YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN. Thomas Wolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ the blind man’s mouth. “That disease!” he thought —“the thing that ruined his eyes — maybe — maybe — why, yes — the man is crazy!” Then he spoke, slowly, simply:

      “Judge Bland.” He rose from the seat. “Good-bye, Judge Bland.” The smile still played about the blind man’s mouth, but he answered with a new note of kindness in his voice:

      “Good-bye, son.” There was a barely perceptible pause. “But don’t forget I tried to warn you.”

      George walked quickly away with thudding heart and trembling limbs. What had Judge Bland meant when he asked, “Do you think you can go home again?” And what had been the meaning of that evil, silent, mocking laughter? What had he heard? What did he know? And these others — did they know, too?

      He soon learned that his fear and panic in the blind man’s presence were shared by all the people in the car. Even the passengers who had, never seen Judge Bland before had heard his naked, brutal words, and they were now horrified by the sight of him. As for the rest, the men from Libya Hill, this feeling was greatly enhanced, sharpened by all that they knew of him. He had pursued his life among them with insolent shamelessness. Though he still masked in all the outward aspects of respectability, he was in total disrepute, and yet he met the opinion of the town with such cold and poisonous contempt that everyone held him in a kind of terrified respect. As for Parson Flack, Jarvis Riggs, and Mayor Kennedy, they were afraid of him because his blind eyes saw straight through them. His sudden appearance in the car, where none had expected to meet him, had aroused in all of them a sense of stark, underlying terror.

      As George went into the washroom suddenly, be came upon the Mayor cleaning his false teeth in the basin. The man’s plump face, which George had always known in the guise of cheerful, hearty amiability, was all caved in. Hearing a sound behind him, the Mayor turned upon the newcomer. For a moment there was nothing but nameless fright in his weak brown eyes. He mumbled frantically, incoherently, holding his false teeth in his trembling fingers. Like a man who did not know what he was doing, he brandished them in a grotesque yet terrible gesture indicative of — God knows what! — but despair and terror were both in it. Then he put the teeth into his mouth again, smiled feebly, and muttered apologetically, with some counterfeit of his usual geniality:

      “Ho, ho! — well, son! You caught me that time, all right! A man can’t talk without his teeth!”

      The same thing was now apparent everywhere. George saw it in the look of an eye, the movement of a hand, the give-away expression of a face in repose. The merchant, Sol Isaacs, took him aside and whispered:

      “Have you heard what they’re saying about the bank?” He looked around quickly and checked himself, as if afraid of the furtive sound of his own voice. “Oh, everything’s O.K.! Sure it is! They just went a little too fast there for a while! Things are rather quiet right now — but they’ll pick up!”

      Among all of them there was the same kind of talk that George had heard before. “It’s worth all of that,” they told each other eagerly. “It’ll bring twice as much in a year’s time.” They caught him by the lapel in the most friendly and hearty fashion and said he ought to settle down in Libya Hill and stay for good —“Greatest place on earth, you know!” They made their usual assured pronouncements upon finance, banking, market trends, and property values. But George sensed now that down below all this was just utter, naked, frantic terror — the terror of men who know that they are ruined and are afraid to admit it, even to themselves.

      It was after midnight, and the great train was rushing south across Virginia in the moonlight. The people in the little towns lay in their beds and heard the mournful whistle, then the sudden roar as the train went through, and they turned over restlessly and dreamed of fair and distant cities.

      In K19 most of the passengers had retired to their berths. Nebraska Crane had turned in early, but George was still up, and so, too, were the banker, the Mayor, and the political boss. Crass, world-weary, unimaginative fellows that they were, they were nevertheless too excited by something of the small boy in them that had never died to go to bed at their usual hour aboard a train, and were now drawn together for companionship in the smoke-fogged washroom. Behind the green curtains the complex of male voices rose and fell in talk as they told their endless washroom stories. Quietly, furtively, with sly delight, they began to recall unsavoury anecdotes remembered from the open and shameless life of Judge Rumford Bland, and at the end of each recital there would be a choking burst of strong laughter.

      When the laughter and the slapping of thighs subsided, Parson Flack leaned forward again, eager to tell another. In a voice that was subdued, confidential, almost conspiratorial, he began:

      “And do you remember the time that he ——?”

      Swiftly the curtain was drawn aside, all heads jerked up, and Judge Bland entered.

      “Now, Parson”— said he in a chiding voice —“remember what?” Before the blind, cold stare of that emaciated face the seated men were silent. Something stronger than fear was in their eyes.

      “Remember what?” he said again, a trifle harshly. He stood before them erect and fragile, both hands balanced on the head of the cane which he held anchored to the floor in front of him. He turned to Jarvis Riggs: “Remember when you established what you boasted was ‘the fastest-growing bank in all the state’— and weren’t too particular what it grew on?” He turned back to Parson Flack: “Remember when one of ‘the boys’, as you like to call them — you always look out for ‘the boys’, don’t you, Parson? — remember when one of ‘the boys’ borrowed money from ‘the fastest-growing bank’ to buy two hundred acres on that hill across the river?”— he turned to the Mayor —“and sold the land to the town for a new cemetery? . . . Though why,” he turned his face to Parson Flack again, “the dead should have to go so far to bury their dead I do not know!”

      He paused impressively, like a country lawyer getting ready to launch his peroration to a jury.

      “Remember what?”— the voice rose suddenly, high and sharp. “Do I remember, Parson, how you’ve run the town through all these years? Do I remember what a good thing you’ve made of politics? You’ve never aspired to public office, have you, Parson? Oh, no — you’re much too modest. But you know how to pick the public-spirited citizens who do aspire, and whose great hearts pant with eagerness to serve their fellow men! Ah, yes. It’s a very nice little private business, isn’t it, Parson? And all ‘the boys’ are stockholders and get their cut of the profits — is that the way of it, Parson? . . . Remember what? he cried again. Do I remember now the broken fragments of a town that waits and fears and schemes to put off the day of its impending ruin? Why, Parson, yes — I can remember all these things. And yet I had no part in them, for, after all, I am a humble man. Oh — with a deprecating nod — a little nigger squeezing here and there, a little income out of Niggertown, a few illegal lendings, a comfortable practice in small usury — yet my wants were few, my tastes were very simple. I was always satisfied with, say, a modest five per cent a week. So I am not in the big money, Parson. I remember many things, but I see now I have spent my substance, wasted all my talents in riotous living — while pious Puritans have virtuously betrayed their town and given their whole-souled services to the ruin of their fellow men.”

      Again there was an ominous pause, and when he went on his voice was low, almost casual in its toneless irony:

      “I am afraid I have been at best a giddy fellow, Parson, and that my old age will be spent in memories of trivial things — of various merry widows who came to town, of poker chips, racehorses, cards, and rattling dice, of bourbon, Scotch, and rye — all the forms of hellishness that saintly fellows, Parson, who go to prayer-meeting every week, know nothing of. So I СКАЧАТЬ