Of Time and the River (105 page)

Oh, it was a wretched, futile, hopeless kind of life, and in their hearts they knew it, but could only speak casually, smile feebly, speak falsely, yet never lay their hearts bare boldly and admit the truth. None of them liked Fried; they were ashamed of him, they turned on him at times in force, argued with him, denounced him, jeered at him, but at the bottom of their hearts they had a strange, secret, and unwilling respect for him, and finally grew silent and listened when he talked.

It was astonishing to watch the effect of that man’s bitter tirades on that forlorn group. For where at first they would protest, remonstrate, sharply caution him, laugh uneasily and look fearfully toward the door as his harsh rasping voice mounted and grew high and snarling with its packed anathema of bitterness and hate, they would at length grow silent and look at him with fascinated eyes, and listen to that snarling and savage indictment with a kind of feeding gluttony of satisfaction, as if into that single naked and abusive tongue had been packed the whole huge weight of misery that had sweltered in their hearts, but to which they had never dared, themselves, to give utterance.

Eugene had asked Sterling how much longer he would remain abroad and he had answered:

“Just ten months more. This is my last year. I am going home next August.” He was silent for a moment, then he added with a faint, regretful smile: “In another year I suppose, I’ll be wondering if all this has ever happened. It will seem strange and beautiful,” he said softly, “like some impossible dream!”

“Yeah!” snarled Fried, with a harsh interruption at this point. “An impossible dream! Jesus! An impossible nightmare!—that’s what you’d better say!”

Sterling looked at him silently for a moment over his thin arched hands. He smiled faintly, disdainfully, and made no answer. In a moment he turned quietly to Eugene again, and dismissing the other man with the cold contempt of silence, continued:

“Sometimes it’s hard for me to realize I ever lived there. Can there be such a place as America, I wonder?” he said with a sad faint smile. “After all this,” he gestured slightly, pausing, “it will seem so strange to be a part of”—he paused carefully “—THAT again. . . . Skyscrapers, subways, elevated trains—” he paused again, with a faint smile—“Tell me,” he said, turning toward Eugene, “do such things REALLY exist?”

“Do they REALLY exist!” Fried now snarled with a jeering laugh. “Do they REALLY exist! I’ll tell the cock-eyed world that they exist!” he rasped. “You can bet your ----- that they exist! . . . Do they exist!” he snorted to himself derisively. “Jesus!”

Sterling stared coldly at him and said nothing. For a moment Fried’s hard, dark, embittered face, the feverish eyes, stared balefully at the fragile and sensitive face of the other youth, set disdainfully against him over his arched hands.

“Where do you get that stuff?” Fried said at length with harsh contempt. “You may kid these guys who never saw the place until a week ago, but you don’t kid me, Sterling. Christ! I know what kind of a dream it’s been—and so do you!”

Sterling did not deign to answer, but continued to look at him with cold faint disdain, and after another baleful and disgusted stare, Fried rasped out bitterly again:

“I suppose it was a dream your first term here when you tried to suck around those English guys and you thought they were going to take you right into the family, didn’t you?” he sneered. “You thought you were sittin’ pretty, didn’t you? You were goin’ to pal around with the Duke of What’s-His-Name and get invited home wit’ him for the Christmas holidays and make a big play for his sister, weren’t you? Yes, you were!” He jeered, “You saw how far it got you, didn’t you? Those guys took you for a ride and played you for a sucker, an’ when they’d had all the fun wit’ you they could, they dropped you like a ton of bricks! You thought that you were pretty wise, didn’t you?” he snarled bitterly. “You thought that you were goin’ places, didn’t you? You were goin’ to do something big, you were! Well, I’ll tell you what you did! You handed them a laugh— see? You handed those guys a great big laugh—yes! a laugh!” he shouted violently. “And, I’ll tell you something else! They’re still laughin’ at you! I saw you, Sterling. I know what you did. But you didn’t see me, did you? Couldn’t see me in those days, could you?”

“I can’t see you now,” said Sterling coldly. “I never could see you!”

“Is that so?” the Jew said bitterly. “Now, isn’t that too bad! . . . Well, I’ll tell you one time that you saw me, Sterling. . . . That’s when those guys had left you flat. . . . You could see me then, couldn’t you? You don’t remember, do you?” he jeered. “Well, I’ll tell you when it was. . . . It was when you came back here that year for the spring term and you found they didn’t know you when you went around. It was when your tail was dragging the ground and you didn’t have a friend in the world—you could see me then, all right. Couldn’t you? . . . I wasn’t good enough before when you were trying to break into High Society—but I was good enough to see after they gave you the big go-by, wasn’t I? . . . Sure! Sure!” he said with an air of derision, addressing himself more quietly now to the rest of the group. “I usta go by this guy when he was running around wit’ his English friends—and did he see me?” he jibed savagely. “Not so you could notice it! . . . ‘Who is that common person who just spoke to you, Mr. Sterling?’ ‘O, THAT! O, I cannot say, old chap—some low fellow that was on the boat wit’ me when I came ovah! . . . Really cawn’t recall his name! A beastly boundah, I believe!’ . . . Sure! Sure!” he nodded. “That was it! High-hattin’ me, you know! I wasn’t good enough! And all the time these English guys were laughin’ up their sleeve at him!”

They had been stunned by the snarling fury of his assault, silenced by the hypnotic compulsion of his dark, hard face, his feverish eyes, the rasping bitterness of his voice that at the end grew strident, high, and gasping from his effort to release in one explosive tirade the whole packed weight of misery, disappointment, and defeat that sweltered poisonously in his heart. Now, however, as he paused there, dark and hard and full of bitterness, surveying them balefully with toxic eyes, silenced by lack of breath rather than by lack of further curses, they gathered themselves together and went for him in a mass.

In another moment the last vestige of restraint, gentlemanly decorum, urbane and tolerant sophistication with which they had clothed themselves had vanished, and they were yelping, snarling, shouting, accusing and denying, inextricably mixed-up in one general and inglorious dogfight; taunts, curses, insults, and indictments filled the air, all of them were shouting at the same time, and out of that roaring brawl all one could decipher were the ragged barbs and ends of their abuse—a tumult of bitter and strident voices characterized by such phrases as—“You never belonged here in the first place!” “It’s fellows like you who give all the rest of us a bad name!” “Why the hell should the rest of us have to suffer for it because you talk and act like an East Side gangster?” “They think all Americans are a bunch of roughnecks because they meet a few like you.” “Ah, g’wan! youse guys! You give me a pain. You all feel the same way as I do but none of you has guts enough to say so!” “You’re just sore because these English boys never had anything to do with you—that’s all you’re sore about!” “Yeah? They had a hell of a lot to do wit’ you, didn’t they?—even if you did try to talk wit’ an English accent.” “You’re a damned liar! I never tried to talk with an English accent!” “Sure you did! Everybody hoid you! You coulda cut yoeh accent wit’ a hatchet! You were tryin’ to suck aroun’ that gang at Christ’s the first year you were here!” “Who says I was?” “I say so—that’s who! You an’ Tommy Woodson both—” “Don’t mix my name with Tommy Woodson, now! You’re not going to include me with that horse’s neck!” “Oh, yeah? Since when did you staht callin’ him a horse’s neck?” “I always called him one! He IS one!” “Sure he is—but you didn’t think so, did you, that first year that you was heah? You was pallin’ around wit’ him an’ wouldn’t have anything to do wit’ the rest of us! You thought it was goin’ to get you somewhere, didn’t you? You saw how quick he dropped you after he got in wit’ those guys at Christ’s! He gave you the big go-by then, didn’t he? That’s when you stahted callin’ him a horse’s neck!” “It’s a lie! I didn’t!” “Sure you did!”

The snarling medley of bitter tongues rose, mounted; they vented their weight of insult, misery, and reproach on one another and at length subsided, checked by exhaustion rather than by some more charitable cause. And as the tumult died away Sterling, two spots of colour burning on his pallid face, goaded completely from his former affectation of coldly elegant disdain, could be heard saying to Fried in a high, excited, almost hysterical tone:

“The kind of attack you make is simply stupid! It doesn’t get you anywhere! And it’s so crude! So raucous! After all, there’s no reason why you’ve always got to be so raucous!”—the way he said the word was “raw-kus,” his thin hands were trembling, and the two spots of colour burned fiercely in his thin pale face; in this and the bitter way in which he said “raucous” there was finally something pitiable and futile.

And at the end, when all their strident cries had died away, the dark embittered visage of the Jew surveyed them wearily, and held them in its sway again. For as if conceding now what was most evident—that his savage, disappointed spirit had a hard integrity, an unashamed conviction, an ugly, snarling but most open courage which they lacked, they sat there, and looked at him in silence, somehow conveying by that silence a sense of bitter and unwilling respect for him, a final admission of agreement and defeat.

And he, too, when he spoke now, spoke wearily, with a bitter resignation, as if he realized the futility of his victory over them, the futility of hurling further insults, oaths, and accusations at people who knew the bitter truth of his complaint as well as he.

“Nah!” he said quietly in a moment, with this same note of bitter, weary resignation in his voice. “To hell wit’ it! Wat t’ hell’s the use of tryin’ to pretend it isn’t so? You guys all know the way things are! You come over here and you think you’re sittin’ pretty right on top of the world! You think these guys are goin’ to throw their ahms around your neck and kiss you, because they love Americans so much! And what happens?” He laughed bitterly. “Are you telling ME? Christ! You can stay here for three years and none of them will ever give a tumble to you! You can eat your heart out for all they care, and when you leave here you’ll know no more about them than when you came. And what does it getcha? What’s it all about? Wat t’ hell do you get out of it that’s so wonderful?”

“I thought,” one of the first-year men suggested mildly, and a trifle piously, as if he were quoting one of the articles of faith, “that you were supposed to get out of it a better understanding of the relations between the two great English-speaking nations.”

“The two great English-speaking nations!” Fried answered harshly with a jeering laugh. “Jesus! That’s a good one! WHAT two English-speaking nations do you mean?” he went on belligerently. “England and what other country?” he demanded. “You don’t think WE speak the same language as THEY do, do you? Christ! The first year I was here they might have been talkin’ Siamese so far as I was concerned! It wasn’t any language that I’d evah hoid before. . . . Yeah, I know,” he went on wearily in a moment, “they fed me all that bunk, too, before I came over. . . . English- speakin’ nations! . . . Goin’ back to your old home! our old home! For Christ’s sake!” he said bitterly. “Christ! It never was a home to me! I’d have felt more at home if they had sent me to Siberia! . . . Home! The rest of you guys can make believe it’s home if you want to! . . . I know what you’ll do,” he muttered. “You’ll stick it out and hate it like the rest of them. . . . Then you’ll go back home an’ high-hat everyone and tell them all how wonderful it was, and what a fine time you had when you were here, and how you hated to leave it! . . . Not for me! I’m goin’ home where I can see someone that I know some time who’s not too good to talk to me. . . and talk to someone who understands what I’m tryin’ to say once in a while . . . and pay my little nickel for the big ride in the subway . . . and listen to the kids playin’ in the street . . . an’ go to sleep wit’ the old elevated bangin’ in my ears! . . . That’s home!” he cried. “That’s home enough for me.”

“A hell of a home,” said someone quietly.

“Don’t I know it!” snarled the man. “But it’s the only home I got! It’s better than no home at all!”

And for a moment he smoked darkly, bitterly, in silence.

“Nah! To hell wit’ it!” he muttered. “To hell wit’ it! I’ll be glad when it’s all over! I’m sorry that I ever came!”

And he was silent then, and the others looked at him, and had no more to say, and were silent.

LXXII

There were four in the Coulson family: the father, a man of fifty years, the mother, somewhere in the middle forties, a son, and a daughter, Edith, a girl of twenty-two who lived in the house with her parents. Eugene never met the son: he had completed his course at Oxford a year or two before, and had gone down to London where he was now employed. During the time Eugene lived there the son did not come home.

They were a ruined family. How that ruin had fallen on them, what it was, Eugene never knew, for no one ever spoke to him about them. But the sense of their disgrace, of a shameful inexpiable dishonour, for which there was no pardon, from which there could never be redemption, was overwhelming. In the most astonishing way Eugene found out about it right away, and yet he did not know what they had done, and no one ever spoke a word against them.

Rather, the mention of their name brought silence, and in that silence there was something merciless and final, something that belonged to the temper of the country, and that was far more terrible than any open word of scorn, contempt, or bitter judgment could have been, more savage than a million strident, whispering, or abusive tongues could be, because the silence was unarguable, irrevocable, complete, as if a great door had been shut against their lives for ever.

Everywhere Eugene went in town the people knew about them, and said nothing—saying everything—when he spoke their names. He found this final, closed, relentless silence everywhere—in tobacco, wine, and tailor shops, in book stores, food stores, haberdashery stores—wherever he bought anything and gave the clerk the address to which it was to be delivered, they responded instantly with this shut finality of silence, writing the name down gravely, sometimes saying briefly, “Oh! Coulson’s!” when he gave them the address, but more often saying nothing.