There Was a Time

  He did not go back to the restaurant for nearly a week. Then, compelled by something he could not explain, he returned and looked for old Matthew. But he was not there. He was not there the next night, nor the next, nor even the following week. Then he asked the fat and dirty cook for the old man.

  The cook stared at him blankly for a few minutes. Then he said: “You mean the old feller used to sit at that table with you? Oh, he bumped hisself off one night. ’Bout a week ago.” He scowled, “Damned old fool! I warned him; I own this dump. He used to leave that gas-heater on all day sometimes, when he went out. It didn’t have no pipe, and it was dangerous, I told him. I said: ‘Looky here, Matt, gas costs money. Turn it off when you go out. And turn it off at night. If you don’t, you’re gonna wake up dead some fine mornin’, and it ain’t fair to me.’”

  Frank felt sick. He said: “And he didn’t turn it off—one night, when he went to bed?”

  The cook scowled again and nodded. “He was just an old coot. Never could remember nothin’.” He scratched his rim of hair under his cook’s hat. “Well, maybe he didn’t bump hisself off, after all. Just forgot to turn off the heater when he went to bed. Anyway, he was dead one mornin’. Accident, the police said. I let it ride that way.”

  But Frank, sitting down at the empty table, knew suddenly and clearly that it had not been an accident. He forgot where he was. He was Matthew again, and he knew everything.

  Frank went back to his own miserable room, and he sat down and wrote the story of Matthew Sanders. He wrote it all in one night. He sent it to a magazine. It came back to him promptly, with a personal letter from the editor: “Wonderfully and powerfully and compassionately told. But much too depressing, in these days, when everyone needs encouragement and hope for the future. Please send us another story, something bright and gay, full of young love, perhaps—something to take the reader’s mind away from the present. Stories of young love are always wanted.”

  CHAPTER 60

  “Young love!” exclaimed Frank bitterly. “Good God! Does the public want nothing but the prurient problems of adolescents?”

  Mr. Endicott Preston read the letter from the fiction editor of one of the big national magazines. He pursed his lips in his curiously sad and cynical smile. “This,” he said, “is what is technically called ‘flight from reality.’” He regarded Frank with long thoughtfulness, wrinkled his eyebrows into little tufts. He saw Frank’s thin face and the sunken hollows under the cheekbones which were now flooded with wrathful crimson. He scratched his chin with a corner of the editor’s letter, then, looking off into space, he continued softly, meditatively:

  “There is something which you must settle in you own mind, Frank, and several opinions of which you must disabuse yourself. Let us first consider literature. What is literature, in the truest meaning of the word? I think it is the faithful reflection of the texture of reality, the fullness and nature of being, written with passion, authenticity and vividness, infused with power and individual truth. By indivdual truth, I mean the honest and vehement conviction of the writer, which doesn’t necessarily mean the truth as others see it. But it does mean the truth of the writer, his lack of hypocrisy and time-serving, his fearlessness and strength. Literature, then, is honest and heroic writing. It can be rough-hewn and rugged, even choppy and crude, in the manner of a great statue whose outline and grandeur must be indicated against a wide sky, without overdue attention to fine detail. Or it can be a miniature painted on gold, an ivory figurine. But whether enormous in concept or delicate and minute in execution, it must have integrity, honor, honesty. That is literature.”

  Frank listened, his impatience and anger struggling with his appreciation of his teacher. Mr. Preston slowly reread the letter. “Yes. Well. There is another kind of writing, which is not so apt to irritate the critics. The critics, I have discovered, are rather annoyed and disconcerted by heroic and ruthless writing, by reality. Sometimes they call it ‘turgid,’ or ‘melodramatic’ or ‘flamboyant,’ or even ‘unreal.’ And that is a very curious thing, indeed. Reality is often denounced as unreality, and truth as ‘tripe.’ I read the book reviews, you see. Pardon me, if I seem to wander—I am thinking out loud. Just recently I was induced to read a novel by a dainty woman writer. An eminent critic became very enthusiastic about it. He called it ‘finely etched, sensitive, subtle, an artistic triumph, full of grace and an exquisite understanding of humanity.’ I ought to have known better, but I spent two dollars and seventy-five cents on that novel. Then I wanted to hang the critic for making me waste the money. I thought I was getting literature; I got drivel. It lacked grandeur and terror and compassion and ugliness, all the things of which reality is composed. Her characters were all very well-bred; her writing was so ‘sensitive’ that I was never sure what her tale was about. It was all beyond me. She knew no more of humanity than a kindergarten pupil. Lovely illusions about the world are all very well for dreaming children. They are grotesque and hideous in adults; they are revolting.”

  “Yes. But what has all this to do with me?” demanded Frank, with impatience. He wished Mr. Preston would stop his maunderings and join him in heated rage against the editor.

  Mr. Preston continued to stare into space. “Sometimes writers of literature are rewarded with public popularity and become rich. More often they are not, though I was never one to believe that the ‘true’ artist invariably starves in a garret. Incidentally, a writer is worthy of his hire, and sometimes the public knows it and buys his books. But it is a chance the true author takes. There is a surer way to money.” Mr. Preston paused. “You can write what the public wants, or what the editors think the public wants. Sometimes they are the same thing. Writers for popular magazines make quite a lot of money. If money is what you want.” He waited.

  Frank set his mouth grimly. “It is what I want, as you know.”

  Mr. Preston sat down in his chair as if very weary. He rubbed his forehead and stifled a yawn. “I may not be a good judge, but I think your style is too strong, too intrinsically and powerfully crude, too passionate, for magazine acceptance. But—you can imitate. Buy or borrow the three most popular magazines. Read them carefully. The people must like them, for they have large circulations. Of course, for you to write such things would be dishonest.”

  “I want money,” said Frank savagely. He looked at Mr. Preston with furiously sparkling eyes. “I’ve told you! Writing is my only hope of escape from what I hate! I’ll write what can be published. I’ve got to have money! I—I’ll die unless I have it.”

  Mr. Preston did not look at him. He asked, in an absent voice: “Why? What do you want with money?”

  Frank stood before his teacher, and stared blindly at the dark, dusty windows which reflected the glaring electric light in the classroom. He spoke, and his voice was low and pent, yet curiously wild: “I’ve got to get away from poverty, from the smell of it, from everything it means. I—I’ve got to have some dignity and freedom in my life. I want to be—safe.”

  “Safe,” whispered Mr. Preston, dropping his hands to his knees and gazing at Frank intently.

  “I want everything money can give me: a fine house, the company of gentle-folk, books, music, travel, peace of mind, beautiful things—Oh, hell! You know what money can bring a man! Escape—”

  “Escape,” repeated Mr. Preston reflectively. “I was afraid of that. Escape from yourself: that is what you mean, I think, though you don’t know it now.”

  He stood up, drew out his old silver watch, glanced at it. “I really must go home, Frank. We’ve been here over an hour since the class was dismissed.” His lined face was masklike, but pity and weariness were heavy in his eyes. “I had hoped I was mistaken in you. But I can see now how terribly frightened you are. You are frightened, horribly frightened, aren’t you?”

  Frank’s teeth were clenched in humiliation. “No. Of course not.” Ugly, disgusting, repulsive word: fear! “I’m not afraid of anything. I hate fear.’”

  When Mr. Preston
did not speak, Frank went on in a flood of raging words: “My parents were always afraid! They were loathsome with fear. I detested them for it. They wanted money because they were afraid of life, afraid of everything, afraid of breathing, afraid of every man and woman they saw. I never was. I—I just hate—”

  “The same thing,” said Mr. Preston gently.

  “No! It isn’t.” Frank was shaking with his mortification. “My parents wanted money because they were afraid of living. I’m not afraid to live. Oh, God damn it! I can’t make you understand.”

  Mr. Preston shook his head. “Some day, I hope, you will realize that at this time you were very like your parents. Just now you are their son.”

  The idea was so repellent, so humiliating, to Frank, that he stared at Mr. Preston with something perilously close to hatred. His voice was muffled and stammering when he exclaimed: “If I were so God-damned craven as you seem to think me, I’d be frightened because I have no job. I’d be afraid of—of—tomorrow. I’m not! I don’t care that I’m half-starved, and that I live in a stinking hole over a butcher shop. I don’t even feel or see these things. I’m shut away from them. I—I’ll go out tomorrow and try to sell these bitchy stockings, and I’ll sell some. Enough to buy me a few cheap meals, and a little to put away for my rent. Look at my clothes. I’m almost in rags. My parents would have died of terror if they’d ever been in my position. But I’m not afraid. I’m shut away—”

  “Yes, said Mr. Preston, “I’m awfully afraid that you are.”

  Frank opened his pale mouth to speak again, then went abruptly from the room.

  The damned, old, sentimental ass! thought Frank, seething. The pedantic scorner of money! He thinks it fine and noble to starve for “art.” Art!

  He went, the next afternoon, to the old brown public library on Washington Street. Here he had come as a child, dreaming, washed in radiance, carrying his armload of books. Flammarion, Hugo, Haggard, Dickens, Dumas, Thackeray—they had lain in his young arms like a heavy but lovely casket filled with treasure. He had been “shut away” then, too, but he had been shut away in glory, in a resounding and clamorous reality. He had walked through these quiet old rooms, and he had felt exultation and joy. Now he saw only that, though clean and hung with etchings, the walls were shabby; he saw the ancient iron elevator, and despised it. He saw the hordes of men, young and old, who sat about the long tables, and knew that most of them came here for a moment’s respite from the weary streets, from the flaying cold, and had not come to read. He saw their hands, slack on the table, or clenched. They stared at the books before them, unseeing, involved in their own terrible thoughts. He turned his head away from them, and climbed up the worn stone steps to the periodicals floor. He had nothing in common with those who were defeated by life. He hated them. The papers termed them “victims of the depression.” But he called them victims of their own inadequacy.

  He thought he had closed his consciousness against the vision of them. But like gray emanations, like gray wisps of mist, they followed him up the stairs, and he felt their faint slow breath on his back. He hurried a little, planting his feet firmly and loudly on the stone. He thought it was disgust that tightened his throat, made his heart beat so heavily and with such dull pain.

  He found the magazines for which he was looking. He sat down and read the gleaming, burnished pages, stared closely at the brilliant colored pictures which illustrated the vapid stories. Young love, triumphant. Young love, full of silly vicissitudes. Young love, in penthouses and night clubs. Young love, defying roaring parents. Young love, at college, in offices, in stately homes. Young love, challenging other young love. A stupid story, here and there, of a “sensitive” child, or of a more-than-human dog, horse, cat, bird. But mostly young love, married, about to be married, discreetly fornicating, indiscreetly “loving”—the saga of lollypops filled the pages, which were interspersed with much more vital and attractive advertisements.

  What of the fury which was gathering in Italy and Germany? What of the mountebank Mussolini or the murderer Hitler? An article here and there, hastily short, tucked among the pages of the everlasting, the ubiquitous and saccharine, the omnipotent Young Love.

  What of the Depression, of the millions of ruined lives, of the despair of a nation, of the terror, the fury, the paralysis of a whole people? Here and there, accompanied by a small photograph of the President, of Mr. Ickes, Mr. Hopkins or Mr. Wallace, an article by an “authority.” But always, and forever—God damn it to hell!—Young Love.

  Gritting his teeth against his real nausea, Frank read the tales. And with his rage grew his amazement, his sheer, honest wonder, his awe at this colossal and shameful folly, this shameless seduction of human minds, this pandering to the gross and the stupid and the tawdry. What was love, as depicted in these pages? It was a bauble sold in a ten-cent store, a plated trinket on a moron’s arm, a fireside diversion, a cheap tinkle of bells, a pre-adolescent’s daydreaming, a pre-puberty excitation! What was the matter with a nation’s soul, which, when confronted by the mounting storm of death and horror rising over the horizon, could turn from the lightnings and the shock of distant thunder to a nursery bowl of sweetened porridge?

  “Flight from reality,” Mr. Preston had called this drug addict’s dream of life, this surfeit of “love.” Frank pushed the magazines from him. Well, this is what they wanted; this is what they paid for.

  He went back to his room, dropping his sample case of stockings on the bare and gritty floor. The walls of the room had originally been papered in a bright orange background, with stripes of brilliant blue. This had now faded to a blurred and bilious tinge, stained, torn and discolored. The one small window, uncurtained, looked out on the narrow and busy traffic of Grant Street, where trolleys clanged vociferously night and day. Frank had a fine view of several cluttered fruit shops and a tailor shop across the street, but he was no longer aware of such views. Just as he hardly saw that his narrow, gritty room was furnished with an iron bedstead, whose filigree work at the head had been painted white but was now a study in peeling gray and black, a square and battered oak table near the window on which stood his creaking old typewriter, a dictionary and a pile of manuscript paper, a straight-back kitchen chair at the table, and a tottering “wardrobe” in a far corner. For this room, steaming in the summer, icy cold in winter, he paid three dollars a week. But he never really saw it.

  As he sat at the typewriter he did not remove his winter coat. He blew on his chilled and reddened hands, flexed them, tried them experimentally on the keys. He thrust a clean sheet of paper into the machine. He bit his lip in concentration and frowned at the paper. He would give “them” what they wanted. He would give “them” the corruption they demanded, the poisoned pap which they ate so eagerly in their “flight from reality.” Thinking fiercely, he got up, lifted a quilt from his bed, wrapped it about his feet, and sat down again. What should he write? Ah, he had it! Young love, triumphant in the depression. The title? He had it also: “We Were Not Afraid.” He wrote the title rapidly, with a sound like a machine gun. Then he paused. Something roiled up in him, black and nauseating, like the contents of a spewing sewer. For the sake of his stomach, he could not write this stuff. Then he clenched his teeth, bent over the typewriter. He must write it, even if he vomited. He waited again. Now he had his characters, a noble and selfless girl thrown out of her job—secretary, store-buyer, which? Secretary, of course. Her boss had just failed, a handsome youngish man, an architect with silvered temples. Both were penniless but courageous, with a penchant for fine humorous laughter and a way of tossing their heads valiantly, and finding everything great fun.

  The typewriter rattled on vehemently while Frank bent over it, his long thin hands rising and falling furiously, his face tight and hard and full of disgust. Why, this was easy! It required no thought at all. The room began to darken, and he stood up and pulled the chain of the naked bulb over his head. Snow began to drift by the window; the panes rattled as if struck by shot. The
typewriter rocked, rang its bell; the paper went in and out. The snow became a shivering white curtain at the window, and the room became a narrow, freezing box. The street lamps burst into the quaking darkness, and trolleys rolled and grunted down the street.

  At nine o’clock the story was complete. Frank went through it quickly, making corrections with his pen. He slipped it into an envelope, addressed it to one of the major glossy magazines. He stood up then. His knees were trembling with exhaustion, and his head ached poundingly, his eyes smarted. He went out into the March storm, bought stamps, and dropped the manuscript into a letter box. The cost of the stamps had eaten into his rigorously guarded food fund, so he went into a corner “box-car” where, for twenty-five cents, he ate a hamburger and a doughnut, and drank a cup of coffee.

  His mind was drained, gray, blotched like a torn piece of blotting-paper. He could not think. He felt dirty, and vaguely thought of a bath. But he was so exhausted that he went to bed, where at least, he could be warm.

  But now the thoughts came, heavy, crowding, sickened thoughts. Behind his closed eyelids marched the faceless years of his lost youth, the years of his blankness. He could see them, shadows of shadows, falling into the abyss of time. He saw himself watching them, numb and impotent and voiceless, and he felt their ghostly substance drifting across his face before they vanished.

  He thought of his mother, alone now in Manchester, for his grandmother had died two years ago, leaving her rooming house to her daughter-in-law. Frank was not certain how his mother was faring; her infrequent letters were full of complaints. But she must be earning a living, since she had not asked for money. He knew, cynically, that her capital was intact. She was glad she was in England, but England had “changed.” It was not the firelit, rosy England of her remembrance. Maybelle complained of this petulantly, as if it were a personal affront.