The Project Gutenberg eBook ofRahabThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: RahabAuthor: Waldo David FrankRelease date: May 10, 2024 [eBook #73590]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: NYC: Boni & Liveright, 1922Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAHAB ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: RahabAuthor: Waldo David FrankRelease date: May 10, 2024 [eBook #73590]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: NYC: Boni & Liveright, 1922Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Title: Rahab
Author: Waldo David Frank
Author: Waldo David Frank
Release date: May 10, 2024 [eBook #73590]
Language: English
Original publication: NYC: Boni & Liveright, 1922
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAHAB ***
[REHAB]
BOOKS by WALDO FRANKThe Unwelcome ManThe Dark MotherRahabCity Block(in preparation)Our AmericaThe Art of The Vieux ColombierVirgin Spain(in preparation)
BOOKS by WALDO FRANK
The Unwelcome ManThe Dark MotherRahabCity Block(in preparation)Our AmericaThe Art of The Vieux ColombierVirgin Spain(in preparation)
ByWALDO FRANK[colophon]BONIANDLIVERIGHTPUBLISHERS NEW YORKRAHABCopyright, 1922, byBoni & Liveright, Inc.—Printed in the United States of AmericaToMagic
ERRATA[Corrected by etext transcriber.]
Page57, second line from top, “stook” should read “stood.”Page113, eighth line from top, reading “the cigarette smoke, closed them, sat down,” should be eliminated entirely, and the line should read “deliberate they beat against her hips”Page147, twelfth line from top, “shadow” should read “shallow”
Page57, second line from top, “stook” should read “stood.”
Page113, eighth line from top, reading “the cigarette smoke, closed them, sat down,” should be eliminated entirely, and the line should read “deliberate they beat against her hips”
Page147, twelfth line from top, “shadow” should read “shallow”
“Be consoled: thou wouldst not seekme if thou hadst not found me....”PASCAL
“Be consoled: thou wouldst not seekme if thou hadst not found me....”PASCAL
“Be consoled: thou wouldst not seekme if thou hadst not found me....”PASCAL
THE door opened against the drawn chain, grating against it.
In the grey strip a woman’s face, very grey, very unexpectant, suddenly was bright.
It measured a man, young, standing at ease. The chain clicked free. “O it’s you, Mr. Samson.” The door opened wide, shut them in.
The hall was a long shadow beyond the glow of them standing. He was quiet waiting, not sheer against her: his shaggy coat poured the street’s coldness. She was a dim thing about eyes.
“I’m so glad it’s you, Mr. Samson.”
She walked noiseless through shadow, she took no space from it, she was infinitesimal within a mood. He followed.
“I was taking it right easy ... reading.”
In the gaslight she turned and fronted him. She took his coat. He was a fair boy, gentle, somewhat plump. He sat down, she stood.
—I have been in this room before, I have seen this woman before. It is not the sort of room, she is not the sort of woman I want to see for I am here for neither.... Why strangely now this sense of her reality upon me?
It was her room, there they were after all, the woman in her room touching upon him.—Let me see in this silence the woman in her room.
Her quiet words did not obtrude upon a silence whose margin he caught as it waved. He saw her a battered creature. He saw her absurdity ofpainted cheeks, two imitation flowers stuck in the ruts of a road. He sat in a room whose dinginess enarmed him. He sat in the misery of this woman. He sat deep.
“Still so cold out?” Over her head a chandelier ... brass gas, hideous brutal under the flecked ceiling. His feet glowed with renewing warmth. In his eye beneath his shoes a carpet of acid green.
—We sit.... She sits in a cloud of dinginess. Sharp spirit veiled in a cloudy flesh. Now: centers of glow, thrown from the woman, solid like her spirit. He was aware of loveliness.
Under the blow of the chandelier a delicate Pembroke table ... book and a glass of whisky.
—Under my arms, pressing against my back, a high arched Windsor chair.
In the break of her hip, standing, a Hepple—white desk.
—We have no furniture like this at home!
She spoke. He peered into the form of her words. His eyes took the gloss of the subtle table, it was one with her words’ accent. Futile words ... grammatical, well-ordered. A subtle table, and beyond a virulent huge sideboard. A faint quaint accent in her pointless words curling like heat of hidden flame above the table, against the sideboard: whispers in how she spoke, like these glowing poems in wood, of a day distant from his New York where there had been leisure and when from the dung of human misery America grew flowers.
A quiet pain in the table and her words ... a distant pain. He did not put his immediate question.
She felt his pause; in it drew up her chair. She sat he thought with grace athwart him at the table. The whisky glass was gone, he had not noticed her hide it. The book was there with her hand. Black little book.Bible!He felt her feeling him feel her. Now she was silent.
They were silent upon each other. Heavily.
His brow twitched.—Let me see her! She was cold and helpless. He understood he could not understand. She seemed a chaste woman with burnt eyes. She drew him.
Words to pull him aloof: “I am afraid we don’t read that book ... half enough.... I don’t I mean,” he blushed. “Do we, Mrs. Luve?”
—Wrong. Wrong! A delicate line left ... he feltleft... under her folded thin lip. Lip folded away.
“It’s a rattling good book.”
“O butyoudo.”
“I?”
“Youread it enough.... You’re a Jew.”
“I’m a Jew,” he repeated. Above her and the table the flourishes and bulgings of the chandelier ... brass gas ... were lewd. “I’m a Jew. If there’s any soul in me worth speaking of, it’s in that book.” She leaned forward upon the table with elbows drawn tight back. “Yet I can’t read a word of it, except in English.... I’m ashamed of that.”
She laughed embarrassed. He was understanding deeper he could not understand. She was upswiftly. She took the Bible, opened a door in the sideboard. Glint of glasses, plush, odor of liquors. She placed the Bible within them.
“I suppose,” a smile to her face, the first: as sudden again her face was grey,” ...you came for Thelma?”
“Why ... yes.”—Of course for that I came, for that only I come ever to your dirty flat.... She has delicate fingers.... How else did I come at first? Dirty? There was a silence fringing his questions, veiling them, making them false. In the silence the presence of strangeness.
“I am afraid I may not be able to get her ... right away.”
Her fingers curled up. He felt how they had drooped from the hard square palms like shoots frozen in a cold Spring.
“There’s just a chance. If you’ll ... excuse me I’ll phone.”
The door shut him in.
He sat quiet because he wanted to get up, hunt for something. Bible? He walked up and down because he wanted to stay, hoped she would find Thelma.
He needed Thelma to-night.... He knew this.
—I do not feel it now. For only a sharp need brought him to this flat he despised. Where alone Thelma would meet him.—I am here again. I must need Thelma. Mrs. Luve was back.
“I’m sorry. Thelma’s gone to a Show, withsome friends. There’s just a chance ... later ... she might possibly go after eleven to the Garden Cafe. I could phone there, then.” Mrs. Luve stood in the door, her face was bright, she smiled again it was grey. “You——“
He shook his head, not getting up. She did not stir also. Her face was bright. Her mouth trembled. He said: “Have you any beer, Mrs. Luve? We might have a drink?”
He could not help seeing her, seeing her more and more. Frail slain fingers resting upon a table warmer than her hand. She all a sapling broken in frost ... standing seasons dead.
—What is there here to see? He pulled a bill from his pocket. As his hand went toward hers, a hot wind stopped it. He felt them both cold. Under her eyes he saw a shadow like a whip’s mark.
He put his money away.
She left the room.
She returned, she carried a silver platter. Upon it a bottle of wine. Two slim glasses.
It was long silence now, with them less heavy against it. Silence full with its own mood, its own blood, strong to live.
The wine stood erect on the subtle table. Mrs. Luve leaned and poured of it, a drop first in her glass, then his glass full, then her glass full. Her bare arm pouring red wine came from a dim kimona.
... In the face of a worn woman black eyes burning: eyes blazing against the face, leaping from face and woman: eyes touching the red of the wine.
He felt:—I am disappearing.There is a silence like lightUpon us.Moving like light a silenceUpon words.There will be words moving in light:There will be lighted words....
He felt:—I am disappearing.There is a silence like lightUpon us.Moving like light a silenceUpon words.There will be words moving in light:There will be lighted words....
He felt:—I am disappearing.There is a silence like lightUpon us.Moving like light a silenceUpon words.There will be words moving in light:There will be lighted words....
SPRING ... a Southern city in song. A city drifting fading into the wide arms of earth, into trees, fields running under grass, into trees, into high thrusts of earth, into trees, trees. The city a raised shadow upon earth. Against earth’s sweep through the Precinct of suns and stars, apart from sun and stars—blotch of hard houses leaning back upon the dead days of their makers—whole city leaning back, falling away from the wide freedom of sun, earth, stars, twirling together locked. And they two ... man and girl ... clasped in the steadfast spin of life—sun stars earth dust—that swung away from the city.
Fanny Dirk was on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting up in erection, spilling in bud. Over: he. Under and over: One. She was viced in One: Grass, hair, fingers, twigs broken to leaf, lips and earth hot against her.... One. She was surrounded by One. She was beyond distinctions. She was One. She was in ecstasy....
Then they walked to their horses on the distant road.
A house, coddling itself warm, despite bright elms, in its shadows of men, cast a grey finger up from the Town to the young man’s mind. His house ... running no longer away from the immobile dance of earth andsun ... reached up now, arrogant, clambered with its long harsh shadows into the mind and mood of his mother’s and father’s son.
“Fanny!”
—Harry, Harry.... O you ... you my life!
“Fanny, now we must get married.”
—Hush! I hate you. How can you speak so now?
“Why are you silent, Fanny? I’m a gentleman, little girl. Don’t think I respect you less, because you love me.... I love you ... we....”
—No respect, then!
“ ...will be married. You are not less the lady.”
—Stop, stop, stop!
“Secretly, of course. Till I am done with College. Not so long, Honey. You can wait? We’ll have a real wedding, then.”
—Can’t you stop? What are you killing? What are you killing? Can’t we stop?
Fanny Dirk became the wife of Harry Howland Luve.
* * *
Mrs. Luve held her slender glass in frail spent fingers. She sipped. Her hot eyes swept above frail flesh, spun glass.
—I want you to see me! I want you to see me!
Mr. Samson nodded.—What else can I do?
—Can you see this? I was as fresh and ruddy as a maple blossom!...
She was hard, she was intact. Her husband took her to a little house on the best street: threesquares away was the Luve Mansion which one day should be his. “This is our home. It’s small dear. But so are you small. We’ll live here till our love bursts it.”
He was tall and thin, yet he gave the air of softness. His big black eyes being soft, his delicate hair that lay thinning on the transparent tinge of his brow gave his sapling body the air of holding a softness. He had small dimpled hands tapering to fingers with which to hold her who was hard and intact.
“O I love it!”
She did not love the hard Luve Mansion, her own home had been prim and small, her hardness needed tender and small things of the world.
“O I love it, Harry! I’m glad it’s no larger. O—what a kitchen! Can’t I do for you right snug in that gem of a kitchen.”
“No, sweet, not that. Mammy Sue comes along. I can’t say No to Mammy. I can’t begin now saying No ... when I’m married. She’s been waiting’, fixin’ for that. She’s been totin’ me from a baby just for that. You’ll surrender, Honey! She loves you for making me surrender ... to her.”
“And I bake such biscuits.”
“You may ... when Mammy’s not looking.”
She made him sit down. “You’re so high!” She clapped her hands. Sharp, she kissed his hair, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Sharp kisses. Each finger tip she kissed. “O—O you!” She opened his waistcoat, she opened one buttonof his shirt. A sharp kiss on his chest. She leaped away, clapped her hands.
“I’ll manage Mammy.”
“Whom couldn’t you manage?”
—You.... I leap gaily clapping my hands, my Love. I leap on Pain, on the shadow of Doubt I leap. What can I do with you?
She was on her knees: her arms embraced his legs, her cheek was hot against his cold shoes.
—Under the Pain is there sunlight for dancing? Under the doubt is there a solid world?
“She loves me,” said to himself Harry Howland Luve. “Blessed sweet!”—Well, I’ve married her. She’s married to a Luve. She’s leaping, dancing on a joy I can understand.
* * *
Mrs. Luve and Mr. Samson talked of small matters pleasantly.
—He sits there sweetly, chatting of small matters. O it is good. O it is cool water. Bless you! He leaves me alone, he does not touch me. I am myself. We move marvelously into myself. He is content there, merely talking, with me a woman, of small matters.
—I have a mind, good mind for others. You shall have the benefit of that whenever you need it. I’ll find out whenever ... good good Boy!...
—I am alone. That is the blessing of talking with you here on cool small matters. You do not touch me as the world does when I am alone with no one. O you heal me: will you at least, afterthese years, these years, such years, be my healer? Not touching! The heal and the health and the miracle of that. Not touched, at last. The years full of bloody bubbles, each year a bubble of my blood unhealed. I shall not tell you of myself. You will feel....
—For thanks of God ... your God.... I embrace you, Boy. When one has a God one can have cool small matters. Let us talk on, for your God’s sake, of your cool small matters.
* * *
“Why do you drink? O Harry ... why, why now?”
“You are not always there. At College you were not there, Fanny. Drink was. One took what was to take.”
“But now....”
“Drink was there first. O I don’t know. When I am drunk I am wrapped in warm smooth clinging stuffs—like entrails—like insides of a great warm creature. When I drink I am wrapped in a woman.... Let me creep into you, Beloved. Farther, nearer. O you are sowhole. Won’t you let me creep away inside of you?”
“Harry I am all open to you. Come.”
“No dear. O my love! No, dear, I can’t. God damn you. You entice me ... impossibly. There you are—you are a woman,there. I can’t touch you ... you’rethere. I am here. Touch you? Break you. I’d smash you into this air if I could. Damn you! Damn you. Why shouldn’t I haveanother drink?Itgoes inside of me ... all of it ... serves me ... warms me. It’s mine, that. Going inside of me, same as me going inside of it. Inside of you ... impossibilities. God damn your sure solid eyes. Let me get out.”
She lifted his head from her lap. “Go then.”
He rose uneasy to his feet. He wiped straying silk hairs from his swimming eyes. He turned: stumbled: sank. He sobbed.
She placed him on his back on the floor: cradled his head in her hands.
“Let me get out! Let me get out!” he shouted, motionless.
“Sh-sh. You can go.”
“Fanny, Fanny,” he whispered, “hold me ... hold me still.” His body swung on the floor, the floor careened about his eyes. Her arms, cradling him, swaying his head, were alone moveless.
She dragged him to bed. He was a helpless drunken child. She undressed him. Her hands, touching his naked body, brought to his face a veil of ease. Her hands ceased. He raised his naked flesh from the hot covers.
“Give me a drink!”
“No.”
His eyes swung back from the wall of her response. But his arms surged forward, they caught her. He dragged her against his naked flesh....
She, little woman, sat in her rocking chair on the porch, looked up at the flood of sun and tried to find the world.
—Up the sun that is warm and good, up the sun that blinds me Struggling, not overwhelmed, I send my eyes....
She was clad in a pink dress whose dainty softness brought clear the silvery atunement of her body. There was naught slack in her. Her bare arms were a gentling, a subtle rounding of her bones: a haze of dark hair on them: hands rose intact and long from the fine wrists like flower from stem. The little breasts stood in the pink tulle, alert, infinitely one with the awareness of her eyes and wrists ... like the antennæ of a bug holding the world upon their frailty.
She sat challenging sun: not wilting: waiting her husband.
—Every day now he drinks. He gambles. He loves me. What have I to do with cards and liquor?
She, larger woman, sat deeper in her chair: lost now in a swathing gown of gray that rose like a wave to her white neck. Her shoulders and her chest; bare, were still planturous in their running variance of plane and mood: strong seeking chin, throat swelling as if with graceful words, chest rising downward from the aloof virginity of her neck to the slow fulness of her heavying breasts. Fanny was pregnant. She sat there ... taut limpid body ... in the sun, eyes unwilted, about her child likea sunny song hiding an omen. She sat there gradually giving way ... her taut and limpid sun-shape giving way ... to the dark press of a swollen larva tangled inside her blood, pressing, kicking, sucking weight to rend.
Harry Luve was gone three days, without a word ... plenty of signs. She knew.
—He has gone. I shall see him again. O yes. Long after I have looked in my child’s eyes. Thank God for that! I shall look long, years perhaps? long and deep in my baby’s eyes in order to understand how I must see him again.
His going down was simple like all of Harry Luve ... simple like a very plaintive song. She sat between the high sun and the low wail of her husband: balanced about a child.
How sustain the light madnesses of College? except in drink and gambling. How nourish the child in him he was? save with the rolling bloods of liquor, the swift tossings, cradlings, plungings of luck at cards. At the end of deep immersement in a helpless joy forever Birth which was an end: the Birth here at last Disgrace, as the Birth once air. Too much money lost, too much folly of a night in his cups. A woman half dead, half naked, bent across a table, a mirror smashed, ten thousand dollars debt. A birth that! Harry slipped down into it as doubtless he had slipped from his mother’s womb ... whimpering, blinking, inarticulate—nostalgic. He was gone.
But his father had Honor to groom. The debt was paid, the woman was salvaged and sent off. No word in the papers.
“He will find out he’s safe ... turn up, sobered ... my Dear. Never worry,” his father assured her.
“And I ...?”
“You are his wife, Frances. You must wait.”
She got up.
“Will you move my chair, Colonel Luve ... over there?”
She walked, clear slender neck and legs with her child so full before her her walk seemed to say: “My child comes first.”
Her husband’s parent shook his head.
“What can you do, my daughter? You must wait....”
She sank in her new-placed chair.
“ ...in the sun.”
—She is pregnant, Colonel Luve explained away the inconsequent words.
Fanny waited.
* * *
“I know your name.... I knew it always ... now you will let me?—Samson Brenner.”
“You say my name as if it meant something.”
“Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does. Go on.”
“I sometimes wonder why I am studying Law. Writing poems is more fun ... and you know? seemsrealler!”
“Yet you distrust writing poems....”
“—bad poems.”
“Bad because you distrust doing anything for fun?”
“You know, I think you’re right!”
He smiled like a child, pleased but a bit scared when he finds true what he had sought in make-believe. His brow wrinkled. He turned away from the brass glare of the light.
“That light is horrid,” she said.
“—all substitutes for the sun,” he said.
“That is so.”
“Yet what a wonder what a glory,” his body stiffened, “that we should have a substitute at all!”
“Why glory, Samson Brenner, if the substitute is false?... Wait.”
Mrs. Luve came back. She placed two candles between them on the Pembroke table.
“Shut out the gas,” she said.
There was blackness, heavy, hot, clasping them both. Two jets of liquid glow tongued from the mellow wood, made the wood lift and gleam like a sun’s ray through moving cloud: cast wreathings subtle, evanescent, out against the blackness.
They were quiet. The candles ... two fingers rose, touched them across the table, joined them, hushed them.
“May I say something to you?”
“What, Mrs. Luve?”
“You have a tongue that speaks truth, you have a tongue that lies.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“You must not have a tongue that lies: for you have a tongue that is true.”
“Haven’t we all ...?”
“You must not——“
—He does not see himself.He moves through a black HoleBright—pouring brightness.Where is a Sun whereby a Sun may see?—I have ten fingers ... ten to weave a WebTo catch at God.Too frail—too fine ... yet you slip through?
—He does not see himself.He moves through a black HoleBright—pouring brightness.Where is a Sun whereby a Sun may see?—I have ten fingers ... ten to weave a WebTo catch at God.Too frail—too fine ... yet you slip through?
—He does not see himself.He moves through a black HoleBright—pouring brightness.Where is a Sun whereby a Sun may see?
—I have ten fingers ... ten to weave a WebTo catch at God.Too frail—too fine ... yet you slip through?
* * *
Fanny looked out from her back sun-parlor upon trees.
Beside a high grey wall rose the thick life of a magnolia; beech and cherry and dogwood sang their light swift presences, a lawn was fresh like dew.
“Trees,” she murmured....—They have waited the Winter. It is Spring, they prepare to give a whole new life—blossom and seed. That is why it is Spring. Each year ... at their feet the dead leaves sink and rot. They push forth new ones. Each year.... They cannot help themselves.
She could go no farther.—Helpless bravery.... Upstairs in her cradle Edith slept. Harry was gone, voiceless, eight months. She was imprisoned in her man’s absence, in her child’s presence.
She had a dream. Harry jumped on his black horse, stood over her in his stirrups. He ribboned the black flanks red with his spurs. Thehorse leaped: as he flew away he leaned to her and cut deep her breast with his crop.... She awoke thinking of Edith. Her child was the red salute of Harry’s going: the scar of it. She loved her child.
She had a dream. A tall man with a baby’s face lay crowding in her arms. She could kiss his baby’s face, but he had tall legs, they spun and twirled about her. They struck a lamp which fell, the house was in flame. All of the town rushed into her house: she saw his father and mother, her mother who was dead and brother ... all of the city came into her sitting among flame holding a baby face. They stood there, pointing, poising, sneering at her. “What is she going to do? She sat rigid holding her baby face. What a fool, she sits there nursing a dead child with fire all about her!” She was helpless.
Now, sitting, watching the brave helpless trees she could go no farther. She had a child whom she loved and who was the wound of another love upon her.
—Trees do not think, they are brave helplessly. Why am I not brave? Trees lift into air. I am buried.
She was buried. Her friends and her relations, seeing her Mrs. Luve, buried her daily. Her child, seeing her mother, buried her daily. Her husband, a distant stroke in a far world, ploughing, ploughing like steel ... heaping the soil of his ploughings forever upon her, buried.
—Trees do not think. I try to think. Thinking is bad for Winter. Thinking is bad for Spring.Thinking chills Spring. Thinking calls sap to Winter which Winter kills. Yet I must think ... for I am motionless. To think is to move when one is motionless. Trees move forever. Leaf and trunk move upward, circle out: seed moves downward, inward. Trees swing forever so they are thoughtless. But I am a broken curve, a splintered part of a Circle I cannot see.... My thought’s a finger feeling from the line of my brokenness for a Roundness beyond me.
—What am I going to do? How am I going to think?
She was the wife of Harry Howland Luve. Pretty clever astounding Fanny Dirk: here’s a riddle for your independence, which we ... your Town ... have had to swallow ever since you were a child bossing your schoolmates, snubbing the smart young men, running through the gray-mossed tangles of our thoughts and ways like an April wind through a sleepy August. You have shocked us, angered us, made us love and accept you. You caught the best match of Town ... here is a riddle for you, smartie Fanny Dirk!
He will come back: she was very quick to find her own way, her own words for it: yet who of us dare say she was not always the lady? Mrs. Harry Luve. He will come back. Nothing for her after all but to sit and wait him....
She had a dream. Her bed was a vast blackness.—It is white, I have no eyes so my bed is black. It was soft and rich, it was comfortable. She lay within it, folded, lost, and it was white vast comfort all abouther. A Hand from a sharp wrist thrust down, clasped her throat ... pressed. She was pressed deeper within the bed: as the Hand pressed down her throat was deep beneath her body, deep beneath her head: her mind and her blood rushed down from her head and body to her swollen throat that a white Hand pressed. The bed unfolded lip within lip as had her body when Harry loved her: now her body cut deep into the bed ... enfolded it was lost in the bed’s blind comfort.... She saw the Hand that pressed her down by the throat. Upon one finger was the ring of Harry: upon another finger was the wedding ring she had worn secret for a year, and was the diamond ring set in platinum which he had given her later. The Hand was colorless like the shell of a departed locust. The wrist above it was long and red and moist. The Hand, pinning her throat, was dry, her throat was dry. She lay there cased in her hot bed ... frozen: under a Hand that pinned her.
She got up. She went to her child and held her in her arms. Edith slept. She held her close against her breast. She stiffened her arms in order to be still. Within, a voice shrieked: “Wake, wake!” It touched the air through her hardened nipples. It touched her child. Edith awoke. She placed her back in her crib.
“Sleep, daughter ... always sleep.”
Saying these words, she felt her gums were hard; it was her gums, it was her teeth that said them. Her lips were still! She kissed her daughter.
—Lips had better kiss.
The child, who had lain wide-eyed silent, fell asleep....
Fanny stood beside her bed. It loomed like a white sucking mouth—white lips. She pulled a quilt away, sank to the floor. With knees high huddled in her arms, near her chin, and the quilt lightly touching her bare toes, her knees, her mouth, she slept on the floor. The world’s blackness, the ghost-grained night of her sleep was not the world, not her sleep ... was the bed above her. Blackness was spun white threads come to rest: each thread beside the other, each thread of white not touching any other. She lay escaped from her Bed in undulant hardness, she flowed ... at last at rest ... like a red worm through water....
—At this Party too, they aren’t going to let me be gay!
All they would not let her. They smiled on her and carefully patterned their talk. They had eyes forever wiping against her thoughts. They must have hated her, had she been gay and forgetful of her loss. They did not want to hate her. They preserved her low and broken where they did not need to hate her. “Dear poor Fanny—so brave!” Their words and their ways announced: “We try to be gay with you, we try to make you gay.” They would not let her be gay. They hoisted their talk uphill against the evident pull of their sole interest in her, of their solemn compassion for her. They would not let her forget. “We are being gay, we are trying to cheer you up.We are talking with you of indifferent matters.” So....
Fanny waited ... here too. In these bright congestions of men and women was there not surely somewhere a color that went with her own, a tone that could make her vibrate? She waited in stiff rigor, not knowing she waited.... Gowns and shoes ... words put on like gowns and shoes over different flesh. She smelt at times under satin and starch warm flesh that needed air. She sat and let herself be talked to, be sympathized with, be gloated over.—If only you’d shout you are glad! Healthy that, naked.... O no. She was stiff as in death.
A tall man, dark....—Newcomer, strange ... moved up to her and spoke. Words not spawned or swerved by her own story: words she needed not to hear since they were fending away a world that would not let her be gay. In a new separateness Fanny felt herself....
Felt herself laughing.
Found her feet, after his quiet resolute own, pattering out to a seclusive alcove.
She saw him.—I don’t size you up. I don’t care! You release my feet and my laughter. You are big strong ... black ... what are you?
He came to her home.
Her ears did not count, yet her ears did for they had given her a label to stick on him so he could pass through her door.... Leon Dannenberg—attorney from Washington—Government lawyer—on short business here. He passed through. More than her eyes saw that he was very strong with hands full of ease. She leaned back in her rocker: her toes jutted forward: they twinkled against his black strength.
They chatted, she had no ears, she had voice. She was gay.
When he left her: “You are unhappy, Mrs. Luve,” he said. “I think you are the unhappiest woman I have known. You must be strong, then ... too.”
She took his hand and liked how her hand was lost in his hand that was full of ease.
“You let me be gay.”
“I’m coming whenever this Case ... and these Conferences ... let me.”
“I have respect for you,” he said. He took her in his arms and kissed her....
He said: “We are strangers ... we are strangers who respect each other.”
“Help me,” he said.
“Help you?”
“Help me to bring you to yourself. You are stunned. Ill things come over you and you are stunned, you cannot make yourself clean.... I want you naked. Help me. Naked against me naked. You will be at last yourself ... inviolate. Help me!”
He undressed her. She helped him to undressher. She lay in his arms: lost sweetly like a tree in a warm wind.
“You make me feel that I have roots,” she told him.
She found that she had been buried in a corrodent silence. She was lifted forth. She had words.
“You are strong,” he said, “and you have been a fool.”
Holding her in his arms, he was to her a sunrise ... cool ... cutting mists and a dim sleep. She lay in him like a warm creature in a gentle sun, sucking sun ... all open.
“Soon I must go ... back to Washington ... my home.”
“You have a home?”
“Why do you doubt it?”
“You are so strong away from home.”
“You are a glory, Frances Luve. You are a spirit like a tree, standing alone on a single rock in a marshland.”
“That is what you think of my people?”
“That is what I think of your people.”
“But have you a home?”
“The Western World,” he smiled with a fine bitterness that hurt her. “I am a Jew, you know.”
“Yes ... I know,” she hushed.
“The first Jew you have ever known?”
“The first....”
“Do you know me, Fanny?”
“Will I ever know?... You are going away.”
“That is right, also.”
“Yes.” She looked at him. She sat high above his prone strong body; looked at him. “Yes, it is right. I look at you. You are beautiful. You are clean. You are wilful and straight. You have black curling hair like a savage dance all over the white tenderness of your body. You have eyes that look forever. Yet I do not love you. I love my husband. He is weak and dirty. Until you came I said: ‘He is weak and dirty, I hate him.’ You came with your clear strength. You took me naked. I took you naked. Because I have taken you clean and strong I know that it is he whom I love.”
He held her hand.
“There is God,” he said, “May he bless you.”
“What does that mean ... if He blesses?”
“The Jews in three thousand bloody years have not found out.”
“I tell you I do not love you: I tell you and you bless me.”
“I reverence you, Fanny. You are clear like water. Love is a word I have not won the use of.”
“What have you done to me!”
“You are water, Frances. You were muddied and thick. You can look down, now, through the clearness of yourself, to the dirt base of yourself....”
“ ...to Harry!”
“See him clear, through your own clean-ness.”
“You are strong. O how strong you are, you man who have won for yourself a power in the world that hates you. Your people have been beaten bloody: always, always. Beaten bloody by their God ... beaten bloody by the world to which they gave their God. They are a bent dark people. Yet you have won for yourself a body fair to see. Never shall I forget your lovely body. Yet I do not love you. I love a man who had all and who cast it away: who was fair as you were never and who has dirtied himself.”
“He only deserves your love.”
“Why that?”
“ ...if you care for him.” He took her hand again. “Since you care to care for him....”
“Good-by,” he said.
She said: “The word Love is never in your mouth.”
“Good-by,” he said.
She said: “I will do what you want.... I would do always what you want. I do not love you: but I bow to you. I kiss your feet. You are holy.... Why are you holy?”
“I have moved you only as a wind that passes.”
“You are putting me aside,” she said.
“No. I touch your branches. I spread them. I take seed of you with me to the fallow meadows. I do not stir your roots.”
“They feel sunshine for you have spread me open.”
“I do not stir your roots—because I have respect for the word Love.”
“Good-bye, then, Leon. I shall find out what this great truth is ... this truth I know, the first truth I have ever known ... that you are holy.”
“Good-by,” he said. Then he went.
* * *
Mrs. Luve looked through the golden flame of an old table, of two candles, burning within the blackness of her room. There ... not of the mellow flame, not of the dark ... a young man speaking of small matters. Where the flame touched him he glowed; where the night touched him his body withdrew harsh into shadow. What is this encaverned boy, talking of small matters?
—He is plump: he is a boy: he has no strength of his own. He is very strong and he is very old. Blond hair curls from bland brow. They are Jews ...hewas straight like steel, hard, sure. So gentle. Sureness alone is gentle in a fumbling world....Are you hard also?”
—You do not know, but I have seen your parents. If I said so would you flush? would your heart rush back in panic, hide in your flesh I have touched by seeing your parents? She counted me change so soberly ... correct, correct ... ‘If I make a mistake against you I will lose by and by: if I make a mistake against me I lose now.’ The greed of justice in your mother counting me change. That time when the clerks were all busy and I in a hurry, your father came out smiling,sold me—what was it?—sausage and cheese? So simple, so condescending he was. You are the child of such parents. They have saved: they have saved in justice of greed, in justice of condescension: and of this saving of their greed and arrogance, you buy your College books, you buy your poetry books, you buy your hours here. Aren’t you ashamed? No he is not ashamed. He is right. Sausages and dollars saved are slime, are lies. You are true, Samson Brenner. You are older than your stinking parents.
She filled his glass with wine.
He sipped. His eyes were hot amber in an iron vat. He asked no question, he sipped.
“Do you want to hear the poem?” he said.
—I hear it already. “Repeat it.”
He did not question her words, he did not question her wine. He took them. His head bent forward. He held his face in his hands ... soft hands. He spoke his poem through soft hands. The poem was a stiff, an alien thing: but her words she had not spoken in the glow of his face were his and came back to her, a poem.
—I become myself. I become untouched. Speak on, Boy. Make me untouched!... He has young eyes—the shadows that rim them are marked by thousand years....
* * *
The world was a sunny field and the young mother walked in it and was herself. Each thing was itself, stood clear up in the sunny field of the world. Black ant over a tuft of grass held the sun in its blackness. Grass threw sparkle of sun against a blue sky dazed with sunniness.—I too walking and carrying the sun. I am very sharply myself, like an ant, like a leaf, throwing with them the sun in a vast gold shower upward into the sky....
Leon was gone: there would be no word of any sort further between them.
Fanny had a way of sitting on her porch and pinching the flesh of her bared arm. Solid! She loved her solidness—I am real! She was sunny with feeling her flesh and her soul real.
—Harry is coming back. O I know! I must be ready, I must bereal.
She was real. Her thoughts, her feelings, her pain were petal and stamen and pistil of the full flower of her realness. Sitting now, different, in her little house where she had been abandoned ... above the pry and the impudent concern of those about her, above the hurt and the insult of Harry’s going ... facing the sacrament of his return—how? beaten, broken?—fully as she had faced no truth in all her life.
... With her child in arms she could pinch bravely and find real....
—I can kiss you now—Baby! little sister!—we wait together for him who is coming back.
—Coming at last. For the first time coming. There was a holy man. He released us, stripped us naked to ourselves. And because of a holy man, we can wait real now, sure, intact, so gently wait and so long, for a man who is coming.
—We need not ask who he is. He is ours. He will find us and love us, won’t he, little sister?... and leave us no more.
—Like you! O my blessed baby—like you whom I was strong enough to bear, not strong enough till now to look upon—like you he is ours.