the street but with a little shirt-tail of ground behind it you could a called a yard though maybe city folks called it a garden; It even had one tree in it, with three things on it that undoubtedly back in the spring or summer was leaves. But inside it was nice: full of folks of course, with two waiters dodging in and out with trays of glasses of champagne and three or four of the company helping too, not to mention the folks that was taking over the apartment while Linda and her new husband was off at the war in Spain — a young couple about the same age as them. “Is he a sculptor too?” I says to Lawyer.
“No,” Lawyer says. “He’s a newspaperman.”
“Oh,” I says. “Then likely they been married all the time.”
It was nice: a room with plenty of window lights. It had a heap of stuff in it too but it looked like it was used — a wall full of books and a piano and I knowed they was pictures because they was hanging on the wall and I knowed that some of the other things was sculpture but the rest of them I didn’t know what they was, made outen pieces of wood or iron or strips of tin and wires. Except that I couldn’t ask then because of the rest of the poets and painters and sculptors and musicians, since he would still have to be the host until we — him and Linda and Lawyer and Hoake and me — could slip out and go down to where the ship was; evidently a heap of folks found dreams in Grinnich Village but evidently it was a occasion when somebody married in it. And one of them wasn’t even a poet or painter or sculptor or musician or even jest a ordinary moral newspaperman but evidently a haberdasher taking Saturday evening off. Because we was barely in the room before he was not only looking at it too but rubbing it between his thumb and finger. “Allanovna,” he says.
“That’s right,” I says.
“Oklahoma?” he says. “Oil?”
“Sir?” I says.
“Oh,” he says. “Texas. Cattle then. In Texas you can choose your million between oil and cattle, right?”
“No sir,” I says, “Missippi. I sell sewing machines.”
So it was a while before Kohl finally come to me to fill my glass again.
“I understand you grew up with Linda’s mother,” he says.
“That’s right,” I says. “Did you make these?”
“These what?” he says.
“In this room,” I says.
“Oh,” he says. “Do you want to see more of them? Why?”
“I don’t know yet,” I says. “Does that matter?” So we shoved on through the folks — it had begun to take shoving by now — into a hall and then up some stairs. And this was the best of all: a loft with one whole side of the roof jest window lights — a room not jest where folks used but where somebody come off by his-self and worked. And him jest standing a little behind me, outen the way, giving me time and room both to look. Until at last he says,
“Shocked? Mad?” Until I says,
“Do I have to be shocked and mad at something jest because I never seen it before?”
“At your age, yes,” he says. “Only children can stand surprise for the pleasure of surprise. Grown people can’t bear surprise unless they are promised in advance they will want to own it.”
“Maybe I ain’t had enough time yet,” I says.
“Take it then,” he says. So he leaned against the wall with his arms folded like a football player, with the noise of the party where he was still supposed to be host at coming up the stairs from below, while I taken my time to look: at some I did recognise and some I almost could recognise and maybe if I had time enough I would, and some I knowed I wouldn’t never quite recognise, until all of a sudden I knowed that wouldn’t matter neither, not jest to him but to me too. Because anybody can see and hear and smell and feel and taste what he expected to hear and see and feel and smell and taste, and won’t nothing much notice your presence nor miss your lack. So maybe when you can see and feel and smell and hear and taste what you never expected to and hadn’t never even imagined until that moment, maybe that’s why Old Moster picked you out to be the one of the ones to be alive.
So now it was time for that-ere date. I mean the one that Lawyer and Hoake had fixed up, with Hoake saying, “But what can I tell her — her husband — her friends?” and Lawyer says,
“Why do you need to tell anybody anything? I’ve attended to all that. As soon as enough of them have drunk her health, just take her by the arm and clear out. Just don’t forget to be aboard the ship by eleven-thirty.” Except Hoake still tried, the two of them standing in the door ready to leave, Hoake in that-ere dark expensive city suit and his derby hat in his hand, and Linda in a kind of a party dress inside her coat. And it wasn’t that they looked alike, because they didn’t. She was tall for a woman, so tall she didn’t have much shape (I mean, the kind that folks whistle at), and he wasn’t tall for a man and in fact kind of stocky. But their eyes was exactly alike. Anyhow, it seemed to me that anybody that seen them couldn’t help but know they was kin. So he still had to try it: “A old friend of her mother’s family. Her grandfather and my father may have been distantly related—” and Lawyer saying,
“All right, all right, beat it. Don’t forget the time,” and Hoake saying,
“Yes yes, we’ll be at Twenty-One for dinner and afterward at the Stork Club if you need to telephone.” Then they was gone and the rest of the company went t
oo except three other men that I found out was newspapermen too, foreign correspondents; and Kohl his-self helped his new tenant’s wife cook the spaghetti and we et it and drunk some more wine, red this time, and they talked about the war, about Spain and Ethiopia and how this was the beginning: the lights was going off all over Europe soon and maybe in this country too; until it was time to go to the ship. And more champagne in the bedroom there, except that Lawyer hadn’t hardly got the first bottle open when Linda and Hoake come in.
“Already?” Lawyer says. “We didn’t expect you for at least a hour yet.”
“She — we decided to skip the Stork Club,” Hoake says. “We took a fiacre through the Park instead. And now,” he says, that hadn’t even put the derby hat down.
“Stay and have some champagne,” Lawyer says, and Kohl said something too. But Linda had done already held out her hand.
“Good-bye, Mr McCarron,” she says. “Thank you for the evening and for coming to my wedding.”
“Can’t you say ‘Hoake’ yet?” he says.
“Good-bye, Hoake,” she says.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 514
