Part 3
The quiet crept upon his body. Tucked in his toes, moistened his hands, lay on his mouth. The quiet was warm. Was music. Harry shut his eyes. The wave of the world, booze and streaking men, fell away. He was in a flatness downy with gentle grass above a gentle river. His feet hurt, he was glad, hurting was living. A warm cloud muffled his head: through his eyes and mouth, through the warm cloud came words:
“Our Father which art in Heaven ... thy Kingdom ... give us this day our daily ... not into temptation ... for thine is the Kingdom ... halleluja, Blesst!... the glory for ever and ever ... seek and ye shall find ... seek seek and and ye ye ... unto you opened ... unto you, opened ... Blood of the Lamb, red blood, ... there is a quiet house, all white, where it is warm this bitter Winter night ... all warm a quiet house ... and arms holding me to a redness, passion, that is allowed. Allowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... allowed. Christ smiles on it, his blood is red and holy.... Fanny’s red, I have seen her red blood. Since I have married her, holy ... red and holy ... knock and it shall be ... opened ... red warm, dear ... all white is the blood of the Christ....”
The smokey man was speaking: “Miracle is not dead.”
Harry Luve rolled around upon his face. The music was still. A new quiet, also warm, wrapped him about. He rolled and rolled in a warm water. “The quiet is ever’ where.”
His eyes gleamed against a blackness suddenly calm and dun, a wall. He looked at a wall in a lighted room. He saw a man beside him clad in black. A hand touched his. Harry was thankful how that hand touched his.
“I have seen,” he said, “ ... O I have seen--“
The hand clasped his. “What, brother, have you seen?”
Harry wrenched away his hands, placed them like fenders before him.
“Let me--let me--!” he stopped. He swayed caught: he flew caught in a chord that sped with the bright room through a roaring darkness. Roar! He was dizzy. He tried to cry. He saw his hands speeding before his eyes like two birds through cavernous space. He stopped from breath ... one two three four FIVE ... he counted his flying fingers. A tiny spring sang over his eyes, sang fraying ready to break. He wanted to cry ... five five!... a little woman flew before his hands like a white bird in the blackness. Naked. One red spot in her naked body where he had made red once ... Fanny!... warm ... allowed. _Hallowed allowed hallowed allowed._ The red spot was a painted house home ... could be about him.... Blessed are they that mourn ... blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit ... comforted ... Kingdom of Heaven lead us not ... rejoice exceeding glad ... into temptation----
“--_Warm and sweet is the blood of the Lamb That washes us sinners white. Sinners sinners Black and quivering sinners we And the blood of the Lamb it warms us It washes us sinners white._”
... The hand of the man in black touched his again. Smokey ... flame. Warmness, red warmness, white from hallowedness. The tiny spring burst. His eyes burst out into myriad diamond stars. A sluice opened. He was all wet. His soul poured ... a pent torrent ... out: speechless whiteness.
“Something--say something, Brother! What wrestles in you? What chokes you? What do you see?”
“Christ!” gasped Harry Rowland Luve: then he slept.
* * * * *
Mrs. Luve leaned back in her chair, took the brimming words of Samson Brenner.
They poured from him, free, full, into the dark pool of her eyes. They poured bright, candid: in the dark pool they fell dark.
--You talk of your fears and your pains: you talk of your loves and your dreams. You are a Jew, you are true. Why is the word Christ never in your mouth?
--O there is reason, deep! What is the pain of nearness--you pampered Jew, you Jew-boy, plump about sorrow--that blots the word Christ from your mouth?
“Mrs. Luve, I forget myself. I talk. I lose myself, there sudden I am. I do not know myself, but I say ‘that is me!’”--Pampered boy. “I talk and talk. God knows of what and why. Mrs. Luve, do I bore you?”
“You move along a path that is mine. Go on. I have no earthly thing to do but hear you.”
“You are grave!”
“Not so grave as you.”
“But I laugh. I must tell you ... the first time I really heard laughter....”
--You move upon my life like a broken sun ashift through cloud at evening after a black day.... You in the flame of my candles, you in the black of my room.... What is this word Christ you know too deep to utter?”
* * * * *
Fanny standing moved her hand from the gathered flowers on the table ... cherry and pear buds high, bowls of anemone, violets ... to her lips.
“He is coming!” She stood.
The door thrust forward--and was away from between them. Clad in white she held firm against the sight of him; tall and dark with pale hands and face, he rose from her still eyes like a column of smoke.
“Harry!” Then she held out her arms.
He shut the door. He knelt.
“Get up, husband.”
He kissed her hands.
She lifted his head in her two palms, lifted him up. His lips were on hers.
They were thin, sweet, laden now with little gasps of air warmed sweet in sweet lungs: no smells of liquor and smoke like a hot corrugation scraping her sense.
He broke from her and sat in a chair. His breath was sudden, he had run a race. One hand lay palpitant against a knee: breathless, afraid, a being out of its element. She thought of a sea. He was fished up dry from a sea.
“Harry,” she spoke low. She knelt at his feet: she looked up: she could smile now.
“Get up, wife.”
“No ... let me. Let me always.”
His dry hands, tremulous, waved about her hair: seeking, afraid: they were moths now, fluttering upon a light: so his eyes. His face was pale and hurt turned down upon her smiling. Fluttering search collapsed. He hid his face in his hands.
“Do not cry now.” She felt shut out by his hiding hands.
“I do not cry. Instead, I pray.”
He looked at her. All of him was dry. From his words he seemed to have won bravery. She felt shut out in his looking.
His eyes were braver: his hands. They moved forward upon her shadowing face: they sought a thing, found it. They carried her mouth upon his, differently, upward. He stood, she under him. Her flesh touched his flesh.
Tall white flesh, scabbarded in black ... and in prayer. Lips washed clean of liquor, scrubbed lips, thin ... very thin. Hands corroded in cleanliness against the nape of her neck. Odorless, fireless.... Fanny flung her arms about him.... Shoulders pointed forward, thrusting away a world. She clasped him close.
“Harry--Harry,” she cried. “O I am so glad you are----” she stopped. She lay swaying in his arms, clasping him tighter, tighter. A faint moan rose from her parted lips as her arms clasped tighter....
They sat and looked at each other.
“You have loved me, Fanny.”
“Yes ... yes.”
“You are my wife.”
She could say no word. She could feel no thing to turn into a word. She was a wisp of cloud: beneath her a weathercock stood still. Harry moveless pinned like a weathercock upon a bloody spike ... under a sky with one wisp of cloud.
From a fringed green horizon, memory like a wind moved up to her.
--I love him. I serve him. I have dedicated my new free strength to that. I have sworn how I was wanting, how I failed. Life now together!
“You know about me,” he said.
“I know you have come back, and I love you ... love you.”
“I must tell you all ... all the sin. You are my wife.”
“Tell me now, only that you are mine.”
“I am yours: for you are my wife since in my sinning you have loved me, Fanny. God rewards me. You were there, awaiting my conversion.”
“We are wedded at last. Do not use words I cannot understand.”
“You must hear all my sins....”
Why did she feel:--He is satisfied with his words?
“I know my sins. God has put upon me, as my way of being cleansed, to speak my sins. As they come forth from my mouth, they cleanse--God has made a miracle in that they cleanse. I am washed clean, speaking them. Already scores of boys, young men, hearing them, are clean. All their horror, each detail of my sins, is a hand washing clean.”
Why did she feel:--Speaking, he moves away?
--I am jealous of your sins. What are sins?
“Tell me at once, then, Harry. Then we can bury them. Then we can start to build. Then you can come and hold me.”
“I was away more than two years....”
--He has come back to hold me.... I will hold him so he understands he has come back to hold me.... O to be held!... He has never held me. We were too wise, we fools, to hold each other. In a plunging world ... O my God how the world veers and plunges ... what fools not to hold each other.
He spoke, he was very eloquent and sure, dwelling again with his sins. He was warm in them. When he looked out from his hot sins to his wife, his eyes were colder.
--Hold me. Hold me! Let me hold you. Come plant your hand in my heart. He spoke, dwelling warm in his sins.
--Damn your sins!
He ended. He came to her and knelt once more. Not feeling him, she let him.
“Fanny, my dearest, my wife, my wife ... do you forgive me?”
Not feeling him there, she was very quiet.
“I do not feel, my love, that there is anything to forgive.”
She looked straight, a little to the side of his white face. She was still.
“We were young,” then she said.--I must speak. “And did not know. All that is past, but is good ... all ... since now we know.”
“I have sinned deeply. Forgive me.”
“You wandered loosely, because I held you loose: because you did not hold me. Now we clasp each other close. It is not a sin to have been a child.”
“Bless you. Bless you.”
“I have learned----“
“You have been always wonderful.”
“No, Harry. I have learned. I have changed.”
“You.... You have not needed to change.”
She looked at him. “Two years you left me alone: and before that two years you left me alone while I was forced to live with a drunkard. Do you think these years did nothing to me?”
“You suffered.”
“And what might come of suffering!”
“Fanny, my Christian wife, you were strong, you were not harmed by suffering. You remained pure. You have been not changed, dear: tempered.”
“O Harry, I am afraid ... so afraid of your words.”
“You are a Christian, dear, and do not know it. That is why you are frightened by my words.”
“You never saw me, Harry.”
“Yes, dear, always. Under a mist, but always. The mist lifted. Darling, I must tell you: that frightful immortal night ... you and Christ.... I saw you both at once together.”
“You never saw me. You do not know how I have changed.”
“You love me?”
“O my darling!”
“You suffered, waiting....”
She put his hands together: helpless she beat her hands against his hands clasped hard.
“You did not give up ... waiting, suffering?”
“I knew you would come back. I saw you, always, coming. Now I know that.”
“Then you have not changed. For you do love me, then.”
“Harry, love to survive must change.”
“Dear, dear ... you were right. I have told my sins. Each one. You have them all. You must remember them all. Let me hold you now, in silence.”
“But Harry, perhaps I too have the need of telling.”
“You have no sin.”
“No Harry, I have no sin. But there are other tidings.”
“Hush, dearest. Hold me----“
“Listen!”
He looked at her. Impatience bit his lip, puckered his eyes slightly.
“ ...Have you thought ever, Harry, of what I did, these years of waiting? of what I was? Harry, look at me clear. Have you ever tried to see me?”
“My Christian wife!”
--Patience, patience!... “Harry, this coming home must be beautiful, it must not be hideous. Give it your share of light, Harry. You must to save it, to make it. Look at me.”
He puckered his brow: he suffered, looking at her beauty he would ... now he had confessed his sins ... have preferred to kiss.--All of you, hidden under your white prim dress! “It is so long since I have kissed you.”
“Harry, your word sin, does it cover up from your eyes what you and I have done? Am I right, dearest, to fear your word sin?”
--I want to kiss you. You are my wife and have forgiven me. I’m done with vices. I have the right, by God! to kiss your mouth and....
“Your going away killed me, Harry. I was near dead before you went. Your going away killed me.”
“Forgive me, I say.”
“Never! if you use that word. Forgiveness, sin ... they are words, Harry, that cover up. You killed me; you did not sin. You struggled for life and killed me. That is all. I struggled for life, after your struggle had killed me. Can you imagine how I needed, alone here in the house with Edith whom you have never seen, to struggle against the death in which your going buried me?”
“Edith----!”
“She is asleep. Have you thought, Harry?”
He stood up. “What can I do or say? Yes I have thought. It is that agony I brought to you which I call my sin: it is my heartache for it, my rushing back to you with hands imploring, that cries ‘Forgiveness.’ You stop me.”
“Harry you did not sin, because you needed life. Always that comes first; our need of life. I did not give you life. I don’t know why, but I did not give you life. You went elsewhere, fumbled. Now I feel strong. I feel now, Love, that I can give you life. We can now, from our new strength, at last give life to each other. If I did not know this, I would never have seen you again.
“But Harry ... please, please understand! I understand your wandering, your hurting, almost your killing of yourself and of me ... in order to find breath. Understand mine!”
“What do you mean, Fanny?”
“I am human also. I am not ... I do not want to be that perfect emptiness you call your Christian wife. O my beloved, I am all warm for you, I am all living for you, because I too have struggled and have wandered ... in order to find breath.”
“What do you mean?”
She stood close to him. “Look at me close, my love.”
“What do you mean?” Very slowly, his pale white hands with their blue veins curled up like leaves in autumn, drying, drying: fists.
“Do you feel how I love you? Do you feel ... O you must ... how my love now, that was a little stupid girlish thing, has bloomed: how it is full of blood, full of sustaining sweetness? Do you not feel, Harry, how you have come back to a love that will feed you, that will lift you up until the end of years?”
“Yes ... I feel that. What do you mean?”
“That love is over the despair and death of our past years as a tree is over the ground.”
“Fanny ... I....”
“ ...rooted in it. I was under the ground. That shows I loved you. Always, always. If I had not loved you, I should not have been so deep-buried under the ground. I was dead. That shows I loved you. I am all open in the air, high to you. That shows I love you. Love for you has never stopped, it has grown.”
“What do you mean ...?”
“There was a thing that helped me to push up from my despair, from my death under the ground where you had buried me, Harry. There was a man....”
Harry Luve stepped forward and viced her wrists: “A man--!”
“Harry dearest, you must let _me_ now, _me_ now tell you all about it.”
He stopped her. “One thing only.... This man--” His voice broke. He dropped her wrists. His face was an ashen mist. “For God’s sake, Fanny! You didn’t ... you didn’t, Fanny--“
His eyes saw her. Saw her face. Her face nodded.
His hands covered his face. He flinched away. He saw her not. He went back, back ... the wall caught him. He crumpled to the floor. He lay under his white hands. Lay long....
At last:
“Harry, Harry ... it was because I loved you. O the hurt! See, I have killed you too. Because I loved you.... I too needed to live, for you had killed me. Do not judge yet. Let me tell you, let me help us understand. I heard you ... your horrors, your orgies, your hells. O Harry, this was not so ... this was clean somehow ... leading to birth, to you. It was, since I am here now, loving you ... ready to give you all, all of a life I have at last won to give you. O my boy....”
With each word she crept closer, sank nearer beside him. She knelt beside him. She sought his hands, his eyes ... his eyes. He saw her face hands eyes kneeling beside him who was crumpled beyond her.... He saw not her face, not her hands. He saw white thighs, white, wide, very soft, very penetrable ... hers ... darkly penetrable; they were the stuff of his flesh, they were the stuff of his brain and they were pierced by someone!... He saw rootflesh of a man ... _not he!_ piercing the stuff of his brain.
He got up. Her face was still low where his face had been. Her face was near his feet. His feet touched her face.
“Our Lord has spoken,” he said, “and I throw no stone.”
She was very still, her face low above his feet. Listening with a firm stillness her body was hard and she held her face above his feet.
“Our Lord has spoken further!--‘_But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication causeth her to commit adultery._’ So has said our Lord.”
She was moveless.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Rise up.”
“Let me here, dearest, try to tell you all. Try to tell you what I know now I must: how I was helpless, how I was poisoned dead ... how I was lifted up.”
“Get up.”
“O Harry, Harry ... I have killed you, too.”
“Get up, I say.”
She lifted her face, furrowed with tears, to his.
“I did not choose, Beloved, the Way I was saved....”
“Do you put that on God? or on Christ who has spoken against you?”
“When has He spoken against me?” Fanny Luve stood silently before him.
“He has spoken against you ... even He. He has said: Cast no stone. No stone shall be cast by me. He has said: Put her away....”
Her hands clenched under his mouth.
“--and I put you away.”
“You put me away!”
“I put you away.... Not for myself. I must travel. It is my mission to travel from College to College. I must be away much from my home, bringing where I can to my brothers the Word ... the Word of our Lord who puts you away. I put you away ... for the sake of my child.”
“Whom you have never seen!”
“Whom you shall never see--“
_THREE_
WHITE SKY
Fanny Dirk Luve stood on the Bridge where she could see the river up and down.
--I know what I am going to do. I know. Not die. Not going to see--What can I--? Since she knew, “Why! Why!” she said aloud.
She searched the world trying to find the anguish--I am not going to die!... of what she was to do.--Why not? But she knew that.... Not die. Not see her child.... She saw the river.
The river came to her from trees. The city, a raised shadow near her eyes, pulled her eyelids down away from there beyond, where she lay once on her back. She lies on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting in erection, spilling in bud. Over: he.... From these trees came the river ... from this past ... flowing like the dimension that was time upon her standing on the Bridge. Time and the river were one. It swept upon her from the past of trees, past of sweet love, thrust against her, surging resistless; it was going to overwhelm her. Where? Time and the river flung in a stroke eternally sure against her standing dry in anguish--love an edged steel--on the Bridge. She turned. It turned her. Time and the river sweeping from rootage and trees struck her now in the back. She saw where it flowed.
It flowed into flat land. A rugose strewing of rust and yard and factory was the flat land. The city in the heights fell down from its proud mansions--through dawdling soiled cottages, through clustered shanties--fell to the flat land of rust and coal. Slow brackish river here, turmoiled ... full. It swirled in oil, it recoiled from the harsh thrusts of the makings of men--of junkyards. River and time stole through this newness of noise and filth away, in a filmy scarf of smoke-bitten locusts, beyond the eyes of Fanny. She felt in her back the subtle thrust of a beginning world of high-banked trees free in the air: how it fell, grew, now hurling through noise, dirt, misery--making, struggle to make!--to beyond her eyes that lay so wistfully against the dying locusts, unable to fall farther.
And at her side the city fell along. From its secluded shadow--warmed mansions fell with her along into a rising clatter of smoke, a foam of steel, huddling men moving.... Mist.
Black-purple mist ... red rust ... the shriek of wheels crunching resistless against and upon steel lines thrust resistless also.
Fanny left the Bridge....
* * * * *
In one hand of Fanny was a valise. Her other hand was a fist.
Her mouth asking for a ticket shut fast. Her hand counting change shut fast. She sat in a train, shut.
The moving train worked at her, stole up in her, swayed, shook, pried her open. Her feet in the opening rhythm of the train. Her legs. Her loins. Warm loins. Breasts, not so frozen, melting. Her head, erect on her frozen breast, now plunged in their melting. She sat in a train, open.... She lay in a hot bath of her melted pain and life, flowing within it, open.
She had no sense of a world of objects--fragments to beat against her. She was all melted hot. She had a sense of the whole world ... whole worlds ... all ... falling. The train fell sure, it was sure of itself in its fall. It fell with the world it held so sure, so steadfast; it was a blessing so. She had the sense of the whole world falling in a stark cadence upward upon God. Tears, battle ecstacy of loss ... a falling somehow upward upon God.
Her hands gripped the plush arms, shrill sharp against the quick of her nails. The world was her world again, and was a delirious tangle of broken objects hurling against her eyes. She was bruised and aghast in the rain of broken objects of her world. But that which she had sensed in the melt of worlds remained. All fell upward ... let her pray!--can I dare?... fell upward upon God.
--I am falling away. Grappling, crying, she saw at last how real was this falling away from the whole warm world of her sorrows and joys and wants.--_Edith, Harry; myself, O Edith my heart!_ It is true. _Can I fall upward?_ ...
The fast train seemed to be running over her life. It ran over an earth full of flying fragments. Over houses, fence snapping, cows dipped sudden into trees, pool flaring skyward, cloud-full, caught in the porch of a house, road ribboning a tobacco-field, shaken straight, road stiff like a rod flashing away beneath her.--This is Virginia, this is I. The fast train running over her life smoothed it clear....
She could have remained and fought him for her child, she could not. She could have remained and won him ... repulsive ... she could not. She moved upon a track that was there she sensed before her moving upon it. But Edith! What sort of a life is this, moving away from Edith? The pain of her deprival was a thousand pains, gray: a thousand gray birds circling her in mist.--I am suffering, suffering. Can I stand this? The mists cleared. She saw her Pain clear ... one Pain ... one moment. Pain. She saw that it was not a thousand pains, weeping in gray wings mistily about her. She saw that it was Life.
Life solid and salient.
--_What is this terror? What have I to do with this terror?_
_You are within it!_
... Like this Virginia, an unbroken sweep, broken alone by the unwonted stress of the dimension of moving. One can face solid. One has two eyes and a mind for facing solid.... She loved her daughter.--I love you, love you! More things she loved. Not Harry perhaps, O yes ... the warm dreams she had born in Harry. The house around Edith. Clean beds, linen her own, the kitchen where she came each day and the apron she tied about her hips and the hips too she loved which arms must circle she was sure of. Edith’s. Home, daughter, man ... why were they all destroyed?
--But they have never been. What have they been?... pool of my blood of dream. Stagnant and dead: pool of my clotted blood. My dream’s blood flows!