Part 14

“Clara,” he said again, “why are you so happy? What have you, Clara?”

Her round face was all warmth and smile. She found her ease on her feet.

“I had fo’ babies, Mr. Loer. An’ ev’ one of ’em died afo’ they was six. An’ my husband that I nussed fo’ ten years--he was sick ten years a-dyin’ on his back--he’s gone too. They is all in Heaven, Mr. Loer. They is all waitin’ th’ah fo’ me. Ev’y onct in a while, they comes to me at night. I sees ’em, sees ’em standin’ th’ah as clar--why as clar as you is! An’ they speaks to me: wuds as clar--as clar as mine is. They’s all gone and safe, awaitin’ for me up th’ah. Tha’s why I’m happy, Mr. Loer.”

Old woman and young man stood very still, looking at each other. Karl stirred first. His hands, then his head. He walked up and down. She was still.

“But Clara--but Clara--”

She beamed on him. He stopped. He smiled also. He grasped his cap. He rushed into the street.

Into the street his smile and her words went with him ... shredding his speed, eating into the mood of his release, until his smile went and he stood stock still.

The sun splintered into the block, from the east, through mouldy cornices of houses. Men and women moved separate upon stone, moved from sun to shadow, brokenly. The day was yet too young to have welded them into the substance of the block. Each was a particle thrown out from a separate home.

Karl stood, looked down through the scatter of men and women, the scatter of shade and sun. Athwart shoulders and skirts and hats that bobbed like dark flotsam in a golden sluggish stream, he saw a man move up.

A weight rose from his bowels, clutched at his throat. The man he had seen once, with the woman he had seen often!--Her husband....

A sense of omen cloaked his head and made him dizzy. He felt only his body free, his head was cloaked. The street was suddenly a force, physical and relentless, fixing him there within the channel of this man.

He could no longer fight for the fading word in him: Folly!

The man was almost abreast of him standing to face him. There, in himself he heard, sharp like a fusillade, the words that were his own.

“_I’m stopping you! Because your wife’s in danger! Look at her! Who put the iron bar across her breast?_”

A young man leisurely moved up. A smile in his ruddy face, his red lips mumbling as if he discoursed amiably to himself. His eyes wandered amenably. He saw Karl. Something furrowed his brow into a question. Karl swerved aside. They passed each other....

And now the word that had been fading ... “folly” ... shrieked. It besieged him and shrieked. It was very brave.

“Fool! Fool!”--what did the words mean? Why am I in the street? Why did her husband cross me in the street?

His mind reached for the surety of his mantel and of its row of sober books. These casual things could be explained. He was lonely. Perhaps he was a bit ... unreally, of course, since what did he know of her?... in love. Nonsense.

He jerked his cap over his eyes.... _Look at her! Take away the bar! Place your arms there!_... he returned to the house he lived in.

The area-gate was open, so he went in by it.

His mind, he was very sure, was master now. It was a hard fight of course. He had had so little training! For so very long, he had weltered in emotion. At home, the emotion of rage and of salvation against the brutal gluttony of his father: the emotion of faith against the crass certainty of his world that his mother was bad. And in America, above all, the emotion of hunger. With one way only to destroy it ... his easiest gift ... the emotion of music with which he earned his bread.

--But it shall not master!

His mind pictured the book on psychology upon his mantel. I’ll learn about that. And then some day I’ll dash the old ’cello ... no, absurd!... I’ll sell it.

His feet led him into Clara’s kitchen.

She was alone. An ironing board was laid from table to low shelf. He saw her back. A bent old back ... a small round head ... a mass of tousled hair dusted with white. Yet as the bare arm pressed the steaming iron to and fro, he felt with a new poignance how a wind, tropical and fresh, wielded this woman.

He tiptoed in, sat down and watched her. The rhythm fleshed.... A naked woman, tall and firm and glowing like red earth. Her hands are above her head. Her hands are flowers with the wind in them. There is a tree above her. And her long, bare feet, with the straight toes, are intertwined to the tree’s roots.

Clara moved to the farther side of the board so as to iron and see him. Her shoes were huge misshapen shreds of leather barely holding about her feet, so that but for the glide of her body, her moving might have seemed a shuffle. He saw her smile now over her board at him. He thought of a cloud saturate with sun.

“Clara,” he said, “I should be studying. But I’m a good for nothing.”

“Yo’ mustn’t say that, Mr. Loer!” As her words came, her arms went to and fro, pressing the steamy steel. Her shoulders spoke in concord.

--Nigger woman ... you are all _one_!... What a strange thing to think about a person!

“No, Mr. Loer,” she crooned, “yo’ mus’n’t say that! We is all good fo’ som’p’n. We doan know what a heap o’ de time. But we all is--”

“How can you be so sure of Heaven?”

She rested her elbow on the board. “I done seen it, Mr. Loer. I sees it ... _offen_.”

“How do you know you see it?”

“How do I know I’se a-seein’ you?”

“You could describe me, Clara. Could you describe Heaven?”

“Why, ob co’se I could! What I sees I can describe....” She ironed. “It’s a great big place! Mos’ly light ... glorious, golden light! An’ angels in white wings an’ harps a-singin’, a-singin’.... When yo’ plays sometimes, Mr. Loer ... dem waily shatterin’ tones ... dey sings like dat. Dey music ... it starts _away_ down an’ it leaps _away_ up!”

She ironed.

“Clara, what would you say if I told you that was all a dream--what you saw?”

She beamed and ironed.

“The wise people, Clara, the wise men who study deep and who write books ... they say all that is nonsense.”

Clara beamed. “Dey ain’t wise ef dey say dat, Mr. Loer.”

She was bent over her towels, beaming upon her towels. Towel after towel she ironed, folded, laid upon the pile of towels at her side ... her brown face beaming.

She stopped. She straightened and looked at Karl. Then she went back to her work....

II

Karl was at work. From twelve to half-past-two, from half-past-six to twelve, six days of the week, Karl played in the Trio at The Bismarck. Played sentimental music ... grime of German and Italian soil, froth and scum of Broadway. He drew with his bow complacencies and veiled obscenities ... at work. His mind and his senses in revolt leaped away towards life: swirled, delved, circled; beaten, brought back to his heart which sent them a burden whose eternity he could not understand, would not accept: of Pain.

His eyes saw the café for whose lounging patrons his hand fingered, his hand drew a bow. His eyes saw his associates ... clever, ugly: Stumm with bald, blond-ruffed head at the piano; Silvis, the leader, dark, agonizingly eager to be artistic, swaying, who was a muddy cloud about his violin.

Karl was at work and his mind and senses beating out of tune.

The flamboyant German Hall: smoked woodwork, paneled and carved in Gothic sayings, beermugs and flags under the sombre rafters like brittle colors falling, unable to rest. And in the sudden alcoves, men and women: idle eyes that took in so little, moist mouths, distended bellies that took in so much. Karl bowing an aria from Bohème; and the crass glint of the hall with its arrogant beer mugs, its mottoes, its elbow-leaning guests currying his mind and his senses as they yearned forth towards purer air.... The bald head of Stumm was round, it rested upon his neck like the head of a pin. His wrists bounced up and down. They dragged Karl back from the purer air he sought. Silvis crossed a knee upon the other and swayed with a small finger fluttering from his bow. His eyes were half shut in an absorbent leer ... absorbing Puccini whom he loved. The weak grace of his body, swaying, leading, sucked Karl from his need to be away....

Last chord. _D A F-sharp D_.... Stumm swung about on his stool. Silvis’ legs stretched forward, abdomen collapsed--like a bug stiffened no more into organic form by its creamy fluid ... the music ... now all oozed out. Their words scraped Karl’s head. When their words spoke to him, it was, this day, as if their fingers touched his lips.

“Lehnstein says, next fall we are going to move for a raise--”

“Did you hear about his wife? I guess she’s his wife--”

“Why don’t Max bring that beer?”

The hard loom of the hall, the coldness of men and women abject before their senses, taking in heat ... heat of air, heat of sound, heat of food, heat of sex ... into their coldness: the soil of these two men, his partners, playing this parody of life for an unreal living: himself with truant senses reeling back and bringing to his heart what pitiful crumbled fragments?--a woman stately with white breasts clamped in iron, a woman with brown beaming smile, all One, a woman of whom he knew no good, no ill, save that she had been his Mother--or to bar him from these a row of brittle books upon his mantel?... Karl with a burst of pain he could not understand, at work making his living to know that this was life?

He covered his ’cello and stood it away in the corner made by the piano.

“Ain’t you going to eat?”

“No, thank you.”

He was in the street.

Where was his mind? What was he suffering for? What about?

A lovely day. Here was pure air. Why did he breathe it and not taste it? He wanted more of it than he could breathe. What was air? Why was it pure ironically to him?

Long stiff rows of dirty houses exuding like sweat and excrement his sisters and his brothers. Cold houses sweating in the spring. Sick houses emptying their bowels upon the pure air.

He climbed by stairs into a house.

A swarthy little man in a great white vest with gold chain larding it from arm-pit to stomach, opened the door. Hands brandishing, lying, welcomed him.

“Well, Loer!... Come in.”

“Just a moment, Dooch. I’m in a hurry.” Hurry for what? What am I hurrying towards? “Will you, as a great favor, Dooch, take my place tonight at The Bismarck?”

Brandishing lying hands: “O, my dear fellow. Y’ know I’d love to--anything to help you out. But I’m so busy ... lessons ... lessons ... all day. I must have my rest. At night ... the only time. Why don’t you ask, let me see ... well Facker’d be glad....”

Another visit? “Ten dollars, if you’ll do it, Dooch.”

Hands dropping from lying. “Well, you know, I’d do anything for you.... Half-past-six?”

“Thank you, Dooch.”

Hands sincere, palm upward: waiting. A bill in a hand happy, silent. Once more the air....

Sudden Karl heard these words in himself above the beat of his feet: “I have never learned to use my mind. It’s hard. That is what hurts.... It will come.”

His legs walked on. He walked through desolation.

“O God, let me find _something_--” He stiffened, hearing his words. “Of all prayers, if one is absurdest, this is the one.”

But he walked still through desolation. He sensed how he walked swiftly. Interminable houses were a heavy, fluttering canopy that passed him: banners they were of some arrogant dominion, dragged through mud, stiffened in frost. They shut him out.

Warm air. It was spring.

Children went under his beating knees like the drip of frozen houses melting in spring.

“Let me think! What do I want?... Something more solid than air.... Something as pure that is more solid than air.”

His right hand clasped his left wrist behind him. His knees and chin thrust forward. From waist to shoulder he tended back. So he walked.

He walked through his life. He ached as he walked through his life. He felt himself trample. He trampled what he felt. Was it not clear? Clarity. He had lived in a pigsty. He had come forth. He was young. He would make a better way for himself in the world than the way of Silvis and Stumm. He would study, he sensed already, and was it not good that already beyond the bowing of fiddles he had won the trenchant accent of Reason--Spencer, Darwin, Huxley? He yearned towards the ecstacy of their release from mist and frowziness ... from beer and Puccini. A crumble of old churches falling in dust, drenching the air with dust. He had hands to tear down. He partook of the ecstacy of the release that lay in clear books, clear eyes, hands tearing down....

His father went to church. He saw again the great stomach and the little eyes and the twist of the wreathing mouth ... the heft of fat red hands he felt ... they were sodden in hair ... beating against him, beating the children of his father’s house. Karl’s arm swung at his side, his chin no longer thrust. He felt now his mother’s voice: it lay like a warm purple scarf against the chill of his thoughts; his mother had a red, sweet mouth shut upon her mystery; she moved beyond the shoulder of the town like a sunset bleeding. Karl’s hand clasped a wrist once more beyond his back.... The woman whom he had seen in the street and who haunted him ... he struggling against her.

“Think! Think! Conquer yourself!”

He walked now heavy and stiff.

“Very well. What is she?” he fought.

He turned upon this woman with clamped breasts ... this myth ... this nonsense. Why was she like green fields? Why was his mind like lead? Married ... a stranger! Oh, she was suffering, he knew.

--Once I spoke to her; but my lips trembled.

“No, I am married,” came her pleading whisper. But her hand moved toward him....

A complacent clod of a little man. But husband. Married. A stranger....

Why was his mind a forest of hot trees when he needed a path? A pavement. Hard, clear, cool, like here where his feet were pounding.

Tedium. He played in a waste of soiled senses. He walked through a waste of frozen thoughts. He was frozen in tedium.

He sat down, for he was tired. He opened his eyes.

III

The East Park gasped its scanty green between the loom of the streets of men and the black tumult of the river. Here he, sitting upon a bench....

Before his eyes first, two boys playing tether-ball. One of them strong and with fresh eyes swung his racket well: it rose from a clear forearm, muscle moulded, mazed with faint gold sleeping hair. His mouth shut firm as he stroked. Against him, a boy, shorter, dark, older. He lunged with mouth slant open, and dull feet. One of his eyes stared wide, the other was half shut. He lost swiftly.

The victor stood bored, easefully; looking beyond for a comrade who did not come. Saliva wet the chin of the other, whose effort had been great. His hand hung, palm forward, near his knee.

“Let’s try again,” he said. “You give me your side where the sun’s not in my eyes. That’s fair.” They exchanged places. The battle went on, the same.

Karl was very tired. He leaned back in his bench.

In three straight strokes came to his passive eyes sky, river, park. The sky was steadfast and still. The river was dense and still, boats and waves moving upon the river were like the shiver of sun-motes upon a steadfast sky. The park swayed under the stillness of sky and water. Its swaying was a word that came from moveless lips; its swaying was a word issued from moveless lips. Three horizontal strokes in the eyes of Karl, of a world that did not move.

Stillness came within him.

He turned his head from side to side, as within steadfastness, not stirring it. He saw no more, no less, by turning his head. He was within a focus where all was steadfast and where stillness was all. He moved his hands, and felt how he was wrapped in movelessness. He was not prisoned. He felt free, fluent, felt the accessibility of flight within stillness, within changelessness as within air.

He sat upright on his bench and was not tired.

He swung his left arm slowly under his face; he felt how the world swung with him so that naught had moved.

Upon the cuff of his left sleeve a spot caught him and made him focus his eyes.... A cockroach moved on his cuff. It moved. It moved against the world. It lied.

It flowed into the mass of his right hand. It was crushed. It was killed.

He said aloud: “I am sorry, life. But I cannot have you around.” He was not surprised at his words.

But his words were another stroke, perpendicular to the three-fold stroke of park and river and sky. A stroke cutting along and lifting a veil before his eyes. The movelessness of life won by this fourth stroke of his words another dimension still. So it was that things seemed to happen. Within his immobile vision, he watched things happen ... people move, sun slant farther beneath the green fingers of trees ... as if this fourth stroke of his words saying, “Things happen,” were a knife cutting a cord, unfolding a magic parchment.

Men sat upon benches as he sat upon a bench. Men had feet on a pavement as he had feet on a pavement. Men had faces written with thought as he had a written face. All this he saw as if it were happening just now. There was ease in his soul which took each happening and put it away and knew that all was one.

A man with a black, thick, filthy beard, black, bushed eyebrows beneath which glistened black eyes, a man with a nose inordinately long, falling sheer from his sooty brow, moved upon legs that carried him circularly, level, as if they were wheels ... moved about. He dipped his talonous hand into a refuse can: his shoulders swung like the walking-beam of a boat. He dipped the other hand. There was refuse in his hand. He put it in his mouth. He dove under benches; he ransacked the scanty grass; he sought refuse. He put it in his mouth.

As he ate, his black eyes looked at Karl; they gleamed with a joy so full that Karl breathed against the glisten of his eyes sparking the air.

A little man with a face ghostly white, lips red like a gash of blood soaking through chalk, a little man with up-pointed shoulders and sleeves that were tatters to the elbow, moved, isolate, intent; picking up scraps of paper. Each scrap his fingers feverishly smoothed, his lean eyes bent and read what was there to read. Then his fingers tossed the paper from his eyes behind his back ... eyes roaming, roaming to another scrap.

As he read each message, his lips moved; as his lips moved they bled.

A man wide as a hogshead, short as a boy, wider than long, black as black earth, a negro dwarf with a huge head sat with legs dangling from a bench and looked at Karl. Karl saw him. The dwarf raised a hand to his head and doffed his derby hat. Courteously he smiled, swinging his hat and his arm. He had white separate teeth and no lips. Beneath the frowze of his muddy trousers were patent leather boots. And they dangled.

As he bowed, Karl knew that within the patent leather boots his toes were twitching.

Karl sat easefully and still, and was not surprised to find beside him on the bench the bearded tramp whom he had seen so often, here and elsewhere, on his walks.

The tramp had always interested him; he had always wondered what could be his story. But a terrible reticence, savage or divine, fended this shambling blond man who with great tender eyes, long beard and skin transparent, blue-veined, now sat beside him. This man, he felt, speaks to no one. There is an embryon word, yet dumb, sheathed by his presence. They had sat before in this park on a single bench; it had been impossible to touch his eyes.

Slight and frail man beside him. Karl did not turn his head to look at him. By virtue of the four-stroked vision within which he dwelt, he saw him clear with his eyes beyond.

He saw between the straight, blond beard and the arching forehead touched with delicate hair, a face young and worn. Sunken cheeks with blue shadows; blue eyes gleaming in red sick lids; a hidden mouth; a nose straight and fine and singularly sharp. He saw, lost within the aged suit of brown, a tenuous body, and at the hip beside him a huge excrescence ... a sort of tumor ... swelling the trouser leg which elsewhere hung in folds.

Karl sat and let the world play and was aware of himself and was aware sharply that he was at ease as he had never been before. Yet it was ease, for he knew it so, and somehow he remembered.

A voice very thin, articulate like the faint etch of acid on a copper plate, from his side:

“I shall call you what you like as we sit here. My name is Peter Dawes. What shall I call you?”

Karl answered: “I have no name.”

“You call me Dawes, then,” said the bearded tramp, “and I shall call you Peter.”

Karl-Peter nodded within himself, to himself he nodded.

The tramp went on: “Across the city the sun goes down. It will soon go down to the Palisades. They are high there, that makes the sun low. Do you see?” He was looking eastward.

Karl-Peter nodded within himself, to himself he nodded.

“Look at the little park,” said the bearded tramp.

From the park’s straight plane, the sun was away. The hands of the westward trees were empty. But beyond his shoulder, above the wall of tenements stood a flame: it leapt into the sky and fell upon the park. The park was thick now with stillness. It was low and leaden-green: it was thickly still under the leaping glow of the sun that was not there.

Within it, moving ... steadfast in Karl’s eyes ... were busy men. They pressed to and fro, furtive, intent, secret from one another. The two boys at tether-ball kept exchanging places: the game was forever the same.