OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ Virginia lay dreaming in the moon.

      Then the moon blazed down upon the vast desolation of the American coasts, and on all the glut and hiss of tides, on all the surge and foaming slide of waters on lone beaches. The moon blazed down on 18,000 miles of coast, on the million sucks and scoops and hollows of the shore, and on the great wink of the sea, that ate the earth minutely and eternally. The moon blazed down upon the wilderness, it fell on sleeping woods, it dripped through moving leaves, it swarmed in weaving patterns on the earth, and it filled the cat’s still eye with blazing yellow. The moon slept over mountains and lay like silence in the desert, and it carved the shadows of great rocks like time. The moon was mixed with flowing rivers, and it was buried in the heart of lakes, and it trembled on the water like bright fish. The moon steeped all the earth in its living and unearthly substance, it had a thousand visages, it painted continental space with ghostly light; and its light was proper to the nature of all the things it touched: it came in with the sea, it flowed with the rivers, and it was still and living on clear spaces in the forest where no men watched.

      And in woodland darkness great birds fluttered to their sleep — in sleeping woodlands strange and secret birds, the teal, the nightjar, and the flying rail went to their sleep with flutterings dark as hearts of sleeping men. In fronded beds and on the leaves of unfamiliar plants where the tarantula, the adder, and the asp had fed themselves asleep on their own poisons, and on lush jungle depths where green-golden, bitter red and glossy blue proud tufted birds cried out with brainless scream, the moonlight slept.

      The moonlight slept above dark herds moving with slow grazings in the night, it covered lonely little villages; but most of all it fell upon the unbroken undulation of the wilderness, and it blazed on windows and moved across the face of sleeping men.

      Sleep lay upon the wilderness, it lay across the faces of the nations, it lay like silence on the hearts of sleeping men; and low upon lowlands, and high upon hills, flowed gently sleep, smooth-sliding sleep — sleep — sleep.

      — Robert —

      — Go on to bed, Gene, go to bed now, go to bed.

      — There’s shump’n I mush shay t’you —

      — Damn fool! Go to bed!

      — Go to bed! I’ll go to bed when I’m God-damn good and ready! I’ll not go to bed when there’s shump’n I mush shay t’you —

      — Go on to bed now, Gene. You’ve had enough.

      — Creasman, you’re a good fellow maybe but I don’t know you. . . . You keep out of this. . . . Robert. . . . I’m gonna tell y’ shump’n. . . . You made a remark t’night I didn’ like — Prayin’ for me, are they, Robert?

      — You damn fool! — You don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout! Go on to bed! —

      — I’ll go to bed, you bastard — I got shump’n to shay t’you! — Prayin.’ for me, are yuh? — Pray for yourself, y’ bloody little Deke!

      — Damn fool’s crazy! Go on to bed now —

      — I’ll bed yuh, you son-of-a-bitch! What was it that y’ said that day? —

      — What day? You damned fool, you don’t know what you’re saying!

      — I’ll tell yuh what day! — Coming along Chestnut Street that day after school with you and me and Sunny Jim Curtis and Ed Petrie and Bob Pegram and Carl Hartshorn and Monk Paul — and the rest of those boys —

      — You damn fool! Chestnut Street! I don’t know what you’re talking about!

      — Yes, you do! — You and me and Bob and Carl and Irwin and Jim Homes and some other boys —‘Member what y’ said, yuh son-of-a-bitch? Old man English was in his yard there burning up some leaves and it was October and we were comin’ along there after school and you could smell the leaves and it was after school and you said, “Here’s Mr. Gant, the tombstone-cutter’s son.”

      — You damn fool! I don’t know what you’re talking about! —

      — Yes, you do, you cheap Deke son-of-a-bitch — Too good to talk to us on the street when you were sucking around after Bruce Martin or Steve Patton or Jack Marriott — but a lifelong brother — oh! couldn’t see enough of us, could you, when you were alone?

      — The damn fool’s crazy!

      — Crazy, am I? — Well, we never had any old gummy grannies tied down and hidden in the attic — which is more than some people that I know can say! — you son-of-a-bitch — who do you think you are with your big airs and big Deke pin! — My people were better people than your crowd ever hoped to be-we’ve been here longer and we’re better people — and as for the tombstone-cutter’s son, my father was the best damned stone-cutter that ever lived — he’s dying of cancer and all the doctors in the world can’t kill him — he’s a better man than any little expolice court magistrate who calls himself a judge will ever be-and that goes for you too — you —

      Why, you crazy fool! I never said anything about your father —

      To hell with you, you damn little bootlicking —

      Come on Gene come on you’ve had enough you’re drunk now come on.

      Why God-damn you to hell, I hate your guts you —

      All right, all right — He’s drunk! He’s crazy — Come on, Bill! Leave him alone! — He don’t know what he’s doing —

      All right. Good night, Gene. . . . Be careful now — See you in the morning, boy.

      All right, Robert, I mean nothing against you — you —

      All right! — All right! — Come on, Bill. Let him alone! Good night, Gene — Come on — let’s go to bed! —

      To bed to bed to bed to bed to bed! So, so, so, so, so! Make no noise, make no noise, draw the curtains; so, so, so. We’ll go to supper i’ the morning: so, so, so.

      And Ile goe to bedde at noone.

      Alone, alone now, down the dark, the green, the jungle aisle between the dark drugged snorings of the sleepers. The pause, the stir, the sigh, the sudden shift, the train that now rumbles on through the dark forests of the dream-charged moon-enchanted mind its monotone of silence and for ever: Out of these prison bands of clothes, now, rip, tear, toss, and haul while the green-curtained sleepers move from jungle depths and the even-pounding silence of eternity — into the stiff white sheets, the close, hot air, his long body crookedly athwart, lights out, to see it shining faintly in the coffined under-surface of the berth above — and sleepless, Virginia floating, dreamlike, in the still white haunting of the moon —

      — At night, great trains will pass us in the timeless spell of an unsleeping hypnosis, an endless and unfathomable stupefaction. Then suddenly in the unwaking never-sleeping century of the night, the sensual limbs of carnal whited nakedness that stir with drowsy silken warmth in the green secrecies of Lower Seven, the slow-swelling and lonely and swarm-haunted land — and suddenly, suddenly, silence and thick hardening lust of dark exultant joy, the dreamlike passage of Virginia! — Then in the watches of the night a pause, the sudden silence of up-welling night, and unseen faces, voices, laughter, and farewells upon a lonely little night-time station — the lost and lonely voices of Americans:—“Good-bye! Good-bye, now! Write СКАЧАТЬ