Part 6

“You don’t have to talk ... with me. I’m not that sort. I’m not the sort of girl who measures a friendship by the number of secrets chattered about.”

“I know.”

“I feel we’re friends, you and I. That’s enough.”

“That’s enough. But O, Clara, if I knew a single thing in all the world, I’d tell you. I don’t know anything. Perhaps you know more than I.”

“I know some things,” said Clara.

“I feel you know some things,” Fanny looked at her friend’s long taut hands. They reached for her bag, opened it, took out a box of cigarettes. She offered it, open, to Fanny. “Go ahead.” They both smoked.

“I know that a smoke tastes good,” said Clara. “I know that in the mornings a cup of coffee tastes good. I know I’m young and that the world won’t give me a thing ... not a thing!... unless I fight, unless I cheat.”

“What has it to give?”

“Just things that taste good....”

“Then ...?”

“Then let’s die.”

“Why do you say Cheat, Clara? Why don’t you say Pay?”

“To pay comes high.”

“To cheat comes low.” She looked at Clara long. “I don’t believe you, Clara. There’s no cheat in you.”

“Then you don’t know me.”

“You said that we knew each other.”

“Well, look at me!” She stood. “I am lovely. Look.” Her hands caressingly followed her words. “My hair is black and soft. My mouth is warm. This is a good white throat, I know.... And my body is good--O so good and clean, and so swelling-slender like a lily. My body deserves something, that is sure.” She sat down. She blushed. “So does yours,” she went on. “I’ve seen you. So does yours.”

Fanny’s hands clasped swaying. “If you could see, O girl, if you could see what has been done upon my body!”

She looked away with her hands still swaying ... The Church! She did not know where to look. She hid her eyes in her hands.

Clara got up. She lifted the face of her friend and held it between her palms.

“I can see much, Fanny. Don’t say a word. I can see much.”

Her hands slipped down. They were fists. Slow, deliberate, they beat against her hips.

Soon she left....

* * * * *

Fanny Dirk opened the windows wide, let out the cigarette smoke, closed them, sat down.

--Who is right, Jesus or God?

--What do I know of Jesus, what does Harry know? There is a meaning that is God’s in the words of Christ, and I can’t find it out. Who knows it? Leon? It seemed to her that Leon knew. A Jew. He uses neither Love nor Christ ... the unlovely and unChristian Jews. We did not meet in Washington. Yet we had a talk. It seems to me I know what Leon said to me in Washington. What Harry said at home? That is real--yet it seems more like a shadow. Harry? You must not hate Harry. Hard. You dare not. What is there terrible in hate? Others hate ... good healthy people hate. Why can’t you? Why, when hate comes for Harry, do you sicken ... something in you rips, fades, bleeds away? I am pulled out from myself as if my heart from my body. It is easier to hate than to love. You cannot. One hate? O I love this world of little people dragging through pain, mired in it, sinking in pain. O I love you! We are close. Let me hate Harry! You dare not. What has he done? He turned good. He quoted Scripture ... here am I. Edith, Edith--your father killed me quoting the words of Christ. O this is not it. There is something beyond. I am exiled. Did God give me exile? I could have stayed and fought.... Not Harry, God gave me exile. Will you hate God? If Harry because you thought he gave you exile, why not hate God? Why not? Why cannot I hate God? He made the Morass of pain in which the world so pitifully struggles, so pitifully dies! Hate God! Not Harry. You too ... who knows what agony you have lived, what sickly visions you have had, lifting you up. Poor Harry ... if one understands you, Boy.... I understand you, miserable Boy.... Fool! I can’t hate you. God? Hate God?... not if you understand him also.

--There was a tree, I see a tree standing upon a mountain side above a quiet lake. And the tree’s roots break out. The tree falls into the water. Downward it groans, crashing and crushing. But in the water does it not lie still? No, it rots. Why does it fall, why does it rot so still when it has fallen? Why does the Hand of God draw it down ... God who has made it grow ... down against its growing, down against a thousand sprouts and seedlings?

--I am falling, Fanny. Are you rotten also? Where are you going? O if you pull me down, Lord, I must go. You do not think that I am bad. You know. God, you know everything, you must see my girlhood ... how I pushed up, eager, straight, sunward. You must see my wifehood. You must see my motherhood. I fall. But I have not lost you, God. O it hurts!... Fall, fall.... Why are you nearer, Father, when I fall?

She pressed her fingers hard against her brow.--Little brain, is God in there? Her eyes with a new salience touched the objects in her room ... the blue burlap on her couch, the chair, the Bible, the wall of the still Church, the swift sun vaulting away above the vaulting roofs. She bound her fingers hard about her brow:--All of you ... all ... I hold you.... There is no air ... there are no spaces. I touch everything that my eyes see, everything that my mind holds.... God?

Fanny sank to her knees on the floor. She felt her face free and bright above her body. Her face prayed, and her body:

“God ... go ahead. If I can stand it, Go ahead. There you are down below. I see you. You draw me like a tree, crashing down, crashing down.” She held her Bible high, let it go, it fell. “God ... go ahead.”

She got up, seated herself once more: and began to darn some stockings.

She worked long. At times:--I am hungry. Better go out and eat, came to her faintly dizzy head. She could not. The room was ripe and round, holding her firm.

A knock.

“Come in.”

--_Why am I not surprised?_ Christopher Johns stepped into the room, shut the door.

She gazed at him silent.

“You don’t mind?” he asked. “I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d look in. The lady downstairs ... what a dear old lady!... said you were out: I could knock if I wanted to be sure.”

“Sit down.”

He took off his coat and laid it on the couch. It crowded nearly the whole couch. He sat down.

“I’m glad I found you in. This is a nice room,” he said. “Do they give you enough heat now winter’s coming?”

She went on darning.

“More heat than I’m used to at home.”

“Where is your home?”

“I have no home.”

“You look so home-like there,” after a pause he went on, laborious, determined. “Darning your stockings ... in your dark-blue wrapper.”

“All sorts of women darn stockings ... and wear wrappers.” She did not look at him. She was framed in the knowledge that he looked at her.

She saw his hand go through his thick brown hair. She felt it.

“I’ve been married fifteen years,” he said. “I know what I feel in you.”

She bit her lips.--Tell me. Tell me!

“For fifteen years I’ve been married to two women.”

She looked up.

“Only one of them legal, of course. But married to both of them just the same. I have had scores of girls during that time under my care. I know something of woman.”

--About me? about me, kind man, what do you know?

He answered her silence. “You I do not know. You are a mystery to me, Fanny. But you’re true and whole ... that I know ... like the whole earth.”

He had called her Fanny!

“My wife’s name is Sylvia. She’s pretty and prim and worships her figure. You can imagine what she thinks of mine! She’s always been afraid because of her waistline to have a baby. But before Sylvia came along, there was Sadie. The first love of my youth. She was thirty then. Now she’s fifty. Fat and sentimental, good old maternal Sadie. She’d love to have children. But how can she? She’s so respectable ... she’s so ill-placed in a hard world. She’s been true to me, has Sadie. Sadie envies Sylvia her marriage license ... the chance she has to have a brood of kiddies. Sylvia despises Sadie, is above jealousy (Sadie’s a part of the landscape) and tells herself in her heart what a far better kept-lady she’d have made, what better times she’d have had ... _she’d_ not have been true to me!... if only she were free and immoral like that fat old foolish thing.”

“Why do you tell me all this terrible farce?”

“I want you to know that I know women.”

“How should I know it from that?”

“These misplaced women love me ... they’re my fate.”

“All of your fate?”

“Not all.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Johns, why you should assume my interest in all this....”

He got up. “Fanny, there’s more between us than that.”

“What do you want?” She was frightened.

“I want you to see me, as I see you. Not understand me. Understanding’s rot. I don’t understand you. What in hell _do_ we understand? What counts is seeing. Touching. What we see and touch is part of us.” She stirred.--My words! “You’re part of me ... you ... because I see you there, attached to me like a hand. That’s what I want.”

“You’re a fool. You had better try to understand a little. You don’t know a thing about me.”

“I don’t want to, then. It’s good you called me a fool. That’s the beginning of warmth, and warmth is the beginning of wisdom. Pretty soon you’ll have to blind yourself in order not to see me. You’ll see me, alright. You don’t want to blind yourself?” He went on: “Never another word shall I say about my two appendages ... my simpering Sylvia and my grandiose Sadie. But you’ll touch it all. You’ll see what that life is ... you’ll look at me: you’ll see what a lot’s left over....”

Fanny got up from her chair. She stood blazing. Sudden she laughed and sat down. He came to her and lifted her in his arms. His big body covered her. He kissed her eyes and her brow, her ears and her hair.

“Aren’t you ashamed,” she murmured. “Aren’t you ashamed!”

He placed her back in her chair. They breathed hard. Silence.

She looked at this looming man. He was brutal, she felt him gentle. He was abrupt, she felt him slow like a child. He was big, she felt he needed arms to cradle.

“Leave me alone!” sudden she cried. “I am a lost creature. Don’t pick me up. Leave me.”

He knelt by her chair.

“I have a husband who has kicked me out. I have a child I’m not good enough to touch.”

His hands curled. “Fanny, you lie.”

“I had a love affair. Do you hear me? I committed adultery. Get out! Even Christ don’t forgive that. Do you see that Church over there?” She jumped away from him and went to the window. “My husband’s a good man. If he came to New York, that’s likely where he’d stop ... in that Parish house. If he passed me in the street, he’d turn his face.”

The room was between them. They, facing each other, held. Fanny’s voice changed. It had been harsh and high. It was low.

“What do you want? Can’t you see that I’m dead? What do you want? Aren’t there plenty of women for the rest of your life? Why me? Let me die.”

He stood still.

“What can I give you? Haven’t I tried to give to my husband ... to Edith? They’ve taken all. I’ve failed. There’s something the matter with me.”

He stood. They were silent.

Her voice was quiet. “I don’t resist you. Do you hear? I don’t deserve to. I am dead. I am nothing. You don’t want that. I don’t resist you. You’ll take your hat and you’ll go....”

He held his silence, and she prayed in it. She saw the world all One: and of it, like a throbbing heart, like a high radiant head, she saw that there was God. But she said again:

“There’s something the matter with me.”

Johns came to her: he stood above her, holding her two hands.

“Come beside me, Fanny.”

The tears ran silent down her cheeks.--What does it mean?

“Come beside me. O close. Lie close with me, Fanny.”

She felt his arms lifting her like a leaf in a warm wind ... laying her down. She felt his hands and his mouth that fell like a warm rain on her parching flesh. She shut her eyes.

* * * * *

... So that day they had walked with Autumn burning all about them. Silently. She, walking through the years with feet at last aware: he, mute unconscious, reckless of pasts, praying that as she walked beside him ... this strange deep lovely creature who had become his life ... she should not walk away.

The day was done. They sat in their room at the Inn, with Night.

They felt the Night. It was clear and brittle like a violin: it gave forth notes, sharp, penetrable, woody: it wove its voices into silken strands. It was a dark and glowing violin. The room in which they sat was still of the past of the Inn which had been a Mansion. The ceiling came low: the beds were canopied: chairs, lowboy, brass hearthpieces, rag rug over the black softwood floor, drew into a tight repressed luxuriance, into a single mood, strong, curbed, sufficient, that was New England: ancient New England pregnant of bursting strengths.

Here they sat, thrust close upon each other by the Night and by the moodpent room.

He wanted to take her hand, he did not dare. His eyes searched her retiscence.

“It was a great day, Fanny. We must have walked twenty miles.”

She saw the miles ... miles of trees flaring against their false defeat.--‘We move skyward! Come, Winter, strip us ... still do we move skyward!’ She saw the miles: hours of her small feet beating immortal earth.

“Jonathan,” she spoke at last, “I am going to leave you.”

He hid his face in his hands.

“I have been drugged into peace. Now you want to drug me into happiness.”

“Put it that way if you will.”

“It cannot be.”

What could he say?

“I do not know,” she whispered, “why it is. It must be, Dear. Let us not argue. Let us not rend the beauty of our parting with inquisitive words--words that can only claw a truth. Let us be peaceful here for the days that remain. Let us accept what neither of us knows ... like our births, Dear, like our deaths: just so deep. It must be.”

He took away his hands from his face.

“I shant argue, Fanny. When I first saw you and loved you, I said: ‘She may come: that is possible. She will go: that is sure.’ I knew. What right have I to argue? You have blessed me with life. If now I must pay, so be it. Which part is the blessing--I don’t know Fanny: my having you, or the long years I shall walk alone if you leave me, and fill with my word: ‘I have had her.’”

“You have given me Peace. You have given me what I must give up.”

“I will not argue. I cannot give up hope. Wont you speak to me, Fanny?”

“What can I say?”

“What are you?”

She was still.

... “Why did you come to me? Why did you let me love you? Why did you not resist? Where do you come from, Fanny? where are you going?”

Her eyes came very slowly from within her world, came to this gentle clumsy lover of hers, rested upon him. He was there, broken into deep shadow, sudden light by the sharp flicker of the open fire.

“None of us could answer any of your questions. Why should I be able to?”

“You more than most of us.”

“When I came to New York, my coming meant one thing. Without that meaning my coming to New York, my leaving my home and my child were simple horror. All my life was a hideous jest unless my coming to New York meant one meaning.”

“What was that meaning?”

“When I know, I won’t be any longer where you are.”

He bowed his head: a jet of flame touched his brow livid like a gash above his grey-shadowed face.

“When I came to New York I fought against that meaning. For all that I had given up, for all the saying to myself _You are dead, You are a sacrifice_ and knowing it, there was in me a self that wanted to live, wanted the good things I had given up. That is why you found me as you did. Resist you? I hungered for you, Dear. You meant, for a while, a Home, Love, a child,--you are such a child, such a dear good child--you meant all I had lost. You took from my coming to New York its meaning. You were a substitute, see? for what I had lost. And that makes it all a hideous jest, all my life. I did not come to seek an exchange, to build on the same charred ground where my life was burned away. That I know. But O I could not resist you. You forgive me, Jonathan? I was so sick, so weak. My arms needed so to hold my child, they were so empty. You were a lie, but O you were good. Forgive me, Jonathan. I knew all along. I needed to drug myself to be peaceful in my peace with you. The City ... work ... our flat ... they drugged me. Stealing some of your linen to mend it, nursing your cold just for a couple of days, taking the problem of your life and suffering by it, trying to help solve it ... O it was drunkenness, it was ecstacy, Dear, it was wrong. I couldn’t stay drugged. So it was wrong for you. Unfair, perhaps. Have I hurt you? Have I ... O God ... have I returned evil for evil after all? I have been hurt. And in the anger and the pain, I have understood why the world injures the world. I have understood how from evil received, from injury done, comes the irresistible impulse to return evil, to injure. I did not want that. I have done it! Yes. I have hurt you. Good tender man ... victim already of two selfish women. I have come with the poison of my wounds, and poisoned you.”

He shook his head. “No, Fanny. You have healed me.”

“If you knew how you said that ... how weak your voice was. You were strong, bursting, bubbling.”

“Whatever happens ... I am free of those two....”

“But now you are so still. Almost, you are thin.... Yes, I have done this. I have done this. I will continue to do this, poison others with the poison of my wound, so long as I seek to be healed. Do you see? That is what makes the world endlessly hurt the world. It seeks to be healed. Do you see? Each human soul, wounded by another soul, seeks a soul to be healed. And the wound is passed along, endlessly, endlessly. O the vicious circle. And I am in it. God thrust me from home, God drew me as a stone is drawn to the earth ... away and out of the Circle. And I came back and entered it again. O I will try again: I was weak. I was not aware. I will know better. _I must not seek to be healed._ That is what I have learned. Can you see that, Dear? That is the deadly poison, that is the curse of passing on the poison ... that is the endless circle of a poisoned world. We seek to be well. We crave peace. We crave love. Even I. I came to you with my bloody soul. ‘Heal me!’ I said. And now you are bloody, too. And I no less bleeding. Do you understand just a little, Jonathan? why the peace you gave me, the care and the tenderness you placed into my empty arms ... why all that has been wrong? The hideous joke, this happiness you offered: the cruel wrong, this happiness I seek?

“ ...Yes ... my arms are still empty.” She held them forth as she spoke ... toward him. “They still hunger. O will they never stop aching to hold? aching to be full? My breast is still a woman’s.... But I shall try better now. Do you hear me, God, wherever you are? I was tired. I was broken beyond knowing. I slipped back from falling. I couldn’t go on falling upward upon you. Not then. I shall try again. Another chance, God, will you?... Yes, you will. There is no other way that you can do.... Dear, do you understand?”

His face was before her, crumpled, like a child’s ... lost in the Dark where she had left him, weeping and yet afraid to cry....

* * * * *

Fanny walked up the street into the Winter sun. It was morning. The sun stood low in the street’s square gap: its heatless dazzle was in her eyes as she walked. She walked with sight blurred by the sun among the men and women walking like her to work. They were the substance of their shadows, long and black upon the sung-glazed City. They swam like wraiths, remnants of warm houses, warm sleep, in the inhuman brilliance of the sun.

Fanny thought: “When I came, what was it that led me to Christopher Johns?”

The comfort of that place, was it curse or splendor lying in her mind? What had it been to Clara? Is Clara there? She had learned quick that there was no place like it. She was unskilled. The one skill she had ... the human one of knowing girls, of managing them well, of a clear head for practical affairs ... who again as she stepped wearying into offices for work would read it in her?

The crowds beat on: the day was going to dim. As the sun went high, these atoms of shadow hording against sun would win. For a day. Till the next morning. Fanny felt that her feet were dark and that they walked on brightness.

--Only my feet. Because they are so tired. I am not black, I am white. In this surge of shadow, Fanny felt wanly white. Her head was dizzy, unpropped by the warm crowds hording against cold sun.

--And yet I am so small. How changed and grown from the white girl?... The door to the loft factory stood a steel barrier to the day. Within: musty heat air full of the stale traceries of wistful hands sewing at steel machines. She went in....

* * * * *

Above the whirr of Fanny’s work there was a voice speaking. Under the blanket of Fanny’s sleep there was a voice speaking. Across her words in meeting men and women, across the words of men and women meeting her, there was a voice speaking. It was one, and it was Fanny.

She knew at times. At times she did not hear it. She would emerge from the thick inattention ... sleep or fever or work or even fun ... and she would know it had spoken. It ran through the heavy years that were now hers like a thin Light moving along the bottom of a Sea that had no sun, moon, star....

--Girl. Perfect girl! I am not tall, but my body is tight. And my mind is taller than all these minds about me. It reaches higher than yours, slow brother, yours, Annie, yours, Delia. It is faster too. It moves very fast, it can skip ahead of your thoughts, it can turn about and wait and squat there grinning, till your thoughts catch up. And it is white and clean. I am fearless. I think that is purity ... don’t you, Jesus up there? You weren’t afraid and that is why you were pure. My mind is white and sound like my body leaping, skipping where it wills, over low stones, over low mud. What have I to fear? I am I....

--I walk the street under magnolia blooms between the proud old houses.... That’s Fanny Dirk: queer girl! I am simply myself. When Annie begins to squint at me I know what she’s thinking about, I know what’s troubled her last night. I can feel sorry for you, Annie. My figure is rather roundish, but the men are just where I want them. I have eyes and lips and a mind to spit them on. This mouse-blue frock is lovely even so, as I walk dangling my parasol through the sun-splotched magnolia way. This cream-dim ruching at my neck shows the olive note of my skin. And _that_ means there is blood flowing very close.... And the white stockings are sharp between the bias skirt and the black slippers.... I walk fearless. I’ll do what I will.... I am surrounded by children.

--This dingy stair ... the factory girls ... you are a factory woman!... O for them true: this horror for them is true. For me? this horror is a tale. It is the words of a song. There is a music ... music. For you and for you and for you, grey shadows dripping from the sun through the encaverned stairs, it is true Horror. It should not be: for it is. For me, it is well.... Fanny Dirk with blue prim frock and the olive throb of my throat ... for it is something else.