Of Time and the River (31 page)

“I do not know: It may be so.”

Thus, when he was almost fifty, Bascom Pentland stopped preaching in public. There was no question where he was going. He had his family’s raging lust for property. He became a “conveyancer”; he acquired enough of the law of property to convey titles; but he began to buy pieces of land in the suburbs of Boston and to build small cheap houses, using his own somewhat extraordinary designs to save the architect’s fees and, wherever possible, doing such odd jobs as laying the foundations, installing the plumbing, and painting the structure.

The small houses that he—no, he did not build them!—he went through the agonies of monstrous childbirth to produce them, he licked, nursed, and fondled them into stunted growth, and he sold them on long but profitable terms to small Irish, Jewish, Negro, Belgian, Italian and Greek labourers and tradesmen. And at the conclusion of a sale, or after receiving from one of these men the current payment, Uncle Bascom went homeward in a delirium of joy, shouting in a loud voice, to all who might be compelled to listen, the merits of the Jews, Belgians, Irish, Swiss or Greeks.

“Finest people in the world! No question about it!”—this last being his favourite exclamation in all moments of payment or conviction.

For when they paid he loved them. Often on Sundays they would come to pay him, tramping over the frozen ground or the packed snow through street after street of smutty grey-looking houses in the flat weary-looking suburb where he lived. To this dismal heath, therefore, they came, the swarthy children of a dozen races, clad in the hard and decent blacks in which the poor pay debts and go to funerals. They would advance across the barren lands, the harsh sere earth scarred with its wastes of rust and rubbish, going stolidly by below the blank board fences of a brick yard, crunching doggedly through the lanes of dirty rutted ice, passing before the grey besmutted fronts of wooden houses which in their stark, desolate, and unspeakable ugliness seemed to give a complete and final utterance to an architecture of weariness, sterility and horror, so overwhelming in its absolute desolation that it seemed as if the painful and indignant soul of man must sicken and die at length before it, stricken, stupefied, and strangled without a tongue to articulate the curse that once had blazed in him.

And at length they would pause before the old man’s little house— one of a street of little houses which he had built there on the barren flatlands of the suburb, and to which he had given magnificently his own name—Pentland Heights—although the only eminence in all that flat and weary waste was an almost imperceptible rise a half-mile off. And here along this street which he had built, these little houses, warped yet strong and hardy, seemed to burrow down solidly like moles for warmth into the ugly stony earth on which they were built and to cower and huddle doggedly below the immense and terrible desolation of the northern sky, with its rimy sun-hazed lights, its fierce and cruel rags and stripes of wintry red, its raw and savage harshness. And then, gripping their greasy little wads of money, as if in the knowledge that all reward below these fierce and cruel skies must be wrenched painfully and minutely from a stony earth, they went in to pay him. He would come up to meet them from some lower cellar-depth, swearing, muttering, and banging doors; and he would come toward them howling greetings, buttoned to his chin in the frayed and faded sweater, gnarled, stooped and frosty-looking, clutching his great hands together at his waist. Then they would wait, stiffly, clumsily, fingering their hats, while with countless squints and grimaces and pursings of the lip, he scrawled out painfully their receipts—their fractional release from debt and labour, one more hard-won step toward the freedom of possession.

At length, having pocketed their money and finished the transaction, he would not permit them to depart at once; he would howl urgently at them an invitation to stay, he would offer long weedy-looking cigars to them, and they would sit uncomfortably, crouching on their buttock bones like stalled oxen, at the edges of chairs, shyly and dumbly staring at him, while he howled question, comment, and enthusiastic tribute at them.

“Why, my dear sir!” he would yell at Makropolos, the Greek. “You have a glorious past, a history of which any nation might well be proud!”

“Sure, sure!” said Makropolos, nodding vigorously. “Beeg Heestory!”

“The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!” the old man howled, “where burning Sappho loved and sung—” (Phuh! phuh! phuh! phuh! phuh!)

“Sure, sure!” said Makropolos again, nodding good-naturedly but wrinkling his lowering finger’s-breadth of brow in a somewhat puzzled fashion. “Tha’s right! You got it!”

“Why, my dear sir!” Uncle Bascom cried. “It has been the ambition of my lifetime to visit those hallowed scenes, to stand at sunrise on the Acropolis, to explore the glory that was Greece, to see the magnificent ruins of the noblest of ancient civ-i-LIZ-a-tions!”

For the first time a dark flush, a flush of outraged patriotism, began to burn upon the swarthy yellow of Mr. Makropolos’s cheek: his manner became heavy and animated, and in a moment he said with passionate conviction:

“No, no, no! No ruin! Wat you t’ink, eh! Athens fine town! We got a million pipples dere!” He struggled for a word, then cupped his hairy paws indefinitely: “YOU know? BEEG! O, ni-ez!” he added greasily, with a smile. “Everyt’ing good! We got everyt’ing good dere as you got here! YOU know?” he said with a confiding and painful effort. “Everyt’ing ni-ez! Not old! No, no, no!” he cried with a rising and indignant vigour. “New! de same as here. Ni-ez! You get good and cheap—everyt’ing! Beeg place, new house, dumbwaiter, elevator—wat chew like!—oh, ni-ez!” he said earnestly. “Wat chew t’ink it cost, eh? Feefateen dollar a month! Sure, sure!” he nodded with a swarthy earnestness. “I wouldn’t keed you!”

“Finest people on earth!” Uncle Bascom cried with an air of great conviction and satisfaction. “No question about it!”—and he would usher his visitor to the door, howling farewells into the terrible desolation of those savage skies.

Meanwhile, Aunt Louise, although she had not heard a word of what was said, although she had listened to nothing except the periods of Uncle Bascom’s heavily accented and particular speech, kept up a constant snuffling laughter punctuated momently by faint whoops as she bent over her pots and pans in the kitchen, pausing from time to time as if to listen, and then snuffling to herself as she shook her head in pitying mirth which rose again up to the crisis of a faint crazy cackle as she scoured the pan; because, of course, during the forty-five years of her life with him she had gone thoroughly, imperceptibly, and completely mad, and no longer knew or cared to know whether these words had just been spoken or were the echoes of lost voices long ago.

And again, she would pause to listen, with her small birdlike features uplifted gleefully in a kind of mad attentiveness as the door slammed and he stumped muttering back into the house, intent upon the secret designs of his own life, as remote and isolate from her as if they had each dwelt on separate planets, although the house they lived in was a small one.

Such had been the history of the old man. His life had come up from the wilderness, the buried past, the lost America. The potent mystery of old events and moments had passed around him, and the magic light of dark time fell across him.

Like all men in this land, he had been a wanderer, an exile on the immortal earth. Like all of us, he had no home. Wherever great wheels carried him was home.

As the old man and his nephew talked together, Louise would prepare the meal in the kitchen, which gave on the living-room where they ate, by a swing door that she kept open, in order that she might hear what went on. And, while they waited, Uncle Bascom would talk to the boy on a vast range of subjects, dealing with that literature in which he had once been deep—the poetry of the Old Testament, the philosophy of Hegel, Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold, whom he worshipped, or some question in the daily papers.

Uncle Bascom, seated, his fine gaunt face grave, magnificently composed now above his arched gnarled hands, spoke with eloquent deliberation. He became triumphant reasoning mind: he talked with superb balanced judgment. All the tumult and insanity of his life had been forgotten: no question of money or of self was involved. Meanwhile, from the kitchen Aunt Louise kept up a constant snuffling laughter, punctuated momently by faint whoops. She was convinced, of course, that her husband was mad and all his opinions nonsensical. Yet she had not listened to a word of what he was saying, but only to the sound of his heavily accented, precise, and particular speech. From time to time, snuffling to herself, she would look in on Eugene, trembling with laughter, and shake her head at him in pitying mirth.

“BEYOND a doubt! Beyond a DOUBT!” Uncle Bascom would say. “The quality of the best writing in the books of the Old Testament may take rank with the best writing that has ever been done, but you are right in believing, too, the amount of great writing is less than it is commonly supposed to be. There are passages, nay! BOOKS”—his voice rising strangely to a husky howl—“of the vilest rubbish—Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth—O vile! vile!” he cried. . . . “And Azariah begat Amariah and Amariah begat Ahitub (Phuh! Phuh! Phuh!). AHITUB!” he sneered. “And Azariah begat Seraiah, and Seraiah begat Jehozadak (Phuh! Phuh! Phuh!) JEHOZADAK”—he sneered with his precise articulation, finally letting out the last syllable with a kind of snarling contempt. “Can you IMAGINE, can you even DREAM,” he howled, “of calling anyone a name like that! ‘And Jehozadak went into captivity’—as, indeed, he ought! (phuh! phuh! phuh!)—his VERY name would constitute a PENAL offence! (Phuh! Phuh! Phuh!) JeHOZadak!” Uncle Bascom sneered. “But,” he proceeded deliberately in a moment, as he stared calmly over his great arched hands, “—but—the quality of some of the language is God-intoxicated: the noblest poetry ever chanted in the service of eternity.”

“The Book of Wevelations,” cried Aunt Louise, suddenly rushing out of the kitchen with a carving-knife in her hand, having returned to earth for a moment to hear him. “The Book of Wevelations!” she said in a hoarse whisper, her mouth puckered with disgust. “EUGENE! A WICKED, bloo-o-edy, kwu-u-el monument to supahstition. Twibute to an avenging and MUH-DUH-WOUS GAWD!” The last word uttered in a hoarse almost inaudible whisper would find his aunt bent double, clutching a knife in one hand, with her small bright eyes glaring madly at us.

“Oh no, my dear, oh no,” said Uncle Bascom, with astonishing, unaccustomed sadness, with almost exquisite gentleness. And, his vibrant passionate voice thrilling suddenly with emotion, he added:

“The triumphant music of one of the mightiest of earth’s poets: the sublime utterance of a man for whom God had opened the mysteries of heaven and hell.”

He paused a moment, then quietly in a remote voice—in that remote and magnificent voice which could thrill men so deeply when it uttered poetry, he continued: “‘I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end’—the mightiest line, my dear boy, the most magnificent poetry, that was ever written.” And suddenly Uncle Bascom threw his gaunt hands before his face, and wept in strong hoarse sobs: “Oh, my God, my God!—the beauty, the pity of it all! . . . You must pardon me,” he whispered after a moment, drawing his faded sweater sleeve across his eyes. “You must pardon me. It brought back—memories.”

Aunt Louise, who had been stricken with a kind of fear and horror when he began to weep, now looked at Eugene with an expression of strong physical disgust, almost of nausea, shaking her head slightly in an affronted and ladylike manner as might one who, having achieved healthy and courageous discipline over all the excesses of emotion, feels only contempt for him who gives way to them.

She retired now with exaggerated dignity to the kitchen, served the meal, and addressed Eugene for some time thereafter with absurd quietness and restraint of manner, and a kind of stiff primness about her backbone. She was an excellent cook; there was magic in her treatment of food, and on the occasions when Eugene was coming out, she insisted that Bascom get her a decent piece of meat to work with.

There would be a juicy fragrant piece of lamb, or a boiled leg of mutton with currant jelly, or perhaps a small crisply browned roast of beef, with small flaky biscuits, smoking hot, two or three vegetables, and rich coffee. Uncle Bascom, quite unperturbed by his outbreak, would stamp into the kitchen, where he could be heard swearing and muttering to himself, as he searched for various things. Later he would appear at the table bearing a platter filled with some revolting mess of his own concoction—a mixture of raw vegetables, chopped up—onions, carrots, beans, and raw potatoes—for he had the full strength of his family’s mania concerning food, violent prejudices about its preparation, and deep-seated distrust of everybody’s cleanliness but his own.

“Have some, my boy. Have some!” he would yell huskily, seating himself and lunging toward Eugene with the awful mess, in a gesture of violent invitation.

“Thank you, no.” Eugene would try to keep his eyes averted from the mess and focus on the good food heaping his plate.

“You may eat that slop if you want to,” Uncle Bascom would exclaim with a scornful and sneering laugh. “It would give ME my death of dyspepsia.” And the silence of their eating would be broken by the recurrent snuffling whoops of Aunt Louise, accompanied by many pitying looks and head-shakes as she trembled with laughter and hid her mouth.

Or, suddenly, in the full rich progress of the meal, Eugene would be shocked out of his pleasure in the food by the mad bright eyes of Aunt Louise bearing fiercely down upon him:

“Eugene!—don’t bwood, boy! Don’t bwood! You’ve got it in you— it’s in the blood! You’re one of them. You’re one of THEM!—a PENTLAND,” she croaked fatally.

“Ah-h—you DON’T know what you’re talking about”—thus suddenly in fierce distemper Uncle Bascom. “SCOTCH! SCOTCH-Irish! Finest people on earth! No question about it whatever.”

“Fugitive ideation! Fugitive ideation!” she chattered like a monkey over a nut. “Mind goes off in all diwections. Can’t stick to anything five minutes at a time. The same thing that’s wong with the moduhn decadents. Wead Nordau’s book, Eugene. It will open yoah eyes,” and she whispered hoarsely again: “You’re OVAH- SEXED—ALL of you!”