Letty Fox (73 page)

D
EAR
L
ETTY
,

Subtlety is not one of my dominant characteristics; but nevertheless I can't get myself to call you a no-good-bitch for not writing. There are so many variables, besides your natural arbitrariness, that reservation of condemnation, castigation, and plain complaint will wait until I definitely don't hear from you for three, count them, months. Then, with the aid of a dictionary which I don't have now, your hide will burn. (It'll be Farmer and Henley's good book of bad slang.)

If you only realized how secluded we are, how vacuous our existence is, how lonely. It is away from everything, your pity alone would prompt you to at least let me know how lousy your place is, where you saw Luke Adams and your other suckers last, how the others are doing and especially, what's noo along the wires and especially “line” but not plainly, abstrusely. Haven't seen a decent newspaper, pamphlet, or spoken to a knowing soul. If you know any good people living near here, please let me live again; being confined here for the summer with a bunch of morons certainly does not result in any moral or mental stimulation. The town library is all the way over the other side of the place and almost a physical impossibility for me to get to from here. If you want to be especially kind, you could send me a couple of the latest books, doesn't your papa get them for review? Considered intellectual that is; I promise to read them. Don't know what struck me; rotten climate. In 1934 the War Dept. did away with the use of saltpeter in the food; however, maybe they use it round here, subversively, my manhood is gone, dormant, or wasting. I wake up, I am alive, but what's most interesting in me (probably) is dead: just is represented by his absence. All day lying, reading, sunning, swimming, presence of girls in sunsuits—and what then? The father of all living is dead. God have mercy on my soul if this is actually so because of my physical state. But they say the opposite; this was one thing I counted on, if I turned into a real lunger. I do not choose to live and yet be—pardon all this garbage, but am tired, have had no exercise worth a centimeter of the party Casanova you said I would turn into. Some garbage! not to say worse. What a life.

A
S EVER
, B.

P.S. I wrote another communication which I tore up and bloody nearly well tore up this one: the fact is I do nothing but crossword puzzles (hate them) or tell dirty stories (don't like them either—both too much effort) or write to you what I think of you, and tear that up. Tell me what I can do? Don't. I know it only too well.—B.

It took me a long time to really absorb this stricken note from my poor friend and it was midday before I read, without real sympathy, the sweet letter from my living bronze, Jeff Mossop.

(ABOUT TO LEAVE NEW YORK.)

L
ETTY
,

I make a gift to thee, back again, of an image of thine own; “my life is too vivid when my eyes are shut, my heart beats too much at night.” Why did it have to be, Letty, that always since I can remember my life is nothing, Letty, but an immense desire stretched toward a very little thing, a very delicate, weightless thing called Happiness? All the stages of my life, Letty—since this childhood, too bled by tears, too regulated by severity, too fevered with silence, my infancy without infancy, my infancy which flowed away to the rhythm of dull days which were crushed by the inexorable severity of a man, my father, whom I cannot hate and for which I therefore hate myself: from then, up to the man I am now, nourished on repressions, this repression, Letty, that is nothing, in short, but a great ungratified desire.

But why do I hesitate to speak of myself? Perhaps the day will come—close, it may be, Letty, close, dost thou desire it as I do?—where we will make an exchange of our lives. Then wilt thou not give me, in thy voice with its tranquil inflections, this little girl again which thou wast, the girl with the long imp's curls, where floated an extravagant forbidden sequin butterfly, gift of Mme. Pauline, and who sang in the country around dear, far Paris,
Meunier, tu dors!
and
Auprès de ma blonde!
And I will give thee a boy drunk with the country air and the leaves and grasses of his birthplace, who runs after the bearded goat and the glittering insects, in the loud insobriety of a free day, a day of unchecked childhood, on my family's farms. But now that the memory of minutes too brief come down upon me from the obscured stars of Harlem, now that the night swells with all that which was “the hope of a tomorrow of dream,” why must it be that there sings in my ear now the vibrant note of burning sorrows to come? From the closet of the night, orchestrates itself the symphony of beautiful dreams poignarded—it's an obscure theme, a
de profundis
of the living who sing with unrecorded voices, who are the voice of all the desires that one thought, perhaps, soon to be attained, married, possessed, and loved by the method of the heart. They drag along now in the silence and in the night, their funeral procession of mourning crape. Good night, Letty. I will tell thee what follows in my sleep, which the thought of thee will fill with a great population of fair Lettys. Good night, Letty.

J
EFF
.

I did not even show this letter around, for I did not know the temper of my family when it came to a man of this kind. But I felt the pleasure of being loved again and resolving to organize my life better from now on, I made up my mind to write a novel during the evenings when I was alone.

For my novel (on
Intolerance
) I had begun at the beginning, and made some notes for myself.

1. I must know different social sets. I am confined to one only, i.e., understand emotions only on faces of my class.
   
2. Must study anthropology, ethnology.
   
3. Anatomy, diagnosis by face, gait.
   
4. Current union, trade, and intellectual papers for phraseology—which avoid. Cant phrases, fads, movie wisecracks.
   
5. Hold forth on topic, like Liberia, in meetings, homes, to draw reactions. Slogans, headlines. Cover sleep.
   
6. National traditions, sexual traditions. Is there a true individual underneath? Seek.
   
7. Basic beliefs of all people, e.g., he is special individual, so is his wife; others are mere types.
   

I worked, and the events of the few preceding weeks began to lift from me like a fog-bank from a harbor. I was back in the world. I resolutely forgot the nights and days when I had sat gibbering with misery over men who were not there.

J
acky, now at college, and uncertain of her career, came to see me often, because I was alone at this new place. She had disliked both the Jane Street place and my friends, Amy and Lorna. She thought I was getting into trouble in Jane Street; and then she wanted to talk about herself and could not, with Amy and Lorna giving her advice about profane love. Jacky was on the classic side. She was handsome now, with dark gold hair still done in a plait crowning the oval head, hair that would become chestnut, gradually; her oval eyes fully opened, her long cheeks which in old age would droop into dewlaps, now were full, fresh, sensual. She had, above all, a remarkably beautiful skin, thick and translucent. When she was dull or dogged, her skin was dull as old paint; but at other times, she was radiant. She was well formed, more slender than myself, with an upward tug of the members which gave her an air of youthful pride. She was vain. Sometimes she would condescend to shine at a family party, but had the most curious vanity of all: she deserted the young men who clustered around her (Aunt Phyllis's days were over) for the older men; and, as there were several brilliant men in our circle, like Froggart, Gondych, Froggart's cousin, Solander, my father, and Banks, the lawyer, not to mention Joseph Montrose, all middle-aged men, she was the fancy of these men. No one else troubled about them at all. I, for one, could not bear them. But Jacky's wits led her astray. She wanted to take each clever man on, in hand-to-hand fight, and then in a general melee. She considered herself a wit. I was anxious about her future, for she had no aim. One week it was languages, the next, medicine; and the next, it was poetry that she would take up.

She came to see me one evening at the end of June as soon as college had closed. We had something to eat off the hotplate I had in my kitchenette, and sat at the window wondering what to do. I picked my words with Jacky, who, though no fool, had not had my experiences. Eventually, I got bored and would take her out to the movies. She generally paid. She was generous, even spendthrift. I had much to do with money, living alone as I did. But this evening, with her handsome, old-gold crowned face turned to the sunset across the Hudson, she was speaking so much of herself in a disordered, interesting fashion, that I thought I ought to stay there and listen to her. After all, the day must come soon when she would wake up and some man would disenchant her. Also, lately I had suffered such a revulsion from the small-minded counsels of Amy and my own horrid misadventures, that I was delighted to listen to the naïve clatter of a young girl. What a beautiful girl says can never really be stupid, whereas with a plain girl one always feels that what she is really saying is, “I am a failure.”

She had been watching a man, an old carcass, who was sitting on the stoop opposite, leaning on a knotted stick and occasionally opening his mouth, like a fish. He was looking this way and that, not up into the sky, and timidly, sadly greeted anyone who would salute him.

“Oh, he's there every day, except when there's wind, or snow, or rain, or humidity, or dust or one hundred degrees in the shade.”

“Yes,” said Jacky, “old age is worse than death for such people; but, after all, I don't know who he is. Perhaps he is one of those for whom death is worse even than old age. Suppose you are Rembrandt van Rijn—death is then worse than old age, for it is the extinction of Rembrandt. The way they all talk—‘I've only just begun, I must live; why, I've twenty years of work ahead of me—let me live another month at least, Doctor, I've got some work to finish.' To them, it's different; to the real workers. I hope I'm a real worker.”

“I'd be delighted to settle down right now,” I said, with feeling; “I don't want to be a real worker. Why do we have to struggle? I don't believe in the struggle of youth. Things ought to be made easy for us when we're at the height of our powers. Old people like to struggle; at least, they're used to it. Why should we get crow's-feet?”

“Tories are people who are frightened of the future,” said Jacky; “perhaps the source of life is shallow in them; anyone can see the future, it all depends on courage.”

“Courage is too painful; she speaks who knows.”

“The face of a really brave man—oh! how he looks at others! He never blinks,” she said, smiling; “it isn't like a man turning his face to an enemy, but like someone turning his face to the sun. But, you see, even the brave get old; then they are afraid of the snow, the wind, the dust, and people who won't say hello to them. Isn't it terrible?”

“Yes. I don't know. I suppose you can keep your chin up at any age.”

“No,” said Jacky. “If you think about old age, you can't believe in anything but materialism. The immortal soul doesn't exist. A man like Faraday, Talleyrand, gets old; Goethe, King Lear, Faust—”

“What have they to do with each other?”

“They were all old.”

Tears were standing in her eyes. I looked at her attentively and waited. She continued, “The face of Talleyrand was shrewish, with an intent glance, and a high forehead. Thought pierced through his skin; he seemed never asleep. When old, his eyes were sluggish, nothing was seen; he had spots on his skin, he limped, he was bent, and his skin was as dry as an old corpse under an autopsy, it wheezed and crackled. He was infinitely polite, he loved society. When he was old he would not let anyone in to see him. Do you think both of these were Talleyrand? Yes, they were. But there was no sole Talleyrand. There was Talleyrand old and Talleyrand young, the two men. Perhaps many more Talleyrands than that.”

“Are you writing about Talleyrand?”

“No. He is interesting though; he was a professional cynic, so much of a crook, so to speak, a diplomatist, that his name is a byword; but as a friend he was charming, open, frank, simple. So you see there were more than even two Talleyrands. Ordinary people are just of one piece, like paper dolls.”

Her skin blazed now. I saw she had something on her mind, and I waited. She led me a dance. Said Jacky:

“The sexual cells are immortal, you know. These queer beings like Talleyrand, I don't say him in particular, for I don't know about his sexual life, but such beings, hypersensitive, morbid, and what we call great, seem to understand that, for they wish to be immortal and they cling to their sexual life when it is exhausted. Now, that poor old man, well, perhaps, even now he dreams of pretty young girls who will come and hold his hand, or something else.”

“Really, you ought to be a playwright. So much in that old hulk, sitting on the stoop!”

“Yes! There is no death from old age, don't you, see. That is to say, no natural death, without lesion, fatal sickness, although I admit you could dispute about the fatal sickness. But there is natural death in this sense, that many generations of cells have lived in us before we die, and sooner or later they cease to regenerate themselves and so life is no longer possible. Or they begin to increase and reproduce in such a dreadful, mistaken way—but no doubt it is in us, the remnant of what once was the power to re-create unremittingly—a limb, skin, parts of the body.”

“I see you've decided to go in for medicine, after all, Jacky.”

“The infusoria have no corpses. The earthworm can re-create himself. Starfish put on a broken limb, lizards a new tail. We can grow new hair, and new teeth once, that's all. Our children don't have any changes, except in the womb. Once they emerge, they just grow from little to big, but no change in actual diagram. We're a fixed race.”