Of Time and the River & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ thumped his bruised skull upon the boards. There was a beautiful thoroughness about his wakened anger — it never made inquiries till later.

      “Good old Ben,” screamed Eugene, howling with insane laughter. “Good old Ben.”

      Eliza, who had been calling out loudly for help, the police, and the interference of the general public, now succeeded, with Luke’s assistance, in checking Ben’s assault, and pulling him up from his dazed victim. She wept bitterly, her heart laden with pain and sadness, while Luke, forgetful of his bloody nose, sorrowful and full of shame only because brother had struck brother, assisted Steve to his feet and brushed him off.

      A terrible shame started up in each of them — they were unable to meet one another’s gaze. Ben’s thin face was very white; he trembled violently and, catching sight of Steve’s bleared eyes for a moment, he made a retching noise in his throat, went over to the sink, and drank a glass of cold water.

      “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Eliza wept.

      Helen came in from town with a bag of warm bread and cakes.

      “What’s the matter?” she said, noting at once all that had happened.

      “I don’t know,” said Eliza, her face working, shaking her head for several moments before she spoke. “It seems that the judgment of God is against us. There’s been nothing but misery all my life. All I want is a little peace.” She wept softly, wiping her weak bleared eyes with the back of her hand.

      “Well, forget about it,” said Helen quietly. Her voice was casual, weary, sad. “How do you feel, Steve?” she asked.

      “I wouldn’t make any trouble for any one, Helen,” he said, with a maudlin whimper. “No! No!” he continued in a brooding voice. “They’ve never given Steve a chance. They’re all down on him. They jumped on me, Helen. My own brothers jumped on me, sick as I am, and beat me up. It’s all right. I’m going away somewhere and try to forget. Stevie doesn’t hold any grudge against any one. He’s not built that way. Give me your hand, buddy,” he said, turning to Ben with nauseous sentimentality and extending his yellow fingers, “I’m willing to shake your hand. You hit me to-night, but Steve’s willing to forget.”

      “Oh my God,” said Ben, grasping his stomach. He leaned weakly across the sink and drank another glass of water.

      “No. No.” Steve began again. “Stevie isn’t built —”

      He would have continued indefinitely in this strain, but Helen checked him with weary finality.

      “Well, forget about it,” she said, “all of you. Life’s too short.”

      Life was. At these moments, after battle, after all the confusion, antagonism, and disorder of their lives had exploded in a moment of strife, they gained an hour of repose in which they saw themselves with sad tranquillity. They were like men who, driving forward desperately at some mirage, turn, for a moment, to see their footprints stretching interminably away across the waste land of the desert; or I should say, they were like those who have been mad, and who will be mad again, but who see themselves for a moment quietly, sanely, at morning, looking with sad untroubled eyes into a mirror.

      Their faces were sad. There was great age in them. They felt suddenly the distance they had come and the amount they had lived. They had a moment of cohesion, a moment of tragic affection and union, which drew them together like small jets of flame against all the senseless nihilism of life.

      Margaret came in fearfully. Her eyes were red, her broad German face white and tearful. A group of excited boarders whispered in the hall.

      “I’ll lose them all now,” Eliza fretted. “The last time three left. Over twenty dollars a week and money so hard to get. I don’t know what’s to become of us all.” She wept again.

      “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Helen impatiently. “Forget about the boarders once in a while.”

      Steve sank stupidly into a chair by the long table. From time to time he muttered sentimentally to himself. Luke, his face sensitive, hurt, ashamed around his mouth, stood by him attentively, spoke gently to him, and brought him a glass of water.

      “Give him a cup of coffee, mama,” Helen cried irritably. “For heaven’s sake, you might do a little for him.”

      “Why here, here,” said Eliza, rushing awkwardly to the gas range and lighting a burner. “I never thought — I’ll have some in a minute.”

      Margaret sat in a chair on the other side of the disorderly table, leaning her face in her hand and weeping. Her tears dredged little gulches through the thick compost of rouge and powder with which she coated her rough skin.

      “Cheer up, honey,” said Helen, beginning to laugh. “Christmas is coming.” She patted the broad German back comfortingly.

      Ben opened the torn screen door and stepped out on the back porch. It was a cool night in the rich month of August; the sky was deeply pricked with great stars. He lighted a cigarette, holding the match with white trembling fingers. There were faint sounds from summer porches, the laughter of women, a distant throb of music at a dance. Eugene went and stood beside him: he looked up at him with wonder, exultancy, and with sadness. He prodded him half with fear, half with joy.

      Ben snarled softly at him, made a sudden motion to strike him, but stopped. A swift light flickered across his mouth. He smoked.

      Steve went away with the German woman to Indiana, where, at first, came news of opulence, fatness, ease, and furs (with photographs), later of brawls with her honest brothers, and talk of divorce, reunion and renascence. He gravitated between the two poles of his support, Margaret and Eliza, returning to Altamont every summer for a period of drugs and drunkenness that ended in a family fight, jail, and a hospital cure.

      “Hell commences,” howled Gant, “as soon as he comes home. He’s a curse and a care, the lowest of the low, the vilest of the vile. Woman, you have given birth to a monster who will not rest until he has done me to death, fearful, cruel, and accursed reprobate that he is!”

      But Eliza wrote her oldest son regularly, enclosed sums of money from time to time, and revived her hopes incessantly, against nature, against reason, against the structure of life. She did not dare to come openly to his defense, to reveal frankly the place he held in her heart’s core, but she would produce each letter in which he spoke boastfully of his successes, or announced his monthly resurrection, and read them to an unmoved family. They were florid, foolish letters, full of quotation marks and written in a large fancy hand. She was proud and pleased at all their extravagances; his flowery illiteracy was another proof to her of his superior intelligence.

      Dear Mama:

      Yours of the 11th to hand and must say I was glad to know you were in “the land of the living” again as I had begun to feel it was a “long time between drinks” since your last. (“I tell you what,” said Eliza, looking up and sniggering with pleasure, “he’s no fool.” Helen, with a smile that was half ribald, half annoyed, about her big mouth, made a face at Luke, and lifted her eyes patiently upward to God as Eliza continued. Gant leaned forward tensely with his head craned upward, listening carefully with a faint grin of pleasure.) Well, mama, since I last wrote you things have been coming my way and it now looks as if the “Prodigal Son” will come home some day in his own private car. (“Hey, what’s that?” said Gant, and she read it again for him. He wet his thumb and looked about with a pleased grin. “Wh-wh-what’s СКАЧАТЬ