CHAPTER XXIX
Martin knew that it was time to work again. He knew that there must be some expression of his own to erase the unending march of Carol and Roberts in his thoughts. The evolution of his type design had stopped, each pattern seeming worse than the preceding one.
He was disturbed and hesitant upon regarding the sun. The clouds were no longer poems and the sunset meant only darkness. Within himself alone could he feel the yearnings and the beauty, the life chord pulling, insisting. He was tormented with dreams. Sounds grew from the ground. Proud women with dragons on their white shoulders walked in a death-like mist. Behind the retreating curve of mountain he could hear Deane laughing. Brought with the wind, the laughter became monotonous—something at which to strike.
In the early morning there was peace. In the early morning when even the birds were silent and the stars white, Martin would awaken and stand by the window. During these moments he was elated and alive. But when he went to sleep again, he fought among dreams that seemed both real and unreal.
One daybreak he awoke and threw his arm across his eyes. The night’s monsters were growing larger and more demanding. Perhaps it was impossible to kill them by bending them into symbols—by throwing them on paper. The units of the living and the dead must be presented to daytime and the mind’s curiosity. He worked soberly, breeding the straight line with the afflicted. He tried the medium of words, changing every character, crossing their susceptible hands. He danced the ugly noises with the sound of roses and blew a splintering rock into a wreath of silver hair. Bravely he went to the night’s agony and blinding sweat until he felt himself confused by so meaningless a gallantry that once again he turned to Deane.
They sat beside each other in her home that night. Deane saw that he had changed—she saw his quietude, the patient line between his eyes.
He kissed her lips.
“It’s restful here, darling,” he said. “A sweet, domestic anodyne—the sweetest I have ever known. The transition has been swift. I ran with wild men, smashed machines, climbed, waded and struggled toward an impossible ideal. I was hard when Carol was murdered; and though little chips were broken from me, the planets remained in their orbits—heat meant one thing, and cold another. This is still true in one sense; but my relationship to them has changed.... Roberts died in my arms. He thought I loved him. Diseased, humiliated byour artificial sexual codes, he made his own world. Quite happily he lived and dreamed in this chimerical condition until unfortunately, I entered his last kingdom. It had to be myself—the one man whose bitter defenses remained impregnable to Roberts’ bold demands. However, as the albinic, antagonistic germ bored into his brain, this mind became detached, severed; and I felt the pent-up hatred of his frustration. I didn’t mind that—but suddenly, consciousness was established again through some strange medium, and he told me it was my world—that he belonged to me. He told me of my cruelty. And that’s how he died.... I love you, Deane, but I’ll go back to the midstrip of the world where my toes bubble, oiling the hot deck of a ship, before I’ll hurt you. That’s my country—isolation in body, but not in mind. And when I touch land it will be a dark whore.” Martin’s face had not changed expression nor had his voice gathered volume. But his self-contempt and his visualizations against the soft, purple shadows of the quiet room and the chained refractions of the woman’s beautiful face beside him pressed Heaven and Hell together and there was no breath around them.
Deane held back her tears.
“You’re bleeding yourself, Martin,” she said, “and for no reason. I’m in love with you, too, and I love your fantasies. But please don’t talk of things which are absurd—of the South Seas—of dirty ships and dirtier islands. Your sound effects about black women are notdramatic, darling—they’re just a little irrational. Oh, no!—Martin, I’m not trusting your libido or your discrimination. To be candid, it isn’t a question of trust. You must have your stage, your setting and your actors. I don’t mind that—and I’ll be part of the whole scheme although I don’t understand it. I’ve run wild, too, though in a different way. But I found out how meaningless it was, how much it hurt me without helping anyone else and I’ve stopped, just as you’ll do. There will always be violence in your dreams, and that will be some outlet. And there are gymnasiums and little fishing boats where you can break your neck in a more restrained fashion.” Deane closed her hands on his, and spoke with a desperate gravity. “And you can always swear loudly to me about the world’s tyranny—perhaps I’ll swear a little, also. But you can’t go back to bad ships and worse men, and be part of an organized brutality. I want you here with me. I want you to work on your beautiful ideas and build a solid foundation for both of us. You look different, Martin. You look more mature. I think you’re tired of that other world. Dearest,” she went on, touching her lips to his cheek, “we can’t dismiss our life together even though it has been brief.” She turned to Martin with a sudden passionate insistence. “Let’s go on from this point together, darling. Let’s dismiss philosophy, ideals that can be forgotten in a night, other people’s helplessness and drama.” She held Martin more tightly. “We must stop thinking about these terrible people,”she repeated. “What do we care about them?” Deane’s lips trembled. “Carnality!” she exclaimed. “The vile, damnable beasts! Pouncing from house to house and bedroom to bedroom like a disjointed Roman carnival. Give them any veil of understanding you possess and they still exist in the flatlands—the tilted, undernoted lowlands where not even slime comes to birth! A driveling code of introduction from one land to the other and a rotten horde of Young America comes alive! What have we to do with that?” Deane was weeping; and as though symbolical of her blazing words, her hair had spread over her shoulders—had spread, thought Martin as he touched it, “like the flame of a torch in the dark waters of a lost lagoon.”
“‘What have we to do with that?’” he repeated. “Nothing, Deane. Nothing can touch us now. But first I have to go from you. I don’t know for how long, or how far. It’s part of the scheme. And remember, I didn’t build it; but I know the undertows, the ebb tides and the breakers. There is a distant sun on our horizon, and I won’t go into happiness or unhappiness until it’s reached. Don’t you think I’ll miss those lights?” He pointed out of the window. “But I’ll have stars around that will bring this room to me. I’m a dreamer, and they have luck. So forget the dull months or the aching ones. Give my picture a bath once a day until it’s white; and I’ll stay that way.” Martin’s voice broke and he stood up. “I can’t say ‘Good-bye, Mrs. Smith—’ and bow andstrain until my sharp, black coat sticks out, nor turn and smile ‘It’s been a pleasant afternoon—I’ll call you soon.’”[5]His voice became harsh. “These fools’ farewells and wet good-byes are as thick and viscous as a glue pot, Deane. Sentiment rises in me easily and I’m ashamed that my hand seems blurred against the dress that covers your knee. That’s why I curse such weakness and yearn to leave my beloved with my hat over my nose, yelling blasphemously at a wall-eyed, pot-bellied moon.”
“You sound like a drunken Irish tenor,” exclaimed Deane, covering her celibate pain at once with the same quick irony.
“By God, Iamdrunk!” cried Martin. “Drunk on your hair and the moisture of your lips and the way you look at me. Drunk with hatred because I won’t see them or taste them again until the same dark wind that takes me away brings me back.”
A wraith-like smile hovered on Deane’s lips.
“The wind that brings you home, Martin, won’t be dark. It will be light and gentle and perhaps will carry a few white clouds on its back.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I want it dark and heavy and raging. I want it so fierce it will bring me home much faster.”
“Let me have it my way, Martin,” she urged softly. “I want it gentle so that no part of you will be hurt. I’ve never been patient about most things; but I will be—aboutthis.” Deane spoke so tenderly that the cool night wind stopped blowing, and a moment of such stillness ensued that all outside was hidden—all sound, all waves of sound and color—everything was hidden.
“Almighty God!” whispered Martin, staring at her—staring at her coral cheeks and swollen bosom. “The Scylla Deeps—a sea no man has found—” Aloud he cried, “It will be done your way, Deane. In the end, it will always be your way.” The tears were coming into his eyes without restraint. He opened the door, saw the silhouette of the woman sitting quietly on the couch, looked for a moment through the window at the lights which seemed to be nodding to him and went into the hall.
Outside, in the street, he hesitated, then turned toward the river. For a long time he wandered about the waterfront. Wearily, at last, he sat down on one of the piers and watched the moon set. When dawn came he got up stiffly and went to the Seaman’s Institute.