—Tell me trees....I am not tired, I am rested.In the arms of this man, with my face turned away, I have rested.I can bear what you tell me....I am hard like you.
—Tell me trees....I am not tired, I am rested.In the arms of this man, with my face turned away, I have rested.I can bear what you tell me....I am hard like you.
—Tell me trees....I am not tired, I am rested.
In the arms of this man, with my face turned away, I have rested.I can bear what you tell me....I am hard like you.
... That afternoon, the ninth of beating about on pavement until pavement tumored upward through her legs, her bowels, her blood, stiffened her brain ... that afternoon she had felt strong again sudden.—So this is Business? this soft flesh in the hard City?
“Mr. Johns, you must let me have that place,” she told him very calmly.
The next day she hung her coat on the costumer in the corner away from the open window. A grey wall rose beyond eyes, shrill greenish white electric bulbs blazed, shutting them all together, papers typewriter woman and desks and murmur beyond: she found she wished to smile.
Solid New York! Solid New York relieved her burden of no base. She had visited New York before: she felt the City deep, having in that past surface of her life beheld its surface. She sensed an analogue. She too had not changed but had gone down below her surface to a turmoiled depth. Within still deeper was there not a quiet, as now she sensed the Quiet of the City under its torrential streets and its human million midges of fire through stone? Thus New York welcomed her: it was a place where people dwelt and had dwelt long, so she could feel it was a place where people dwelt. Her Southern City, ... almost as old, was dead whereold, was raw and unaccustomed where it was new ... its industrial heart of smoke, its outskirts of prim bungalows. Here was a Cityone: the place she knew for such as she to come to.
—Such as I?
Loving New York so sudden above the agony of her intimate deprivals, she said: “We are something in common, you and I.” She and the wide solid City that untouched her frail and bloody inwardness ... lifting her up to a light where she could seek what this thing meant, this I.
In the Office was Clara Lonergan.
When she spoke to persons, particularly when she spoke to Clara, Fanny lost her quiet City: New York became a pullulent pile, a heaving surface above a boil of blood. So Fanny did not seek out persons, she feared that City.—Do I not need to seek myself? She feared the self that was like it. But Clara, she knew at once, she was not to avoid.
She saw in a glance that she was supposed to remove her hat. She took a seat demurely, her heart compressed and moving up and down as she breathed fragilely. She felt how all within her was fragile and was surrounded by a solid world. Miss Lonergan smiled:
“I guess Mr. Johns will see about you pretty soon,” and went into his Office. Her smile alone of the outside world also was fragile.
So Fanny sat demurely. Beyond her was a long dark room filling with girls. She heard their footfalls in the hall: at times through the wiredglass of the door she caught faces ... face sallow hungry, face angrily uplifted toward sun and laughter by the means of rouge, face resigned in sweet debility.... That one will marry. As feet cadenced the hard cement Fanny’s heart fluttered. The door swung; voices angled against the feet and the door, escaping in this brief interim of home and work in allusive herd-calls: Fanny felt thrust away. Each voice and footfall thrust her. She struggled to be back.
—I am of you, now, she argued to herself. A little older than most. O in life so older!... But I am one of you now.
The door opening from the private Office called her sharp up. Miss Lonergan came in, seated herself with fingers already rustling at her pad. Mr. Johns loomed before her.
“Good morning. Good morning.”
He stood with his feet apart and his toes turned out. Fanny observed how his knees flexed inward, how his legs aburst in their drab trowsers flexed and gave her mind the same thought as his ruffled hands and hair: made her smile.
“Well now,” he was saying, “you two said anything yet to each other? get acquainted yet? no explanations?” He turned from the one woman to the other. “You’ll be friends. O all of us’ll be friends. What could be more companionable after all than to engage in the business of soft drinks ... making Delight Drinks for the thirsty people....”
Miss Lonergan struck a key of her machine.Click, she smiled.—I can’t wait for your nonsense.Click clicket click....
“You see,” went on Mr. Johns, “the people get hot and what cools em off is ice. But they wont pay for ice. Not much! Ice is ice ... nameless. We don’t furnish ice. They pay for our lovely game of names,” he handed Fanny a list. “So we send the names in the liquid forms, to the candy men and the soda men: andtheyput in the ice: and the ice cools the people: and the people pay us.”
He flourished clumsily. His face glowed open about his clear blue eyes. “Will you come, Mrs. Luve?” His head serious now thrust back. “I want to show you the girls you are here to take care of.”
* * *
“Why I live on Twenty-First Street. That’s right near.”
“Let’s walk,” said Clara.
New York was open letting the calm day in. An afternoon of May ... made of the scent of far young grass, the swayings of far trees, the slopings of far hills ... lay above the streets where Fanny and Clara walked: came down, feathery certain into the open City, into their eyes and limbs. They walked languorous through a sleepy city lying like a brittle-kneed woman under the loved day. The City glowed with half responses ... new. The angle of a street falling away from the straight street where they walked was a gesture of pleasaunce. Above the clotted people the dim houses leaned gently together, making a haze ofmemory above the urgence of people. The streets turned angles leisurely: a Square beyond them was an invitation like a hand open or a mouth relaxed, the swerve of the Elevated train on the near Bowery was a stroke that caressed.
“You are from the South, I can hear that. Have you been here long?”
“About a month,” said Fanny.
“I was born here. I wonder what it’s like, coming to New York.”
“New York is easy to come to.”
“Do people come here happy?”
Fanny did not want to look at Clara. The day was lazy and round, falling into night. “Why do you ask that?” she said.
“O I don’t know.... I was just wondering—why do they come to New York.”
“Why did your parents come?”
“My father’s family was starving in Wicklow. Pa was a boy and no use at home ploughing more fields for a grabbing landlord. So he came. He wasn’t happy coming. Mother I don’t remember very well, she came from a place near Pressberg in Bohemia. She was so lovely always ... tall and so sweet ... and always so tired. I guess they were all just tired—her whole family came—they couldn’t keep still. I’ve been tired that way. I’d keep moving and moving. I’d say to myself; Now Clara if you’ll just try and stop andsit downyou’ll be better. I couldnt. Something like that I’ve felt in all the foreigners ... Czechs and Dagos and Bohunks ... I have ever seen. Something in ’em I guess got too tired to hold on,to stay on, they had to move ... and there’s America all ready, a chute like in the cowpens I’ve seen over in Brooklyn ready to swallow ’em up as they come tumblin’. Heaven knows where those foreigners get their idea of us.”
She was taller than Fanny, slimmer.—She cant be more than eighteen. Fanny’s heart went out, clamorous, sudden ... stopped against a strength and a maturity she felt. With her heart’s warmth she saw this girl.
Saw sharp against the day’s languor the long face, clear dark, with narrowing thrust chin from the full mouth, cheeks high and delicate, brow faintly curving and sheer beneath the black hair. Saw in the soft fabric of her waist nervous elbows thrusting outward always as she walked, against air, against world. Saw the whole taut tender body in a world less clear, ever less fair than her dark freshness. Saw at last as they stopped: “Well I go here. See you to-morrow” ... eyes very black very large, dry and within themselves like windows of some hidden world having no faith in the sun.
—I have lost what you have not yet begun to make. Yet my hand is softer than yours! Fanny knew it was a thing which must change: that her hand was softer. She walked the swirling Spring-drunk dusty streets with thoughts of this girl and her hand.
* * *
She had a room which she had come to love. Itwas upstairs in the back of an old red brick house: it was oblong, square-buttressed by its honest doors painted white, its two wide windows and its low grey ceiling. She had spent eight dollars to remove the acid-red carnations blotching a sea of green bars on the walls ... (“I want you to scrape first, not paper over it”) ... then clad her room in a dull buff. The walls were bare. The landlady grumblingly took out the wide iron bed, leaving her a couch. The carved oak table, the bastard Empire chairs were distributed to the rest of the lodgers and replaced by plain ones from the storeroom. She took off her hat, let down her hair, put slippers on her feet and drew a chair to the wind. The day was more darkly textured but still clear. An ailanthus flaunting half naked through its tinselly leaves thrust above fence and tesselate brick walls between her and the grey rear of a Church. Beside the Church, a small house receded, built of the same dim sooty stone. On Sundays, the sun vaulted the cluttered roofs at just about the time that a hymn, many-voiced, shone through the corner of the stained-glass window which she could glimpse on the protruding side. There was a little grass plot. It was littered with dust and ash bits, fluffs of drifting textile: but now sod pushed bravely up in a dim green. On the high fence at the side away from the Church, among clusters like sunrays of iron spikes, clothes-lines were drawn. A servant was busy taking in the wash.
The girl’s arms reached up, loosed clothes-pins, dropped her armsfull in a basket. The girl’s armsreached up.... Fanny lost herself in the dull catatony. She was tired. She held her eyes beyond her. Dimly behind she felt a world she did not wish to turn to: world where there were wash-lines and a girl her own.... Industrious, this girl. A young man stepped from the kitchen door of the house. The girl’s arms, full of tableclothes, suspended against her breast. He spoke to her, she nodded: disposed her burden. She was bent before him, he leaned down and kissed her. He stepped back, his arms and hands and shoulders, his feet and hips throwing out little splintery signals of his panic. He wore the cloth of the Church. Then the girl straightened, lifted her hands to her broad hips and smiled. The little curate’s splintering commotion melted. He kissed her again. They went together into the kitchen.
Fanny sat very still. She felt that the muscles of her throat and legs and chest were tense, holding her still.
—What is the matter?
The world dim behind her eyes bellied out ... swallowed the cool grey scene before her of a backyard, a flirting servant and a Church. A Church! Fanny swung around in her chair. She was circled now by a world no longer dim. She asked no question. Like one dropped sudden into a sea, she swam.
She swam to get out. Not yet ... some day ... she must swim in the other direction, away from shore, away from shore ... swim, swim till she sank. But something within her told her she was not ready. This dullness upon her mind, thisfog fending her heart that was there since the month she was gone: let it be there longer. Was it beginning to part?
—Why am I here? I am afraid to ask why I am here. Solid New York, bear me up! Longer, your cold surface, lift me, hold me!
She swam to get out. She was up from her chair. Humming a tune she did not hear or know of, she lighted the gas: she clasped her short thick hair and thrust it atop her head. The gas danced hard on her eyes and her black hair. She lighted her little stove: she put water to boil: she was very busy swimming to get out.
And when she had drunk two coddled eggs and eaten an orange, she took the blue cover from her couch, folded it carefully away, threw wide her windows: and with the light of the downtown heavens falling in sprays and fluffs of murmurous gold against her sombre carpet, she lay down. Soon she slept.
* * *
Work gripped her. Mr. Johns was delighted with her way of work.
“Dont kill yourself, Mrs. Luve.”
She smiled wistfully. “I shant die.”
He looked at her warmly. “You say that as if you knew.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps you don’t know the deadliness of New York.”
“I’m not ready yet,” she announced half to herself.
“You’re a bad example,” he caressed her with bluff words, “of Southern indolence.”
“I’m a New Yorker,” she said and went back to her girls.
Always she knew this could not last. Yet always life came easier, easier ... in its harsh brusque work, in its biting flavor of intercourse with Mr. Johns, with Clara.
Each night as she lay down to sleep, the question stood before her: Why? A question like a single point of steel piercing so many lives, piercing so many loves, all bleeding-spitted upon it. But she slept quick. She slept heavy. In her sleep, if it was parted at all, merely the Question again, rising up, up, out of sight like an infinite steel point: she was impaled on it: but bloodless already. She lay there quiet, impaled. She had no responsibility since she was bloodless already. And in the morning, when she awoke there was work.
She entered the Office a breath of wistful quiet, a cloud of gentle moisture moving upon a sultry day. All who were there unthinking were glad, when she entered the Office.
Clara found herself glad when she was with her. In the cooling dusk of summer they walked homeward: at times they dined together: quiet words went from each to each, no depths articulate and yet there was a peace.
Fanny looked at her friend as they ate in silence.
—Know everything! There is naught in me I do not wish you to know. But know it silent. She would have been happy to be of help to Clara.
Summer was a full time in the Sales Office ofDelight Drinks Inc.Even so there came pause. Slack hours lounged in the hot rooms. Rooms, writhed in the dry green blare of the electric lights, burning like sores against the summer’s sultry and drab dampness, came to a halt, jolted against their usual flow, stood glazed and ominous upon the dark grain of Time.
As in a crowded car suddenly broken from its speed the passengers congest, fall huddled upon each other, so Fanny’s girls piled heavy moist against the soul of Fanny. She sat at her desk with her hands laid before her. The girls at long tables opened the envelopes of orders, marked blanks and sheets, sorted by geographical location, placed in trays. The girls yawned together ... sudden the girls were One, with moist throat running down in dusty waist, with bare arm brushing sweat from brow, with body crowded lush in a narrow skirt, under narrow table, into narrow shoes. They were a body breathing and sweating in a smoulder of will to lie out naked near a lapping sea under cool winds ... cool lips. She loved the girls.
—O if I could show you how I understand!
—Why do I understand?
Here with these girls, her life could come and she face it. Question no longer. Her life was a way, here, tender and passionate and simple, leading into the hearts of a dozen girls.
—I am all open. You do not come in.I am all open. I come into you.
—I am all open. You do not come in.I am all open. I come into you.
—I am all open. You do not come in.I am all open. I come into you.
“It’s a hot afternoon, girls.”
“Gee ... yes!”
“What do you say to a round of lemonade?”
Surface of scared wills against a whirling world. But here all was quiet and sweet, and all was in herself. She could look at each girl, see a face already bitten and shrunk by the acids of life. But she looked in herself, and each hurt, each struggle was a throb within her ... they were healed.
“Good! You, Daisie, you know that Italian’s on the corner? Let’s collect five cents each—only those who want it though! You go out, dear, and bring up a pitcher ... two pitchers.” As Daisie bustled by, she slipped a quarter holding the little calloused hand just long enough to give two messages: “Buy some cookies or something with that” and her heart’s fullness.
—What do I understand? now she asked herself as the room waited, spinning in expectancy, released in laughter and jest and stretching of arms from Time.
—There is something beautiful ... in the understanding? in what? O life how you hurt! O life, how when one holds you warm and athrob in one’s heart, you are good, hurting!
The lemonade came: giggles and smacking lips softened the blare of the lights. “One can live,” Fanny murmured sipping her sweet drink, ... “without questions.” The room went its way up Time’s black tunnel. The girls’ congestion broke.They were one and one and one. They were many girls, now, some sweet, some bitter, some bright, some dull, some brave, some ugly and broken. They were many girls at work: they opened envelopes, marked blanks and sheets, sorted and marked ... they droned in many minds about little shut circles of thought, each shut from the other circles: circles spun about their many heads, colliding, rebounding, spinning away alone....
—One can live without asking questions. Not you. One can live spinning and droning. Not you. One can weave a steel sheet between one’s heart and one’s mind. Not you. Lord, I shall think. I promise, Lord.... I shall remember that I have suffered and died, that I am here, to think.... Lord, just a little longer.
* * *
Fanny walked home alone, avoiding Clara. In the dim afternoon the City was solid. Houses were made of stone and brick and were held up in their vast weights by pavements.
Pavements solid strong, hold me up also.You hold these crowds, you hold these walls.Solid City, do not let me fall.
Pavements solid strong, hold me up also.You hold these crowds, you hold these walls.Solid City, do not let me fall.
Pavements solid strong, hold me up also.You hold these crowds, you hold these walls.Solid City, do not let me fall.
Fanny walked tense through the slack afternoon, helping to hold herself. Her trip from the South was there. She runs swift, relaxed, through the world. She falls through the world in a train, falls upward. She falls upward upon God.Hold me, City.
In her room, the Church. Her fists clenched.
“I am going to move,” she muttered, her breath was angry. She hated ... she hated. “Damn that Church! it blots out most of the sun.”
Down she went, deliberate, to the kitchen. Old Mrs. Deemis bent rhythmically over a padded board ironing towels.
“Hot, eh? Mrs. Luve.”
“Yes.”
“Anything I kin do for you, dearie?” the woman filled the pause. Her gray hair fell in wet patches over her wide bland forehead. “Never you hesitate if there’s anything I kin do for ye, now.”
Fanny, quailing before her sudden resolve to give notice, sat in a chair.
“You couldn’t remove that Church for me, could you, Mrs. Deemis?”
Mrs. Deemis stamped the steaming iron with elbows right-angled to the board.
“Now, will you believes me, Mrs. Luve, I wisht I could!”
Fanny tried to laugh.—Haven’t I been joking?
“You mean Saint—acrost the way there, don’t you? They own this house, and they’re the meanest landlords ... the downright stingiest, meanest landlords, now, you ever seen. I been here twenty years. On the first of the month, it’s the rent quick, you bet. But if it’s the roof that leaks, or the plumbin’ that stinks—O any year’ll do for fixin’ that.”
“This is Church property,” murmured Fanny.
“Yes ...this....” Mrs. Deemis flourished the dismal kitchen with its seeping walls, itscrumbling plaster ceiling, its ooze rotted floor, into the eyes of Fanny.
“How can I live on Church property,” Fanny thought aloud.
“Why!... Mrs. Luve!” Mrs. Deemis doubted her ears. “What’d ye say? Beg pardon?”
“They’re rotten landlords?”
“Well now ... of course.... I dont say they’re noworse....”
“The Church takes the sun from my window, Mrs. Deemis. I love the sun.”
“Why you aint never there? You work. What do ye need the sun for?... Dont blame the Church for that, my dear. You must be fair. If ’twasnt the Church wouldn’t it be one of these here ... now ... factories or office-buildings?”
“—— taking the sun,” murmured Fanny and saw the once more ploughing arms of the old lady.
“You aint thinkin’ of leaving, Mrs. Luve? Cause ... that’s a fine room ... kin rent——“
“Why no.” Fanny got up. “No, I shant move. I love my room. But if you could be so obliging as to remove that Church....” She laughed with her eyes gleaming differently from laughter.
Upstairs she lowered the shades. She undressed. Naked, she saw in the glass that she still wore her hat. Her brow ached. She let fall her hair, letting her cold hands run through its electric dusk. Ungowned in her sheet she lay through the thick night with hands clasping her arms beneath her breasts. She lay dreamless, moving very fast. When she awoke it was late and sheknew she had gone far. There were red furrows deep in the flesh of her arms.
The night following ... sudden she emerged from the hot fog that held her. She is in the Church. Naked she stands before a stately mirror whose gold-tooled pediment crowned the blaze of her black hair and eyes. She struck her breasts with a firm fist. “You are cast out, you are vomited by Love.” She stands there burning in cold shame. Her mouth is open, and from it, like a white water, runs a moan. “What does it mean? Christ, what does it mean? Why was I hurt so? Why was I so given a high thought, high dream? I have been hurt. O Christ how it hurts so to be hurt without a meaning. Why?”
—This is a Church!She knew that Christ was coming. He was a man whom she knew. She could not see him, standing there beyond her: but each nerve of her lay in the impact of his presence.—He sees me! It was right that he should look upon her naked and shamed.—It is good, it is good. He looks on me and that is good. He looks on me because my hurt is an unmeaning hurt....
Her half-opened eyes, her half-shut hands, her outstretched knees and her thighs touched the warm smoothness of her bedclothes.—I am so tired! It was good in bed. She slept.
She walked downtown in the young summer morning. The air had a coolness like lilacs after rain. A man passed. Coming closer, sheer, the sight of the man tugged on the cheek and on the neck of Fanny. A man old and bent. Grey beard tangled from a face long furrowed: the eyes wereblue and gentle and the brow was untouched.... His beard was a grey prayer. His face was his life. Above his life was his brow like a dawn above storm. “He was a Jew,” she whispered to herself. Then she remembered her dreaming and her moan.
* * *
... Something within her said: “There is no hurry.” Much within her said: “You have no life, you are broken. Why alive? You are broken and flayed by life. Life without what you have lost is a mere agony dying down, a slow starving, a slow suffocation.” But something within her said: “There is no hurry.”
Something within her stirred to say: “Even your hurt has a soul. Even the insult lying in your heart has a soul.” Then her hands worked faster. She had eyes then for her girls toiling in their mute slavery, that brought out love, like a cool mist rising from a morning sun, into the dismal workroom.
At times, eating her meat and enjoying it, laughing alone at a show, she found in herself assurance ... mad and blind howsoever ... like a babe’s lying within a womb.
She asked herself doubtingly: “You have been unhappier having, than now when you are empty. Perhaps I am dead!”
Each thought and pain, pushing forth from her, could not leave the mist of her strange slumber. So that she could not be unhappy. For unhappiness is the departure of ourselves from ourselves, the adventure beyond us of our hearts and eyes. Fanny was caught in her pregnant slumber. Her consciousness was like a maze of creatures crawling about a Sphere who cannot leave its surface: who cannot conceive of aught within or without its surface: creatures of two dimensions spanning a Globe about and about ... and yet unable to know it.
* * *
It had been hot, this day: now late, sultry clouds pressed like steel on the pulsant City. Dust rose in a great wind. The Office seemed to plunge through a sea of dust and steel cloud.
The others were gone: in the suddenly dark room, Fanny worked alone with Mr. Johns. He examined her books, leaning over her, just above her shoulder, breathing palpably there in the dark room.
A gust of wind from the gray window scattered a pile of papers, Johns’ hand came flat on the table.
“It’s going to rain,” he said.
“Yes.”
He strode to the window and shut it.
“That wont be too hot? All these papers will blow, I’m afraid.”
“It’s cooler, already.”
It was not cooler. The shut window made the dark room plunge and stifle. Fanny felt ill. Her hands ran over the sharp cool sheets of paper.The nerves of the palms of her hands were shrill.
“Is that all, Mr. Johns?”
“There’s the whole South yet! We’d better see how they’re drinking down in the South.”
“O yes....”
“You wouldn’t forget the South?”
A picture bright like a knife ... this her house, the garden, Edith in her blue bassinette ... cut her and filled the room.
—Get away! get away!
“Now—first, Virginia—“
“Yes.”—Get away! O my baby! O Harry! How could you? Couldn’t you understand? Yet? Where are you Edith?... “This was at Flora’s table.”—Get away!
She talked. Her words were dim, she could not see her words. She went on talking ... strong hands gripped her arms near her shoulders, turned her. A long heavy face—red and kind—thrust bewilderment upon her eyes that could not see her words.
“Mrs. Luve!”
—Your face is different: heavier, solider ... could it hurt so?
“Mrs. Luve!”
—Your hair is not silky. Silk cuts. Silk cuts.
“Mrs. Luve! what is the matter?”
He placed her in a chair. The window flew open. Steel cool night flooded in. The room righted.
“Excuse me, Mr. Johns.... I—I reckon I—I was faint a bit. Let’s go on.”
“There’s no hurry.”
—He’s looking at me. And I can’t see mywords. I am talking. I must talk. Do my words stand between me and him? O they must.... Silk only cuts.... She stopped.
Her heart was weary.—If you must see, you big good man, then see. I can fend no more. I let go. She covered her face one moment with her hands. No tears. Her head lifted, eyes blazing.
“Well,” she said, “have you seen enough? Have you had enough! Coward!”
A heavy hand lay gently upon hers. Gentle hand outstretched from a long arm.... O how long! and there, vastly beyond as in a dream, this man: solid red good.
“Quiet,” his hand spoke to her. The other hand. “Quiet.” Fanny jumped up.
She saw him there, and that he was frightened.
—He is frightened by me, he is frightened about me! He cares because he sees me in pain. He is worried about me. Impossible, impossible. Right this!
Fanny’s scream knifed through the grayness. Then she was clear. She stood there, seeing him in the dark room, clear.
He saw her clarity: his brow clouded.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I thought you were sick: you seemed hysterical, Mrs. Luve. I meant only to quiet you.”
“Your hand you mean? It was good. Thank you for your hand, sir. It took one scream from me. Thank you.”
She breathed very fast. She was headclear now, as if in a storm which had passed all fibre,all flesh had been stripped from her taut nerves. She was a framework of nerves.
“Thank you,” she said again. “One less scream. Do you know what that means? One less scream!”
He came to her and clasped her arm.
“Scream again.”
She looked at him full. “Wait,” she panted. He held her. She leaned back feeling his hands strained by her weight to eat into her arms.
“Wait!” There was a liquid fullness in her voice. “Perhaps I can laugh instead. Laugh—“
“No. Don’t laugh, I tell you. Don’t lie, for God’s sake. Scream.”
There was a silence. The silence was all fresh and new like a dawn.
Gently she pressed from him. She sat by the table at the room’s far side. She buried her face in her hands on the cluttered table. She wept....
She wept long. She stayed still motionless there, with her face buried among papers after she had wept. The world came back:—The dusk of the spent day. The long cool wake of the spent heat-storm. The little office, pitching no longer ... spent ... atop the cluttered City. And this man, stranger she had worked for now many months, who was solid and could help ... this man so good that he had made her scream.
With a felt slowness she lifted her head, turned her face.
—He is there! He has not moved. He stands there silent, held by thesight of me ... while I wept.
She smiled at him.
“Do you feel better now?”
She nodded.
“Sure?”
She nodded. He brought her coat and hat. An orange feather tufted from the straw. His long vein-straggled hand ran over the feather. She looked at it. The feather was not ruffled.
“Thank you,” she said very soft.
His face was rounder with a smile. She saw his jagged teeth and his soft twining lips. She saw the dimple in his chin and his long neck.—Ostrich! She was alert, serious as he helped her. She felt him ... good ... with her back ... all about her ... as he helped her.
—He is sure! While I wept, he was there, not moving!
The hand she held out to his seemed small to her, pretty....
There was a knock on Fanny’s door.
“It’s me, Mrs. Luve.”
“O Mrs. Deemis. Come in....”
She was almost dressed. The old lady gave a glance that was like a draught of drink at the whole room ... her room, changed so often into new mystery of him or her who hired it. She lived familiarly in mystery. It warmed her. She had no man, her children were gone: she had a family of mystery. She did not know but on these she subsisted.
“There was a phone call for you ... early ... your office. A Mr. Johns—he didn’t give no other name—he said as how if you wasn’t feeling well this morning you should knock off. It’d be alright. Are you sick, dearie?”
“No.” Restless before her mirror.—What should I do here, workless? “Yesterday afternoon a little.... The New York heat, I reckon.”
“I guess so. Well,” the old lady opened the door, “Take the chance when it’s offered. Eh?” She was a silent woman for she was full of her mysteries. She left. Fanny went on dressing.
But there came a morning in the clear coolness of autumn. Fanny’s eyes opened from sleep. Her body stretched on its back ... the warm thin bed ... her body less plump already measuring the bed ... the bed measuring the wall, soft cream ... the room ... windows behind their white mesh curtains thresholding, flaring, shouting out into the world, all new and terrible again in its old Pain ... came to her. Different! She lay. She could lie, eyes open, and the windows flared and led out, and there was the Pain of the congested world: yet she lay warm, stretched in her bed, and could bear it.
—It’s Sunday. O how good! It was long, back in the age that was separate by the Abyss, since she had lain awake in a sweet bed.—Why?
—There’s been a hairy monster sitting on my face!The hair in my eyes, the fat and the stink and the bagGlued on my mouth!...
—There’s been a hairy monster sitting on my face!The hair in my eyes, the fat and the stink and the bagGlued on my mouth!...
—There’s been a hairy monster sitting on my face!The hair in my eyes, the fat and the stink and the bagGlued on my mouth!...
Here was a clear gold morning, full of sun ... a morning mad to drink....—He squats there yet!Gold mornings made to drink, clear cool drinkable days. I’ll drink you yet, I’ll drink you yet. Sun-veined air, wine of the sun, I’ll have you!
—Find out the monster’s name: pull him, tweak him.Find out his name and he’ll squeal away like a pig.—O he is there. But I have sipped a morning.
—Find out the monster’s name: pull him, tweak him.Find out his name and he’ll squeal away like a pig.—O he is there. But I have sipped a morning.
—Find out the monster’s name: pull him, tweak him.Find out his name and he’ll squeal away like a pig.—O he is there. But I have sipped a morning.
She got out of bed ... dimness before her eyes and brow like a curtain before fire. The curtain became mist. She knew so yet it must be ... the mist quenched and quenched.Not all the fire! Never all the fire!In this way she got out of bed.
* * *
In her nightgown she stood by the open window, letting the cold air race through her. She looked at the Church, she did not feel the cold air save that there was sun in it. The Church did not race. It stayed there immovable. It was fixed somewhere under the spinning of her world ... where the Pain was also. Half naked by the open window and the Church, she took her Bible and opened it. She felt the Church a dull base on which the Bible was written: from which it leaped, it leaped in syllables of sun.
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of GodShouted for joy....”
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of GodShouted for joy....”
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of GodShouted for joy....”
She turned the pages. She saw:
“For I say unto you,Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the causeOf fornication causeth herTo commit adultery.”
“For I say unto you,Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the causeOf fornication causeth herTo commit adultery.”
“For I say unto you,Whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the causeOf fornication causeth herTo commit adultery.”
She shut the book. She looked at the Church. She looked at the Church, the morning stars sang through her flimsy nightgown. But she was not cold. She wondered.
She went back into bed, holding the Bible. Two fingers marked the two places she had read. Her eyes narrowed.—I am beginning to think! Once more she jumped up. She turned the curtains back so that the windows were bare. She went again to her bed. She could see the Church now from her pillow. She pressed the little black book against her breasts. “Where,” she said aloud, “in which of the two places does it touch me?” She pressed the Bible against her left breast and against her right breast. She liked the feel of the hard book against her.... “What sucks me?” she whispered.” ... that which has cast me out, or the other that draws, that welcomes?” She lifted her two hands high above her face. “Yes” she cried, “the other that calls me good!” Her hands fell in her bosom.—I am beginning to think.Dowords in sunlight leap from a page and leave it? She turned her head, gazed at the wall of the Church so heavy and fixed against the sun-dazzled window. The organ rose. A hymn, many-voiced, twined with the organ, pealed slanting upwards toward her through the window.—It leaves the Church. Comes to me. I hear it as no one ... don’t I know?... as none of them sticking in their varnished pews.Ihear alone. Out of a Church. She took the Bible again and read the words of Jesus.
She read them calmly. She looked away seeing the terrible words. Pain, agony of shame and of deprival, rending of doubt parted once more the golden haze she had lived in for a moment.—I am sinking back! She was afraid.—I am sinking. There it was all ... Harry, her search to hold, to find him: the lancing anguish of her revelation: Leon, Edith, the ecstacy of Good ... and the cool-lipped stranger so close pointing a finger, thrusting her out with a finger.
Fanny rocked in her bed, rocked motionless, dizzy with rocking thoughts.—Go away, go away, she moaned.—Why, why must I ask Why? I cannot bear it.
There was a knock on her door. She was very still. Knock, knock.
“What is it?”
“May I come in?... It’s Clara Lonergan....”
“O you.... Yes. Come in.”
The girl smiled: “It’s such a bully morning.”
“I am glad you came.”
“I had no idea you’d be so lazy. I thought you might come for a walk.”
“The day came into the room. I have both day and bed.”
Clara brought a chair to the bed and sat down. She saw the Bible.
“And Church too, I see.” Her lips curled but her eyes were really smiling.
“Don’t you approve of Church?”
“No,” said Clara, “I hate it.MyChurch at any rate. Pa said it was the Priests that made Mother willing to die.”
“Well ... what have Church and Bible to do with each other?”
Clara laughed. “O come on! Let’s walk. It’s cold in here.” She drew her boa across her throat. “Shall I close the window?”
“Don’t you dare!” cried Fanny. She jumped out of bed. She was exhilerated. Her nightgown fell to the floor.
Clara was up. “You’ll catch your death of cold....”
“No, no,” said Fanny. She stood there naked. Her arms were lifted above her. “I’m not cold. There are stars and sun in this room ... they are racing through me.”
“You’re mad, dear,” said Clara. She was close. She placed her hands on the naked woman’s shoulders. Their eyes met. Clara’s eyes and face went down. Very lightly she touched her lips upon the throat of Fanny.
“Dress.... Hurry.” Clara went back to her chair; half-turned away she fingered the fallenBible. There was a new warm glow between them in the room.
Fanny dressed silent, fast.
“Why do you want to move about?” She seated herself in her wrapper before Clara on the bed. “I don’t feel like walking. I’ll close the windows. I’ll make the bed in a jiffy. You stay.”
“Go and make yourself some coffee. I’ll fix the couch.”
“I’ll make coffee for two.”
“Alright.”
They sat at last, quiet in the clear sunlit room, and smiled at each other. Sleep and the night were gone, with the bed turned couch.
“Now it’s my sitting room,” laughed Fanny.
“You’ve been used to more than that.”
“Please don’t!” Then Fanny was sorry. “No I don’t mean that. I don’t mean to hide myself from you, Clara. Only, it hurts.”
“You don’t have to talk ... with me. I’m not that sort. I’m not the sort of girl who measures a friendship by the number of secrets chattered about.”
“I know.”
“I feel we’re friends, you and I. That’s enough.”
“That’s enough. But O, Clara, if I knew a single thing in all the world, I’d tell you. I don’t know anything. Perhaps you know more than I.”
“I know some things,” said Clara.
“I feel you know some things,” Fanny looked at her friend’s long taut hands. They reachedfor her bag, opened it, took out a box of cigarettes. She offered it, open, to Fanny. “Go ahead.” They both smoked.
“I know that a smoke tastes good,” said Clara. “I know that in the mornings a cup of coffee tastes good. I know I’m young and that the world won’t give me a thing ... not a thing!... unless I fight, unless I cheat.”
“What has it to give?”
“Just things that taste good....”
“Then ...?”
“Then let’s die.”
“Why do you say Cheat, Clara? Why don’t you say Pay?”
“To pay comes high.”
“To cheat comes low.” She looked at Clara long. “I don’t believe you, Clara. There’s no cheat in you.”
“Then you don’t know me.”
“You said that we knew each other.”
“Well, look at me!” She stood. “I am lovely. Look.” Her hands caressingly followed her words. “My hair is black and soft. My mouth is warm. This is a good white throat, I know.... And my body is good—O so good and clean, and so swelling-slender like a lily. My body deserves something, that is sure.” She sat down. She blushed. “So does yours,” she went on. “I’ve seen you. So does yours.”
Fanny’s hands clasped swaying. “If you could see, O girl, if you could see what has been done upon my body!”
She looked away with her hands still swaying ... The Church! She did not know where to look. She hid her eyes in her hands.
Clara got up. She lifted the face of her friend and held it between her palms.
“I can see much, Fanny. Don’t say a word. I can see much.”
Her hands slipped down. They were fists. Slow, deliberate, they beat against her hips.
Soon she left....
Fanny Dirk opened the windows wide, let out the cigarette smoke, closed them, sat down.