Part 21

Martin looked toward the pier and saw the headlights of an automobile coming upon them. The car was gaining speed as it passed the pile of lumber. Martin, faster than the others, leaped for the running board and swung himself against the windshield glass, holding to the door-handle. His head was turned just enough to see Eddy jump behind him. Eddy missed the board. His body spun vertically against the rear fender and crashed on the pavement. Behind him, Rio was running frantically. Martin smashed his hand through the side window, feeling slivers of glass against his arm. He caught the driver by the throat and, through the sound of the motor, could hear the dark gurgle under his fingers. There was swearing and shoving inside, but Martin hurt too much to care. He pushed steadily against the lower part of the wheel until the machine swerved and tilted toward the river. It came around in a wide arc, breaking heavily on the shoulder of the pier. Then Martin heard Rio’s voice and knew that he, himself, was falling. He turned so that the back of his head would not strike the paving, and felt the rush of hot blood as his nose and mouth hit first. Instead of putting him out, it cleared his brain. He lay quietly, watching Rio swing his fist and then his club. Abstractly, he watched the other men in the crew go into action against the finks. He didn’t care....

The gorilla-like sailor with whom he had quarreled, held a bottle as though it were a club. He was snarling as he pulled a man from the car.

“So it _is_ ye, ye finkified mate! I been lookin for ye!” Martin heard him say. “I been lookin’ for ye, an’ yer damned long finger ye’ve pointed at me like a dog! God!—I’ll git that finger now!” he added hoarsely, bringing the bottle down on the fender of the car until it was split across. Savagely he threw the mate on the ground, held him by the collar and stepped on his wrist. Then, separating the man’s forefinger from the rest of his hand, he brought down the split edge of the bottle sharply above the middle knuckle.

“Wife—Wife!” cried the mate softly.

The seaman picked up the severed finger, shook it in the man’s face and flung it on the ground beside him.

“Splice it, Jack! Splice it!” He was cursing the fallen man brokenly. Martin looked away....

Then he saw the boy whose brother had been killed in Detroit. “Automobiles,” thought Martin. The boy had no club and was on his back, fighting desperately with a large man from the car. Martin crawled to his knees, not feeling his injured arm or his split chin. He stood waveringly for a moment and got to them just as the man’s broad hand was spearing the boy’s face. Martin knew that he was falling again, not fighting, as he reached them; but he dug his teeth into a fleshy neck and held on as though he were killing a snake, while the body beneath him thrashed and cried. A hard hand pulled him off. Rio was standing above him.

“It’s over, Martin. We got a car.... Come, men!”

Martin spat out blood and climbed into the automobile along with the others.

_CHAPTER XXVIII_

Martin went slowly to Roberts’ apartment house, his head lowered. His right arm was in a sling, the lower part of his mouth was bruised and split. His nose was swollen. He went up in the elevator to Roberts’ rooms and rang once. A doctor came out into the hall. For a moment the two men regarded each other speculatively. Martin saw the blue, introspective eyes, the strong turn of the chin and the gray hairline, receding deeply at the temples. The physician saw a young man with a broken, illusive face.

“I’m Martin Devaud, Doctor. I’m Roberts’ friend. I heard he asked for me.”

“I can see you, Martin,” said the physician kindly, “for I’m Roberts’ friend, too.”

Martin rubbed his cut arm and turned his eyes away.

“You can see? How far?”

The physician shook his head, but did not answer.

“This stroke,” Martin continued. “Is it serious? Is there any time to help?”

All this while, the doctor had been watching him, noticing his bruised face and strained expression, his bandaged arm.

“You seem to have been in something of a mix-up, yourself,” the physician smiled faintly. Then, of a sudden, his face became divisible with the old, tired pains and the new, sharp ones as balance. “Do you know Roberts’ condition?” he asked seriously.

“No,” said Martin. “Roberts and I quarreled, and I haven’t seen him lately.” He ran his hand over his tender chin.

The doctor looked off down the hall, and in his eyes there was now restraint born of his intimacy with pain.

“He mentions your name continually, Martin,” observed the physician. “The thought of you seems to make him desperate in the moments of lucidity which unfortunately attend his madness. And from the strange way he talks at times, one might think you had had a part in the cause of this grave illness. But such is not the case. His illness took root years ago.”

One word cried out to Martin.

“‘Madness’?—you say?”

“Yes,” said the physician. “It’s like the putrefaction of albumen. Almost like the expansion of gasses within a closed chamber. This disintegration must go on. It’s what we have here.”

Martin felt himself turning sick.

“‘Putrefaction’? Doctor?”

“Yes. Putrefaction of the cerebral mass, that most delicate and most amazing structure—a powerful gift to man.” The doctor was grave.

“What can I do?” asked Martin, horrified.

In answer, the physician shook his head and Martin knew that all was futile.

“May I see him?”

Again the doctor regarded Martin thoughtfully. It was as though he wondered whether this man’s agitated mind could view the spectacle which was soon to be presented. And Martin, waiting quietly, understood and respected this professional skepticism. At last, the physician spoke.

“Before you go in, Martin, remember that you are looking at the demanding, expansive form of paresis. Be careful!”

As Martin entered the bedroom he saw a disorientated face—a deflective rapport of Roberts with his environment—a clouding of consciousness. And as he went closer he knew that Roberts had no comprehension of detail or of situation. Martin felt completely helpless. It seemed to him that the translucent, attenuated skeleton of the adviser had wrapped its arms around him, instead of the disease. The sick man’s lips, dry and split, opened and closed in an effort to speak. The guttural tones reached Martin’s ears as though from a great distance—the words moving gently, like a broad leaf without wind.

“Martin! Martin!” Roberts’ expression became clear and defined. The immobile muscles of his face relaxed. “Martin!” he repeated. “Are you there?”

In the room was a terrible pressure.

Again he called—“Martin! Martin! Are you there?”

“Yes, Roberts, I’m here.”

The pitiful, decayed mask upon the pillow broke like a free tide. It spilled in diluted, semi-conscious tears against the linen. Roberts tried to shake the covers; but his hands stood out perpendicularly from the sides of his waist. They remained there, insensitive, incoherent, until Martin took them gently and laid them on the sheet.

Again, momentary consciousness lighted Roberts’ face. Its brightness and shrewd study shocked Martin more than any act of tension could have done.

“Do you want a confession, dear boy?” called out the sick man. “Do you want my signature?... Ha, ha!—Ho, ho!—Hee, hee, hee!...” The ghastly cry reflected from the ceiling. It wasn’t laughter, or hysteria. It was a lachrymose and untidily folded cry of remorse, torn from the swiftly hollowing brain cell.

With his left hand Martin raised his own wounded arm to his forehead. When at last he brought it down, the gauze was wet. In the interim, bright eyes shone through the window. They were mirthful, smoldering and amused—the cancerous eyes of birds. Infuriated, Martin crossed the room and pulled down the blinds. When he turned in the direction of the bed once more, Roberts’ luminous eyes were parallel with his hand which was now hanging over the edge of the covers. The constriction of the pupils was so intense—so minute that the eyes seemed blind. But the expression was one of gravest interest.

“Come, Martin! Come, Infidelity! You’re my only one. If I don’t look grotesque enough for a death scene, give me a nightcap. One with white flaps over the ears and a blue peak—laugh for me, Martin!”

“For God’s sake, Roberts—not now. I’m dying with you.”

There was a sprawling, unintelligible sound from the adviser’s lips, and then silence. Martin waited, amazed at the clarity of Roberts’ words, amazed at this strange and powerful mind, still formidable. Again the adviser looked at him.

“Die?” he asked peevishly. Then more firmly, “No you won’t, darling. Unhappy men don’t die.... Could you give me your strong, brown arm without shuddering? It would mean a great deal to me.... I can see your strong, brown arm where there’s heat and dark, flashing clouds. It’s peeling a tangerine—cutting a fruit for lips as soft as the flesh in my spine—oh, wicked!... A dark girl’s belly—the cup for your mouth. Oh, God, Martin! Your mouth—the stomach—the stench of normalcy. Before that happens, give me your arm—your clean, brown arm....”

Martin went swiftly to the bed, his eyes flickering as he sank to his knees. With his good left arm, and hiding the one stripped with bandages, he lifted the skull-like head until it was level with his own, which had begun to throb and ache.

“Here is my arm, Roberts. It is your protection and your faith,” he said.

Vapidly Roberts smiled at him.

“My faith—my own true faith.... No one believed, but I knew that you were mine!... Not even Deane believed.”

“Not even Deane,” repeated Martin, his wounded arm shaking against the silken counterpane.

Roberts’ eyes were becoming glazed.

“They’d all feel cheap, if they could see us now. Your arms around a corpse—a corpse that strikes to prove itself!” His thin hand pushed against Martin’s broken nose, falling again and again on Martin’s face which failed to recognize the pain. “You love me, though I’m defeated, my dear boy.” He raised his hand once more, but this time it dropped limply to the coverlet. Again the torn brain lost all contact, and he wandered, hesitantly.

“I come before the leisured policies of man. I have these tears, these positive notes of cruelty. Do you want to know?... Smash the hidden casket of Carol, and you’ll find the first. He fed himself with the intolerable dreams of your isolated sanctuary. He cried out of lips as stale as mine. Our Grail was the same, each futile in its own pride. Carol, the bucket. Filled with the residue of my hatred. Murder?—Death?—That’s nothing.... I went to him on a night gray as your eyes. He desired you. His flesh, quite frantically, cried out. Could I stand _that_? Could I stand the corned stupidity of his mind after _you_, most beautiful?... I went to him. Deadly and most honestly I threw the passionate, leaden stone into the vacuum of his heart.” Roberts spoke without lips—the ventriloquy of his despair so hurtful and adolescent, so pitifully gay.

“There is a tear for Rio. I’ve seen him follow you with his eyes—that rollicking, healthy sailor! That bold adventurer with the Mongoloid eyes. His bravado is covered with a native strength to hide his shame.” Roberts chuckled hoarsely. “My sinful innocent—never to have seen the colored lechery behind his muscles!... Rio—epitome of flesh—carnality in Mother Goose’s shoes—a bundle of white snow—quite terrified.... I’ve seen his bleak face, whipped by wind and wave, and so have you. But it takes death to bring me the knowledge of his simple, frightened passion. Oh!—he will never fail you, although he doesn’t know why.... Enough of him—enough of his cautious, boastful gallantry which makes one sick when one is well, and makes one laugh when one is sick.” Again the adviser hesitated. Slowly and painfully he turned that he might look at Martin.

“The next tear is for Deane—the one you think you own. You don’t possess her. You hold an empty vase—the artificial movements, smiles and anguish of the woman—all of them as brazen as I, when I first met you. I thought you were the spindle, I the thread. I thought that you were life—an intoxicating bubble in a heavily filled glass. Deeply and amusedly I drank, too late to feel the poison.”

“I’ve saved a tear for Drew. He thought that he was strong enough to escape. But it isn’t ‘escape’ to avoid the thing one loves the most. And so, _I_ know I had the strength _not_ to escape—and I am happier than he....

“The last tear is in a vial that I give you. A tear to use when abstract sorrow’s not enough—a potion you may pour on blistered flesh to lift the crust of tender skin that each swift-moving piston and fast-spinning wheel of man can drive and curve before your fond excitement.

“On myself, you didn’t use a tear. Your hands and mind tore my integument until the bone shows. Watch this!” Roberts, weakened, but fierce, reached for Martin’s hair. There was a brief silence as Martin, his head bowed over the bed, felt the momentary spasm of twisted fingers on his scalp. He did not speak or lift his eyes. As in a dream, he felt the fingers that had clutched his hair so frightfully, become more feeble. There was a gentle, automatic patting against his forehead and he heard deep, horrible sobs....

Roberts put his hands across his eyes.

“Martin, you are like my desperate, dead mother, she being the more selfish and adored though, of the two. It’s why I’ve loved you both, though you the less. She is the most important now. She is the greater.” The adviser raised his head in a final gesture of triumph. “Speak! Why don’t you speak, Martin? Your tongue’s been loose enough before. But now that each mad syllable could match the inarticulation in my own vast lungs, you sit dumbly—like a passive Christ. Have you reformed?—or, are you a dead man waiting for my company? For I’m a King. I have great powers. Shall I have you tortured in my dungeons, or thrown from my domain?—But no! I have no rack, no bed of agony to meet your own inventions. And my domain’s a joke. You own it all, from the boiling center of the earth unto the farthest, coldest star.”

Martin held him closer. He stared at Roberts until the sick man’s eyelids lifted, showing the brief, unfocused glance. There was recognition, but complete indifference. The vacant, polite smile was only a slight movement of the lips. Had Martin not been blinded by his own fine helplessness—his deepened affection, he would have seen another thing. He would have noticed the oddly rounded chin with its slackness—its hint of cogent lechery below the hungry bones that stretched the cheek of the adviser. He would have seen the newly tapered lines, out of silhouette, and the dense eyes, gaping; or the fibrous hair, the cocked head and gently fluttering tongue. Instead, the generalities—vague outlines were predominant. This swiftly perishing mask, to Martin’s eyes, could have been a sallow apple—a melon broken from the vine—or an older moon in autumn. There was no individuality or ego. There were damp breathings, sonorous emanations from the bed and the faint, orgastic music of white flowers in a tomb. Martin held his breath, held his own head lower and asked for some release.... When he looked up again this blended, spectral motion was gone forever. This mixture of sound and color, so horrible to him, now drifted from the gently closing door.

_CHAPTER XXIX_

Martin knew that it was time to work again. He knew that there must be some expression of his own to erase the unending march of Carol and Roberts in his thoughts. The evolution of his type design had stopped, each pattern seeming worse than the preceding one.

He was disturbed and hesitant upon regarding the sun. The clouds were no longer poems and the sunset meant only darkness. Within himself alone could he feel the yearnings and the beauty, the life chord pulling, insisting. He was tormented with dreams. Sounds grew from the ground. Proud women with dragons on their white shoulders walked in a death-like mist. Behind the retreating curve of mountain he could hear Deane laughing. Brought with the wind, the laughter became monotonous—something at which to strike.

In the early morning there was peace. In the early morning when even the birds were silent and the stars white, Martin would awaken and stand by the window. During these moments he was elated and alive. But when he went to sleep again, he fought among dreams that seemed both real and unreal.

One daybreak he awoke and threw his arm across his eyes. The night’s monsters were growing larger and more demanding. Perhaps it was impossible to kill them by bending them into symbols—by throwing them on paper. The units of the living and the dead must be presented to daytime and the mind’s curiosity. He worked soberly, breeding the straight line with the afflicted. He tried the medium of words, changing every character, crossing their susceptible hands. He danced the ugly noises with the sound of roses and blew a splintering rock into a wreath of silver hair. Bravely he went to the night’s agony and blinding sweat until he felt himself confused by so meaningless a gallantry that once again he turned to Deane.

They sat beside each other in her home that night. Deane saw that he had changed—she saw his quietude, the patient line between his eyes.

He kissed her lips.

“It’s restful here, darling,” he said. “A sweet, domestic anodyne—the sweetest I have ever known. The transition has been swift. I ran with wild men, smashed machines, climbed, waded and struggled toward an impossible ideal. I was hard when Carol was murdered; and though little chips were broken from me, the planets remained in their orbits—heat meant one thing, and cold another. This is still true in one sense; but my relationship to them has changed.... Roberts died in my arms. He thought I loved him. Diseased, humiliated by our artificial sexual codes, he made his own world. Quite happily he lived and dreamed in this chimerical condition until unfortunately, I entered his last kingdom. It had to be myself—the one man whose bitter defenses remained impregnable to Roberts’ bold demands. However, as the albinic, antagonistic germ bored into his brain, this mind became detached, severed; and I felt the pent-up hatred of his frustration. I didn’t mind that—but suddenly, consciousness was established again through some strange medium, and he told me it was my world—that he belonged to me. He told me of my cruelty. And that’s how he died.... I love you, Deane, but I’ll go back to the midstrip of the world where my toes bubble, oiling the hot deck of a ship, before I’ll hurt you. That’s my country—isolation in body, but not in mind. And when I touch land it will be a dark whore.” Martin’s face had not changed expression nor had his voice gathered volume. But his self-contempt and his visualizations against the soft, purple shadows of the quiet room and the chained refractions of the woman’s beautiful face beside him pressed Heaven and Hell together and there was no breath around them.

Deane held back her tears.

“You’re bleeding yourself, Martin,” she said, “and for no reason. I’m in love with you, too, and I love your fantasies. But please don’t talk of things which are absurd—of the South Seas—of dirty ships and dirtier islands. Your sound effects about black women are not dramatic, darling—they’re just a little irrational. Oh, no!—Martin, I’m not trusting your libido or your discrimination. To be candid, it isn’t a question of trust. You must have your stage, your setting and your actors. I don’t mind that—and I’ll be part of the whole scheme although I don’t understand it. I’ve run wild, too, though in a different way. But I found out how meaningless it was, how much it hurt me without helping anyone else and I’ve stopped, just as you’ll do. There will always be violence in your dreams, and that will be some outlet. And there are gymnasiums and little fishing boats where you can break your neck in a more restrained fashion.” Deane closed her hands on his, and spoke with a desperate gravity. “And you can always swear loudly to me about the world’s tyranny—perhaps I’ll swear a little, also. But you can’t go back to bad ships and worse men, and be part of an organized brutality. I want you here with me. I want you to work on your beautiful ideas and build a solid foundation for both of us. You look different, Martin. You look more mature. I think you’re tired of that other world. Dearest,” she went on, touching her lips to his cheek, “we can’t dismiss our life together even though it has been brief.” She turned to Martin with a sudden passionate insistence. “Let’s go on from this point together, darling. Let’s dismiss philosophy, ideals that can be forgotten in a night, other people’s helplessness and drama.” She held Martin more tightly. “We must stop thinking about these terrible people,” she repeated. “What do we care about them?” Deane’s lips trembled. “Carnality!” she exclaimed. “The vile, damnable beasts! Pouncing from house to house and bedroom to bedroom like a disjointed Roman carnival. Give them any veil of understanding you possess and they still exist in the flatlands—the tilted, undernoted lowlands where not even slime comes to birth! A driveling code of introduction from one land to the other and a rotten horde of Young America comes alive! What have we to do with that?” Deane was weeping; and as though symbolical of her blazing words, her hair had spread over her shoulders—had spread, thought Martin as he touched it, “like the flame of a torch in the dark waters of a lost lagoon.”

“‘What have we to do with that?’” he repeated. “Nothing, Deane. Nothing can touch us now. But first I have to go from you. I don’t know for how long, or how far. It’s part of the scheme. And remember, I didn’t build it; but I know the undertows, the ebb tides and the breakers. There is a distant sun on our horizon, and I won’t go into happiness or unhappiness until it’s reached. Don’t you think I’ll miss those lights?” He pointed out of the window. “But I’ll have stars around that will bring this room to me. I’m a dreamer, and they have luck. So forget the dull months or the aching ones. Give my picture a bath once a day until it’s white; and I’ll stay that way.” Martin’s voice broke and he stood up. “I can’t say ‘Good-bye, Mrs. Smith—’ and bow and strain until my sharp, black coat sticks out, nor turn and smile ‘It’s been a pleasant afternoon—I’ll call you soon.’”[5] His voice became harsh. “These fools’ farewells and wet good-byes are as thick and viscous as a glue pot, Deane. Sentiment rises in me easily and I’m ashamed that my hand seems blurred against the dress that covers your knee. That’s why I curse such weakness and yearn to leave my beloved with my hat over my nose, yelling blasphemously at a wall-eyed, pot-bellied moon.”

“You sound like a drunken Irish tenor,” exclaimed Deane, covering her celibate pain at once with the same quick irony.

“By God, I _am_ drunk!” cried Martin. “Drunk on your hair and the moisture of your lips and the way you look at me. Drunk with hatred because I won’t see them or taste them again until the same dark wind that takes me away brings me back.”

A wraith-like smile hovered on Deane’s lips.

“The wind that brings you home, Martin, won’t be dark. It will be light and gentle and perhaps will carry a few white clouds on its back.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I want it dark and heavy and raging. I want it so fierce it will bring me home much faster.”

“Let me have it my way, Martin,” she urged softly. “I want it gentle so that no part of you will be hurt. I’ve never been patient about most things; but I will be—about this.” Deane spoke so tenderly that the cool night wind stopped blowing, and a moment of such stillness ensued that all outside was hidden—all sound, all waves of sound and color—everything was hidden.