Part 1
BOOKS by WALDO FRANK
_The Unwelcome Man_ _The Dark Mother_ _Rahab_ _City Block_ (in preparation)
_Our America_ _The Art of The Vieux Colombier_ _Virgin Spain_ (in preparation)
RAHAB
_By_
WALDO FRANK
BONI AND LIVERIGHT PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_RAHAB_
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
_Printed in the United States of America_
_To_
_Magic_
ERRATA
Page 57, second line from top, “stook” should read “stood.”
Page 113, eighth line from top, reading “the cigarette smoke, closed them, sat down,” should be eliminated entirely, and the line should read “deliberate they beat against her hips”
Page 147, twelfth line from top, “shadow” should read “shallow”
CONTENTS
PAGE
_One_
BRASS GAS CHANDELIER 13
_Two_
RIVER GARDEN 21
_Three_
WHITE SKY 69
_Four_
PAVEMENT OVER EARTH 81
_Five_
CLARA 167
_Six_
PAVEMENT BROKEN 203
_Seven_
EARTH 245
“_Be consoled: thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not found me._ ...” _PASCAL_
_ONE_
BRASS GAS CHANDELIER
The door opened against the drawn chain, grating against it.
In the grey strip a woman’s face, very grey, very unexpectant, suddenly was bright.
It measured a man, young, standing at ease. The chain clicked free. “O it’s you, Mr. Samson.” The door opened wide, shut them in.
The hall was a long shadow beyond the glow of them standing. He was quiet waiting, not sheer against her: his shaggy coat poured the street’s coldness. She was a dim thing about eyes.
“I’m so glad it’s you, Mr. Samson.”
She walked noiseless through shadow, she took no space from it, she was infinitesimal within a mood. He followed.
“I was taking it right easy ... reading.”
In the gaslight she turned and fronted him. She took his coat. He was a fair boy, gentle, somewhat plump. He sat down, she stood.
--I have been in this room before, I have seen this woman before. It is not the sort of room, she is not the sort of woman I want to see for I am here for neither.... Why strangely now this sense of her reality upon me?
It was her room, there they were after all, the woman in her room touching upon him.--Let me see in this silence the woman in her room.
Her quiet words did not obtrude upon a silence whose margin he caught as it waved. He saw her a battered creature. He saw her absurdity of painted cheeks, two imitation flowers stuck in the ruts of a road. He sat in a room whose dinginess enarmed him. He sat in the misery of this woman. He sat deep.
“Still so cold out?” Over her head a chandelier ... brass gas, hideous brutal under the flecked ceiling. His feet glowed with renewing warmth. In his eye beneath his shoes a carpet of acid green.
--We sit.... She sits in a cloud of dinginess. Sharp spirit veiled in a cloudy flesh. Now: centers of glow, thrown from the woman, solid like her spirit. He was aware of loveliness.
Under the blow of the chandelier a delicate Pembroke table ... book and a glass of whisky.
--Under my arms, pressing against my back, a high arched Windsor chair.
In the break of her hip, standing, a Hepple--white desk.
--We have no furniture like this at home!
She spoke. He peered into the form of her words. His eyes took the gloss of the subtle table, it was one with her words’ accent. Futile words ... grammatical, well-ordered. A subtle table, and beyond a virulent huge sideboard. A faint quaint accent in her pointless words curling like heat of hidden flame above the table, against the sideboard: whispers in how she spoke, like these glowing poems in wood, of a day distant from his New York where there had been leisure and when from the dung of human misery America grew flowers.
A quiet pain in the table and her words ... a distant pain. He did not put his immediate question.
She felt his pause; in it drew up her chair. She sat he thought with grace athwart him at the table. The whisky glass was gone, he had not noticed her hide it. The book was there with her hand. Black little book. _Bible!_ He felt her feeling him feel her. Now she was silent.
They were silent upon each other. Heavily.
His brow twitched.--Let me see her! She was cold and helpless. He understood he could not understand. She seemed a chaste woman with burnt eyes. She drew him.
Words to pull him aloof: “I am afraid we don’t read that book ... half enough.... I don’t I mean,” he blushed. “Do we, Mrs. Luve?”
--Wrong. Wrong! A delicate line left ... he felt _left_ ... under her folded thin lip. Lip folded away.
“It’s a rattling good book.”
“O but _you_ do.”
“I?”
“_You_ read it enough.... You’re a Jew.”
“I’m a Jew,” he repeated. Above her and the table the flourishes and bulgings of the chandelier ... brass gas ... were lewd. “I’m a Jew. If there’s any soul in me worth speaking of, it’s in that book.” She leaned forward upon the table with elbows drawn tight back. “Yet I can’t read a word of it, except in English.... I’m ashamed of that.”
She laughed embarrassed. He was understanding deeper he could not understand. She was up swiftly. She took the Bible, opened a door in the sideboard. Glint of glasses, plush, odor of liquors. She placed the Bible within them.
“I suppose,” a smile to her face, the first: as sudden again her face was grey,” ...you came for Thelma?”
“Why ... yes.”--Of course for that I came, for that only I come ever to your dirty flat.... She has delicate fingers.... How else did I come at first? Dirty? There was a silence fringing his questions, veiling them, making them false. In the silence the presence of strangeness.
“I am afraid I may not be able to get her ... right away.”
Her fingers curled up. He felt how they had drooped from the hard square palms like shoots frozen in a cold Spring.
“There’s just a chance. If you’ll ... excuse me I’ll phone.”
The door shut him in.
He sat quiet because he wanted to get up, hunt for something. Bible? He walked up and down because he wanted to stay, hoped she would find Thelma.
He needed Thelma to-night.... He knew this.
--I do not feel it now. For only a sharp need brought him to this flat he despised. Where alone Thelma would meet him.--I am here again. I must need Thelma. Mrs. Luve was back.
“I’m sorry. Thelma’s gone to a Show, with some friends. There’s just a chance ... later ... she might possibly go after eleven to the Garden Cafe. I could phone there, then.” Mrs. Luve stood in the door, her face was bright, she smiled again it was grey. “You----“
He shook his head, not getting up. She did not stir also. Her face was bright. Her mouth trembled. He said: “Have you any beer, Mrs. Luve? We might have a drink?”
He could not help seeing her, seeing her more and more. Frail slain fingers resting upon a table warmer than her hand. She all a sapling broken in frost ... standing seasons dead.
--What is there here to see? He pulled a bill from his pocket. As his hand went toward hers, a hot wind stopped it. He felt them both cold. Under her eyes he saw a shadow like a whip’s mark.
He put his money away.
She left the room.
She returned, she carried a silver platter. Upon it a bottle of wine. Two slim glasses.
It was long silence now, with them less heavy against it. Silence full with its own mood, its own blood, strong to live.
The wine stood erect on the subtle table. Mrs. Luve leaned and poured of it, a drop first in her glass, then his glass full, then her glass full. Her bare arm pouring red wine came from a dim kimona.
... In the face of a worn woman black eyes burning: eyes blazing against the face, leaping from face and woman: eyes touching the red of the wine.
He felt:--I am disappearing. There is a silence like light Upon us. Moving like light a silence Upon words. There will be words moving in light: There will be lighted words....
_TWO_
RIVER GARDEN
Spring ... a Southern city in song. A city drifting fading into the wide arms of earth, into trees, fields running under grass, into trees, into high thrusts of earth, into trees, trees. The city a raised shadow upon earth. Against earth’s sweep through the Precinct of suns and stars, apart from sun and stars--blotch of hard houses leaning back upon the dead days of their makers--whole city leaning back, falling away from the wide freedom of sun, earth, stars, twirling together locked. And they two ... man and girl ... clasped in the steadfast spin of life--sun stars earth dust--that swung away from the city.
Fanny Dirk was on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting up in erection, spilling in bud. Over: he. Under and over: One. She was viced in One: Grass, hair, fingers, twigs broken to leaf, lips and earth hot against her.... One. She was surrounded by One. She was beyond distinctions. She was One. She was in ecstasy....
Then they walked to their horses on the distant road.
A house, coddling itself warm, despite bright elms, in its shadows of men, cast a grey finger up from the Town to the young man’s mind. His house ... running no longer away from the immobile dance of earth and sun ... reached up now, arrogant, clambered with its long harsh shadows into the mind and mood of his mother’s and father’s son.
“Fanny!”
--Harry, Harry.... O you ... you my life!
“Fanny, now we must get married.”
--Hush! I hate you. How can you speak so now?
“Why are you silent, Fanny? I’m a gentleman, little girl. Don’t think I respect you less, because you love me.... I love you ... we....”
--No respect, then!
“ ...will be married. You are not less the lady.”
--Stop, stop, stop!
“Secretly, of course. Till I am done with College. Not so long, Honey. You can wait? We’ll have a real wedding, then.”
--Can’t you stop? What are you killing? What are you killing? Can’t we stop?
Fanny Dirk became the wife of Harry Howland Luve.
* * * * *
Mrs. Luve held her slender glass in frail spent fingers. She sipped. Her hot eyes swept above frail flesh, spun glass.
--I want you to see me! I want you to see me!
Mr. Samson nodded.--What else can I do?
--Can you see this? I was as fresh and ruddy as a maple blossom!...
She was hard, she was intact. Her husband took her to a little house on the best street: three squares away was the Luve Mansion which one day should be his. “This is our home. It’s small dear. But so are you small. We’ll live here till our love bursts it.”
He was tall and thin, yet he gave the air of softness. His big black eyes being soft, his delicate hair that lay thinning on the transparent tinge of his brow gave his sapling body the air of holding a softness. He had small dimpled hands tapering to fingers with which to hold her who was hard and intact.
“O I love it!”
She did not love the hard Luve Mansion, her own home had been prim and small, her hardness needed tender and small things of the world.
“O I love it, Harry! I’m glad it’s no larger. O--what a kitchen! Can’t I do for you right snug in that gem of a kitchen.”
“No, sweet, not that. Mammy Sue comes along. I can’t say No to Mammy. I can’t begin now saying No ... when I’m married. She’s been waiting’, fixin’ for that. She’s been totin’ me from a baby just for that. You’ll surrender, Honey! She loves you for making me surrender ... to her.”
“And I bake such biscuits.”
“You may ... when Mammy’s not looking.”
She made him sit down. “You’re so high!” She clapped her hands. Sharp, she kissed his hair, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Sharp kisses. Each finger tip she kissed. “O--O you!” She opened his waistcoat, she opened one button of his shirt. A sharp kiss on his chest. She leaped away, clapped her hands.
“I’ll manage Mammy.”
“Whom couldn’t you manage?”
--You.... I leap gaily clapping my hands, my Love. I leap on Pain, on the shadow of Doubt I leap. What can I do with you?
She was on her knees: her arms embraced his legs, her cheek was hot against his cold shoes.
--Under the Pain is there sunlight for dancing? Under the doubt is there a solid world?
“She loves me,” said to himself Harry Howland Luve. “Blessed sweet!”--Well, I’ve married her. She’s married to a Luve. She’s leaping, dancing on a joy I can understand.
* * * * *
Mrs. Luve and Mr. Samson talked of small matters pleasantly.
--He sits there sweetly, chatting of small matters. O it is good. O it is cool water. Bless you! He leaves me alone, he does not touch me. I am myself. We move marvelously into myself. He is content there, merely talking, with me a woman, of small matters.
--I have a mind, good mind for others. You shall have the benefit of that whenever you need it. I’ll find out whenever ... good good Boy!...
--I am alone. That is the blessing of talking with you here on cool small matters. You do not touch me as the world does when I am alone with no one. O you heal me: will you at least, after these years, these years, such years, be my healer? Not touching! The heal and the health and the miracle of that. Not touched, at last. The years full of bloody bubbles, each year a bubble of my blood unhealed. I shall not tell you of myself. You will feel....
--For thanks of God ... your God.... I embrace you, Boy. When one has a God one can have cool small matters. Let us talk on, for your God’s sake, of your cool small matters.
* * * * *
“Why do you drink? O Harry ... why, why now?”
“You are not always there. At College you were not there, Fanny. Drink was. One took what was to take.”
“But now....”
“Drink was there first. O I don’t know. When I am drunk I am wrapped in warm smooth clinging stuffs--like entrails--like insides of a great warm creature. When I drink I am wrapped in a woman.... Let me creep into you, Beloved. Farther, nearer. O you are so _whole_. Won’t you let me creep away inside of you?”
“Harry I am all open to you. Come.”
“No dear. O my love! No, dear, I can’t. God damn you. You entice me ... impossibly. There you are--you are a woman, _there_. I can’t touch you ... you’re _there_. I am here. Touch you? Break you. I’d smash you into this air if I could. Damn you! Damn you. Why shouldn’t I have another drink? _It_ goes inside of me ... all of it ... serves me ... warms me. It’s mine, that. Going inside of me, same as me going inside of it. Inside of you ... impossibilities. God damn your sure solid eyes. Let me get out.”
She lifted his head from her lap. “Go then.”
He rose uneasy to his feet. He wiped straying silk hairs from his swimming eyes. He turned: stumbled: sank. He sobbed.
She placed him on his back on the floor: cradled his head in her hands.
“Let me get out! Let me get out!” he shouted, motionless.
“Sh-sh. You can go.”
“Fanny, Fanny,” he whispered, “hold me ... hold me still.” His body swung on the floor, the floor careened about his eyes. Her arms, cradling him, swaying his head, were alone moveless.
She dragged him to bed. He was a helpless drunken child. She undressed him. Her hands, touching his naked body, brought to his face a veil of ease. Her hands ceased. He raised his naked flesh from the hot covers.
“Give me a drink!”
“No.”
His eyes swung back from the wall of her response. But his arms surged forward, they caught her. He dragged her against his naked flesh....
* * * * *
She, little woman, sat in her rocking chair on the porch, looked up at the flood of sun and tried to find the world.
--Up the sun that is warm and good, up the sun that blinds me Struggling, not overwhelmed, I send my eyes....
She was clad in a pink dress whose dainty softness brought clear the silvery atunement of her body. There was naught slack in her. Her bare arms were a gentling, a subtle rounding of her bones: a haze of dark hair on them: hands rose intact and long from the fine wrists like flower from stem. The little breasts stood in the pink tulle, alert, infinitely one with the awareness of her eyes and wrists ... like the antennæ of a bug holding the world upon their frailty.
She sat challenging sun: not wilting: waiting her husband.
--Every day now he drinks. He gambles. He loves me. What have I to do with cards and liquor?
* * * * *
She, larger woman, sat deeper in her chair: lost now in a swathing gown of gray that rose like a wave to her white neck. Her shoulders and her chest; bare, were still planturous in their running variance of plane and mood: strong seeking chin, throat swelling as if with graceful words, chest rising downward from the aloof virginity of her neck to the slow fulness of her heavying breasts. Fanny was pregnant. She sat there ... taut limpid body ... in the sun, eyes unwilted, about her child like a sunny song hiding an omen. She sat there gradually giving way ... her taut and limpid sun-shape giving way ... to the dark press of a swollen larva tangled inside her blood, pressing, kicking, sucking weight to rend.
Harry Luve was gone three days, without a word ... plenty of signs. She knew.
--He has gone. I shall see him again. O yes. Long after I have looked in my child’s eyes. Thank God for that! I shall look long, years perhaps? long and deep in my baby’s eyes in order to understand how I must see him again.
His going down was simple like all of Harry Luve ... simple like a very plaintive song. She sat between the high sun and the low wail of her husband: balanced about a child.
How sustain the light madnesses of College? except in drink and gambling. How nourish the child in him he was? save with the rolling bloods of liquor, the swift tossings, cradlings, plungings of luck at cards. At the end of deep immersement in a helpless joy forever Birth which was an end: the Birth here at last Disgrace, as the Birth once air. Too much money lost, too much folly of a night in his cups. A woman half dead, half naked, bent across a table, a mirror smashed, ten thousand dollars debt. A birth that! Harry slipped down into it as doubtless he had slipped from his mother’s womb ... whimpering, blinking, inarticulate--nostalgic. He was gone.
But his father had Honor to groom. The debt was paid, the woman was salvaged and sent off. No word in the papers.
“He will find out he’s safe ... turn up, sobered ... my Dear. Never worry,” his father assured her.
“And I ...?”
“You are his wife, Frances. You must wait.”
She got up.
“Will you move my chair, Colonel Luve ... over there?”
She walked, clear slender neck and legs with her child so full before her her walk seemed to say: “My child comes first.”
Her husband’s parent shook his head.
“What can you do, my daughter? You must wait....”
She sank in her new-placed chair.
“ ...in the sun.”
--She is pregnant, Colonel Luve explained away the inconsequent words.
Fanny waited.
* * * * *
“I know your name.... I knew it always ... now you will let me?--_Samson Brenner._”
“You say my name as if it meant something.”
“Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does. Go on.”
“I sometimes wonder why I am studying Law. Writing poems is more fun ... and you know? seems _realler_!”
“Yet you distrust writing poems....”
“--bad poems.”
“Bad because you distrust doing anything for fun?”
“You know, I think you’re right!”
He smiled like a child, pleased but a bit scared when he finds true what he had sought in make-believe. His brow wrinkled. He turned away from the brass glare of the light.
“That light is horrid,” she said.
“--all substitutes for the sun,” he said.
“That is so.”
“Yet what a wonder what a glory,” his body stiffened, “that we should have a substitute at all!”
“Why glory, Samson Brenner, if the substitute is false?... Wait.”
Mrs. Luve came back. She placed two candles between them on the Pembroke table.
“Shut out the gas,” she said.
There was blackness, heavy, hot, clasping them both. Two jets of liquid glow tongued from the mellow wood, made the wood lift and gleam like a sun’s ray through moving cloud: cast wreathings subtle, evanescent, out against the blackness.
They were quiet. The candles ... two fingers rose, touched them across the table, joined them, hushed them.
“May I say something to you?”
“What, Mrs. Luve?”
“You have a tongue that speaks truth, you have a tongue that lies.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“You must not have a tongue that lies: for you have a tongue that is true.”
“Haven’t we all ...?”
“You must not----“
--He does not see himself. He moves through a black Hole Bright--pouring brightness. Where is a Sun whereby a Sun may see?
--I have ten fingers ... ten to weave a Web To catch at God. Too frail--too fine ... yet you slip through?
* * * * *
Fanny looked out from her back sun-parlor upon trees.
Beside a high grey wall rose the thick life of a magnolia; beech and cherry and dogwood sang their light swift presences, a lawn was fresh like dew.
“Trees,” she murmured....--They have waited the Winter. It is Spring, they prepare to give a whole new life--blossom and seed. That is why it is Spring. Each year ... at their feet the dead leaves sink and rot. They push forth new ones. Each year.... They cannot help themselves.
She could go no farther.--Helpless bravery.... Upstairs in her cradle Edith slept. Harry was gone, voiceless, eight months. She was imprisoned in her man’s absence, in her child’s presence.
She had a dream. Harry jumped on his black horse, stood over her in his stirrups. He ribboned the black flanks red with his spurs. The horse leaped: as he flew away he leaned to her and cut deep her breast with his crop.... She awoke thinking of Edith. Her child was the red salute of Harry’s going: the scar of it. She loved her child.
She had a dream. A tall man with a baby’s face lay crowding in her arms. She could kiss his baby’s face, but he had tall legs, they spun and twirled about her. They struck a lamp which fell, the house was in flame. All of the town rushed into her house: she saw his father and mother, her mother who was dead and brother ... all of the city came into her sitting among flame holding a baby face. They stood there, pointing, poising, sneering at her. “What is she going to do? She sat rigid holding her baby face. What a fool, she sits there nursing a dead child with fire all about her!” She was helpless.
Now, sitting, watching the brave helpless trees she could go no farther. She had a child whom she loved and who was the wound of another love upon her.
--Trees do not think, they are brave helplessly. Why am I not brave? Trees lift into air. I am buried.
She was buried. Her friends and her relations, seeing her Mrs. Luve, buried her daily. Her child, seeing her mother, buried her daily. Her husband, a distant stroke in a far world, ploughing, ploughing like steel ... heaping the soil of his ploughings forever upon her, buried.
--Trees do not think. I try to think. Thinking is bad for Winter. Thinking is bad for Spring. Thinking chills Spring. Thinking calls sap to Winter which Winter kills. Yet I must think ... for I am motionless. To think is to move when one is motionless. Trees move forever. Leaf and trunk move upward, circle out: seed moves downward, inward. Trees swing forever so they are thoughtless. But I am a broken curve, a splintered part of a Circle I cannot see.... My thought’s a finger feeling from the line of my brokenness for a Roundness beyond me.
--What am I going to do? How am I going to think?