The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (14 page)

All this will give you an idea what sort of a name Harry made for himself, but the funniest stories about him are the ones that have to do with Harry in heaven, or in hell, selling earthquake insurance, and automobiles, and buying clothes cheap. He was a worldbeater. He was different. Everybody likes to laugh about him, but all the same this whole town misses him, and there isn’t a man who knew him
who doesn’t wish that he was still among us, tearing around town, talking big business, making things pop, a real American go-getter.

“You want me to laugh?”

He felt lonely and ill in the empty class-room, all the boys going home, Dan Seed, James Misippo, Dick Corcoran, all of them walking along the Southern Pacific tracks, laughing and playing, and this insane idea of Miss Wissig’s, making him sick.

“Yes.”

The severe lips, the trembling, the eyes, such pathetic melancholy.

“But I do not want to laugh.”

It was strange. The whole world, the turn of things, the way they came about.

“Laugh.”

The increasing tenseness, electrical, her stiffness, the nervous movements of her body and her arms, the cold she made, and the illness in his blood.

“But why?”

Why? Everything tied up, everything graceless and ugly, the caught mind, something in a trap, no sense, no meaning.

“As a punishment. You laughed in class, now as a punishment you must laugh for an hour, all alone, by yourself. Hurry, you have already wasted four minutes.”

It was disgusting; it wasn’t funny at all, being kept after school, being asked to laugh. There was no sense in the idea. What should he laugh about? A fellow couldn’t just laugh. There had to be something of that kind, something amusing or pompous, something comical. This was so strange, because of her manner, the way she looked at him, the subtlety; it was frightening. What did she want of him? And the smell of school, the oil in the floor, chalk dust, the smell of the idea, children gone; loneliness, the sadness.

“I am sorry I laughed.”

The flower bending, ashamed. He felt sorry, he was not merely bluffing; he
was
sorry, not for himself but for her. She was a young girl, a substitute teacher, and there was that sadness in her, so far away and so hard to understand; it came with her each morning and he had laughed at it, it was comical, something she said, the way she said it, the way she stared at everyone, the way she moved. He hadn’t felt like laughing at all, but all of a sudden he had laughed and she had looked at him and he had looked into
her face, and for a moment that vague communion, then the anger, the hatred, in her eyes. “You will stay in after school.” He hadn’t wanted to laugh, it simply happened, and he was sorry, he was ashamed, she ought to know, he was telling her. Jiminy crickets.

“You are wasting time. Begin laughing.”

Her back was turned and she was erasing words from the blackboard:
Africa, Cairo, the pyramids, the sphinx, Nile;
and the figures 1865, 1914. But the tenseness, even with her back turned; it was still in the class-room, emphasized because of the emptiness, magnified, made precise, his mind and her mind, their grief, side by side, conflicting; why? He wanted to be friendly; the morning she had entered the classroom he had wanted to be friendly; he felt it immediately, her strangeness, the remoteness, so why had he laughed? Why did everything happen in a false way? Why should he be the one to hurt her, when really he had wanted to be her friend from the beginning?

“I don’t want to laugh.”

Defiance and at the same time weeping, shameful weeping in his voice. By what right should he be made to destroy in himself an innocent thing? He hadn’t meant to be cruel; why shouldn’t she be able to understand? He began to feel hatred for her stupidity, her dullness, the stubbornness of her will. I will not laugh, he thought; she can call Mr. Caswell and have me whipped; I will not laugh again. It was a mistake. I had meant to cry; something else, anyway; I hadn’t meant it. I can stand a whipping, golly
Moses, it hurts, but not like this; I’ve felt that strap on my behind, I know the difference.

Well, let them whip him, what did he care? It stung and he could feel the sharp pain for days after, thinking about it, but let them go ahead and make him bend over, he wouldn’t laugh.

He saw her sit at her desk and stare at him, and for crying out loud, she looked sick and startled, and the pity came up to his mouth again, the sickening pity for her, and why was he making so much trouble for a poor substitute teacher he really liked, not an old and ugly teacher, but a nice small girl who was frightened from the first?

“Please laugh.”

And what humiliation, not commanding him, begging him now, begging him to laugh when he didn’t want to laugh. What should a fellow do, honestly; what should a fellow do that would be right, by his own will, not accidentally, like the wrong things? And what did she mean? What pleasure could she get out of hearing him laugh? What a stupid world, the strange feelings of people, the secretiveness, each person hidden within himself, wanting something and always getting something else, wanting to give something and always giving something else. Well, he would. Now he would laugh, not for himself but for her. Even if it sickened him, he would laugh. He wanted to know the truth, how it was. She wasn’t
making
him laugh, she was
asking
him,
begging
him to laugh. He didn’t know how it was, but he wanted to know. He thought, Maybe I can think of a funny story, and he began to try to remember all the funny
stories he had ever heard, but it was very strange, he couldn’t remember a single one. And the other funny things, the way Annie Gran walked; gee, it wasn’t funny any more; and Henry Mayo making fun of Hiawatha, saying the lines wrong; it wasn’t funny either. It used to make him laugh until his face got red and he lost his breath, but now it was a dead and a pointless thing,
by the big sea waters, by the big sea waters, came the mighty
, but gee, it wasn’t funny; he couldn’t laugh about it, golly Moses. Well, he would just laugh, any old laugh, be an actor, ha, ha, ha. God, it was hard, the easiest thing in the world for him to do, and now he couldn’t make a little giggle.

Somehow he began to laugh, feeling ashamed and disgusted. He was afraid to look into her eyes, so he looked up at the clock and tried to keep on laughing, and it was startling, to ask a boy to laugh for an hour, at nothing, to beg him to laugh without giving him a reason. But he would do it, maybe not an hour, but he would try, anyway; he would do something. The funniest thing was his voice, the falseness of his laughter, and after a while it got to be really funny, a comical thing, and it made him happy because it made him really laugh, and now he was laughing his real way, with all his breath, with all his blood, laughing at the falseness of his laughter, and the shame was going away because this laughter was not fake, and it was the truth, and the empty class-room was full of his laughter and everything seemed all right, everything was splendid, and two minutes had gone by.

And he began to think of really comical things
everywhere, the whole town, the people walking in the streets, trying to look important, but he knew, they couldn’t fool him, he knew how important they were, and the way they talked, big business, and all of it pompous and fake, and it made him laugh, and he thought of the preacher at the Presbyterian church, the fake way he prayed,
O God, if it is your will
, and nobody believing in prayers, and the important people with big automobiles, Cadillacs and Packards, speeding up and down the country, as if they had some place to go, and the public band concerts, all that fake stuff, making him really laugh, and the big boys running after the big girls because of the heat, and the streetcars going up and down the city with never more than two passengers, that was funny, those big cars carrying an old lady and a man with a moustache, and he laughed until he lost his breath and his face got red, and suddenly all the shame was gone and he was laughing and looking at Miss Wissig, and then bang: jiminy Christmas, tears in her eyes. For God’s sake, he hadn’t been laughing at her. He had been laughing at all those fools, all those fool things they were doing day after day, all that falseness. It was disgusting. He was always wanting to do the right thing, and it was always turning out the other way. He wanted to know why, how it was with her, inside, the part that was secret, and he had laughed for her, not to please himself, and there she was, trembling, her eyes wet and tears coming out of them, and her face in agony, and he was still laughing because of all the anger and yearning and disappointment in his heart, and he was laughing at
all the pathetic things in the world, the things good people cried about, the stray dogs in the streets, the tired horses being whipped, stumbling, the timid people being smashed inwardly by the fat and cruel people, fat inside, pompous, and the small birds, dead on the sidewalk, and the misunderstandings everywhere, the everlasting conflict, the cruelty, the things that made man a malignant thing, a vile growth, and the anger was changing his laughter and tears were coming into his eyes. The two of them in the empty class-room, naked together in their loneliness and bewilderment, brother and sister, both of them wanting the same cleanliness and decency of life, both of them wanting to share the truth of the other, and yet, somehow, both of them alien, remote and alone.

He heard the girl stifle a sob and then everything turned up-side-down, and he was crying, honest and truly crying, like a baby, as if something had really happened, and he hid his face in his arms, and his chest was heaving, and he was thinking he did not want to live; if this was the way it was, he wanted to be dead.

He did not know how long he cried, and suddenly he was aware that he was no longer crying or laughing, and that the room was very still. What a shameful thing. He was afraid to lift his head and look at the teacher. It was disgusting.

“Ben.”

The voice calm, quiet, solemn; how could he ever look at her again?

“Ben.”

He lifted his head. Her eyes were dry and her face seemed brighter and more beautiful than ever.

“Please dry your eyes. Have you a handkerchief?”

“Yes.”

He wiped the moisture from his eyes, and blew his nose. What a sickness in the earth. How bleak everything was.

“How old are you, Ben?”

“Ten.”

“What are you going to do? I mean—”

“I don’t know.”

“Your father?”

“He is a tailor.”

“Do you like it here?”

“I guess so.”

“You have brothers, sisters?”

“Three brothers, two sisters.”

“Do you ever think of going away? Other cities?”

It was amazing, talking to him as if he were a grown person, getting into his secret.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. New York, I guess. The old country, maybe.”

“The old country?”

“Milan. My father’s city.”

“Oh.”

He wanted to ask her about herself, where she had been, where she was going; he wanted to be grown up, but he was afraid. She went to the cloak-room and brought out her coat and hat and purse, and began to put on her coat.

“I will not be here tomorrow. Miss Shorb is well again. I am going away.”

He felt very sad, but he could think of nothing to say. She tightened the belt of her coat and placed her hat on her head, smiling, golly Moses, what a world, first she made him laugh, then she made him cry, and now this. And it made him feel so lonely for her. Where was she going? Wouldn’t he ever see her again?

“You may go now, Ben.”

And there he was looking up at her and not wanting to go, there he was wanting to sit and look at her. He got up slowly and went to the cloak-room for his cap. He walked to the door, feeling ill with loneliness, and turned to look at her for the last time.

“Good-bye, Miss Wissig.”

“Good-bye, Ben.”

And then he was running lickety split across the school grounds, and the young substitute teacher was standing in the yard, following him with her eyes. He didn’t know what to think, but he knew that he was feeling very sad and that he was afraid to turn around and see if she was looking at him. He thought, If I hurry, maybe I can catch up with Dan Seed and Dick Corcoran and the other boys, and maybe I’ll be in time to see the freight train leaving town. Well, nobody would know, anyway. Nobody would ever know what had happened and how he had laughed and cried.

He ran all the way to the Southern Pacific tracks, and all the boys were gone, and the train was gone,
and he sat down beneath the eucalyptus trees. The whole world, in a mess.

Then he began to cry again.

Thinking, in the mazda-lamp light, the clock ticking night of January and the silent radio bulging with forty-six jazz orchestras, crooners, waltzes, tangos, quiet delirium; ah, lovely cigarette, swift steed leaping no thought, swiftly over no space, the lovely taste of death coming, loveliness in death coming, all children must perish, sweeping high over it, all children must lose their faces, all children must walk with their small legs out of it, all children must go.

Thinking January night all faces all forms all thought must go, must go, and nothing is coming, only slowly and swiftly the death of the moment, and the death of of of the death of who is it that thinks?
and whence? in the night, the quiet of waltzes, the hush of noise? who is it? who? and whence? which avenue of the living? which by way of the dead? Tall sad eucalyptus trees in January wind some centuries hence symphonically in no sadness of weeping.

And the stare of the gaping phonograph the shadow against the blur of monotony in wall-paper precise walls for precise seclusion all men must walk to moments ending all men must twist from print to earth and eyes that see must see not and ears that hear must hear only the sea and the smashing of space in accordion silence and all hands must lie deeply in the dirt and rot and rot and the garments of all men must be taken from their bodies and placed on wax dummies in the stores of pawnbrokers etcetera and the night which is ending will never end and the man who sits wakeful amid crumbling will return as a ghost to see his trousers being offered special one dollar and twenty-five cents and the same with his hat.

It is a merry time in January when the eucalyptus trees of tomorrow weep thoughtlessly for the men who died (dying now) a couple of hundred years ago which was last moment, and that boy smoking a cigarette was the one, it was he who was there and it was in a house there that he sat studying the gaping phonograph and where is he now? as well as his coat?

For there is some grace in dying quietly amid some fragment of a life some fragment of another’s death two thousand years before some fragment of another’s death and there is some grace in standing in the
mazdalight our noblest contribution to sleeplessness our offering to children dying standing in the mazdalight awake and awake and dying and alive and the grace is a form of immobility as of quiet death and it is of the dance and the dance is of stone hard rock and never of fluid never of waves in motion and the dance is of smash of mountain graceful sky beloved pointlessness.

They will be saying then as they are saying now by turning inward and turning outward with the eye of thought to before and to after and they will be saying then as now that it was here during a moment of cigarette and mazdasleeplessness that it was here that he stood awake suddenly and suddenly alive in death and well now there is no house here only a tree a large fat thick selfish ruthless strong eucalyptus swooning in the wind and holding birds and it was here that a moment ago we saw his face quietly there in the light mocking the death and humbling himself before it and wanting it and mocking it and it was here almost that we heard him breathing the rock into his lungs and out again as thought as something from time and man and as something from the moment of himself but now there is no house here only this tree and what is the truth? what is it that we can say is not a lie even if it is a Christian lie? is it anything? or is it always an untruth? though we know that it was here that he stood?

And the talk we hear after all these moments and the crumbling of more rock and the shifting of seas and continents this talk that we hear is now a talk of silence and the words come blurred and there is
no meaning there is no meaning and all is faint and sickly save the strength of the big tree weeping for no thought of man but weeping where the house stood and the talk is so quiet and it is so gentle that no one can say if it was the boy who spoke it or if it was maybe after the years the tree moaning it and there is no fact that can be stood on its tail and pointed to and there is no truth and all that comes through the space and through the quiet is the soft undulation of the thought almost sounded by mortal breath and it is of the upper limbs of the big tree swaying and breathing life and remembering the death of the boy.

But there is no fact and the issue is blurred. Historians stand bewildered and the rock which is crumbling crumbles more and the fact is in and out of the rock and in and out of the water coming in waves special delivery from the moon special one dollar and twenty-five cents for your best trousers and a dime for your hat and your ties are worthless absolutely unmarketable being polka dot ties.

You might as well smoke another cigarette and look again at the small calendar to make sure to see the fact on paper in print that it is January and you might as well presume that it is yourself looking and you might touch the gaping phonograph worshipping its silence, for it will be morning again before the tree bends itself westward again.

It is this year and it is now and already the tree and the rock are saying with the others who have speech that perhaps but only perhaps it may have been here in this spot on this earth that the boy stood dwindling to the pavement to the asphalt and to the bowels of
it the bowels of the city and the earth and so you might just as well rise and yawn and say to yourself gentlemen I presume the hour is at hand and in the name of this universe I accept the nomination and humbly take my position among the solid ones now feeding flowers in cemeteries from Tokyo westward to Tia Juana and in all other directions humbly accept and humbly make my bow and platform speech to wit as follows gentlemen I shall do everything in my power and everything in my blood and bone and bowels to feed myself to sunflowers because they are strong and they resemble so much the sun and it is for the perpetuation of them that I humbly go down to make room for small and large and inarticulate imitations of the great bringer of light and life and laughter and leering and lice and all the other large and small things that make the scene so exasperating and lovely and make the scene so very very lovely and gentlemen you have my word of honor it is for the flowers that I say good day, I am going, going, gone.

The clock ticks language not yet precise but nearly so and the night is January. It was here that the boy quietly handing his coat to the man from the store said quietly to the man from the store well sir it is not a new coat and I have worn it for years but it will keep some poor devil warm another winter and that is all I care about to keep some poor devil warm another winter for we have the tradition to preserve and there is talk of time going away from us and there is a rumor that a couple of centuries long past due are crowding us and a number of unborn children are wailing their eyes out wanting to get on their feet
and make a scene such as something about one child male wishing another child female and in them a multitude of children wishing the same thing only more savagely. So you see that the coat must serve to keep some poor devil warm another winter. Or else it will be all over and I being gone shall be gone utterly and the other shall be gone with me and the rodents will laugh and man will scratch his dead head and think well now that was remarkable those rodents laughing that way as if the joke was on us alone as if because they breed faster they don’t die faster and it is remarkable and it is at that.

So fare thee well. It was here. It was in this house and now only a big tree is here, fare thee well, a big tree is here, so fare thee well, everywhere, everyone, seeking and never finding, everywhere, so fare thee well, lost everywhere, fare thee well, it was here, and again it is here but the day the night come and go and ah kindly one you were never in this house, so fare thee well, fare well, you were never here, and now the day is ending death is coming kindly over the emptiness and so fare thee well, ah gentle God, seeking thee we find the emptiness of the night and so fare thee well, the tree, the big tree is sinking its roots deep in preparation for the explosion from the earth and from time to thee to thee gentle and kindly God, seeking thee we perish unweeping and unhurt but wanting and wanting, so fare thee well, forever fare thee well, it was here and it was only a moment ago that we saw the boy’s face grinning to God, and now there is only this big quiet tree, weeping for no one, moaning for no thought, seeking no God but being of God, forever and forever, farewell.