Bright Flows the River

  “Coming back to what we were talking about,” said Tom, “there is a time and a place for violence. Justified violence against evil. Violence and bravery often go together, like Castor and Pollux. You’ve got to be brave in every aspect of your life, or the world will beat you and it’s all you deserve.”

  He heard a sound and listened. “I think that’s young Jennie in the pen, groaning about something. Let’s go see.”

  They finished their wine and then went to the pigpen, which had an aroma even Tom could not say was pleasant. But he had pointed out to Guy many times that swine were among the cleanest of animals and that they wallowed in the mud to rid themselves of tormenting insects. There were two pens, one for mothers and their endearing young piglets, and one for the “matrons” and the boar, who had an evil look. Jennie had six little piglets, who now stood about her anxiously as she lay on her side and groaned. She stared up at Tom with a piteous look, which was rare for her, for she was a young sow who was usually willing to challenge anyone. Tom leaned on the fence. “What’s the matter, Jennie?” he asked.

  Guy looked over the fence also. “She looks fat and sleek,” he said. He looked closer. “But her belly’s swole up. If she was human you’d give her a dose of castor oil.” At this moment the poof young sow audibly, very audibly, farted.

  “Now, why didn’t I think of that?” asked Tom, scratching his beard. “Thinking of being a vet, Jerry?”

  “No. A doctor.”

  “When did you get that idea?”

  “Long time ago, when I was young,” said Guy

  Tom laughed. He patted his son on his shoulder. “Good, a thing as anything. If you do get around to it, remember it’s just as important to find out what castor oil the soul needs as well as the body. Well, I’ll get the pig laxative for Jennie.”

  Later they carried out the swill from the kitchen to the trough and Tom mixed it with various other edibles. The late afternoon was increasingly still and glowing. They could hear the cow bell at a distance and to Guy it had an infinitely melancholy sound as well as musical. The mule had tired of his games with the bull and was placidly eating grass nearby the herd while the bull patrolled his womenfolk, threatening the whole world occasionally with a savage bellow. The chickens were fed. Tom scattered the corn and Guy helped him. Tom was quite silent and he showed a rare gravity, as if thinking. They returned to the stoop.

  “Think I’ve got something to read to you, about that doctor business,” he said. He went into the house and returned with a shabby book, its spine held together with tape. He squatted on a step and turned the pages, humming to himself.

  “These are all quotations, Jerry, and they’re like old silver coins worn thin, but still valuable, as they pass through men’s hands and minds. Here’s Voltaire: ‘Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.’” He chuckled. “Here’s one from old Ben Franklin: ‘God heals and the doctor takes the fee. He’s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of most medicines.’ And from that cynical Frenchman, ‘The best doctor is the one you run for and can’t find.’

  “But here’s something else, better than it all: Juvenal—‘A sound mind in a sound body is a thing to be prayed for.’ But the Greeks said it first; the Romans could just repeat, they being worthy men who found action easier than thinking. Now. We got these psychiatrists these days—we used to call them alienists—preaching the new gospel about the human body and the human soul. It all comes from that old Austrian, Freud, who disliked his father and was in love with his mother. He believes, to put it somewhat simply, that copulation is all. If your soul is sick, you are either fantasizing about copulation, or you want to sleep with your mother, or perhaps your sister, or even perhaps your brother or other male friend. He didn’t believe in the dark night of the soul. It was all a matter of genitals. Now, I’ve got nothing against genitals. Most wonderful things God ever created, as you’ve seen right here, son, and as you’ll know when you’re older and have had experience with life. For the genitals are glorious life itself, especially the male genitals, and never be ashamed of what you’ve got. Be proud. Well. I’ve been wandering away from the subject of medicine.

  “It’s an art, they say. And it is. But an artist knows when to refrain and listen to the soul. That’s being a good physician, too. Know what I mean?”

  Guy had listened with fascination. He nodded, and again his young face was brilliant with love for his father. Such a peace came to him then, and he leaned his head against Tom’s knee, and Tom stroked his hair. Guy had never seen his father sad. When he did look up, Tom was smiling.

  “I preach too much,” he said. “But there’s so much I want to tell you, Jerry, and life isn’t long enough for that. Knowledge is like a river, too full and wide and vast for a man to drink in a thousand thousand lifetimes. So, we have the well of words, filtered through the earth of tongues, from the river, and we can fill our cups and be satisfied—for a time.” He looked at the mountains, now floating in a silvery mist like moving gauze. “Yes, there’s a limitation to words and to speech, but there’s no limitation to what a man thinks. There’s a whole universe there to be explored, and each man has his own universe, full of fiery planets and dead suns.”

  They ate a somewhat greasy but filling supper, then went to milk the cows. Tom carried the milk pails into the house but Guy remained, waiting for his father to return. The sky at the zenith was palpitating with a mauve light, but over the mountains stood a lake of emerald green and the shadow on the earth was the color of lavender. The silence was more intense.

  Tom looked at the west. The evening star was rising, purely grave, immaculate as light, gaining luster moment by moment. The man and boy stood side by side, content, watching. Not even a leaf rustled, but a night bird called.

  Then Guy thought of his mother. She would say, of this “idleness” of father and son, “Wasting time, fooling away time, when there’s work to be done!”

  A dark uneasiness came to Guy. Then Tom began to sing in a clear and vibrant tenor, from Tannhäuser, “O Star of Eve!”

  Guy listened, as the ecstatic but mournful song lifted to the sky in what the child thought of as moving reverence, and his eyes filled with painful water and yet a kind of rapture was in his heart.

  “Get to work!” he heard his mother say.

  “O Star of Eve!” sang Tom, and Guy wanted to cry and did not know the reason. There was only that worshipful voice celebrating God and His glory, and though Guy had never heard the thunderous climax of the song, he heard it in his soul.

  My God, thought James, and he was much stirred. Is that actually a tear that’s running down Jerry’s cheek? Or is he asleep, and crying? And what is he crying about? The tear was gone, but it was as if lead had settled on James’s chest; he had been moved as rarely as he had been moved before. Another man’s anguish was both a noble and a sacred thing, not to be intruded upon. Not even comfort could be offered, for what, damn it all, was human comforting?

  James did not see Emil Grassner that night, for Emil had returned to Philadelphia for the weekend to be with his family. James went out into the snowy night and his thoughts were inchoate and miserable, but they had nothing to tell him except pain. There was something far back in his own mind, he knew now, that he did not want to face, though what it was he did not know. He could only sense regret and sorrow and self-reproach—but about what, he could not fathom.

  He could only walk restlessly through the trembling haze of falling snow, feeling frost bite at his nose and chin but not caring. It was a long while before he returned to his hotel, and he was very tired. I am getting old, he thought, hoping for his own comforting, but he knew it was something else.

  He called Emma and she said with joy, “Damn it, James, it’s five o’clock in the morning here in London. Where have you been? Carousing?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “It would have been better for me i
f I had.”

  “How do you mean?” she demanded, and her robust voice was now anxious.

  “The dark night of the soul’s on me, Emma,” and he laughed weakly.

  There was a little silence. Then she said, “Yes. Well Dear Jimmy, that’s the Jew in you. You can’t even be merry with the heritage from your mother without your father putting in his ponderous thoughts.”

  “My father was never ponderous,” said James, and then he asked himself: Wasn’t he?

  He suddenly remembered one winter evening early in 1939 when his parents had stood hand in hand, forgetting him, on the street, looking up at one clear and icy moon.

  Without any perceptible cause his father had said, with passionate emotion, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One!”

  And his mother, in her gentle and shaking voice, said, in tender counterpoint, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She blessed herself and began to weep.

  Yes, it was the early winter of 1939, and there was terror in the air.

  James said to his beloved mistress, across three thousand miles of black and stormy water, “There’s terror in the air, Emma.”

  “Yes, love, I know, I know,” she said.

  7

  That night James Meyer dreamt of his parents. It was a strange and haunted dream. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces not quite meeting, other pieces out of place and at an angle. It was a chill late-summer day; the dream was pervaded by the odor of coal gas; the roofs and chimney pots outside were steaming with the moisture of a recent rain. They were in the bedroom, the parents’ bedroom, and James stood on the threshold, watching His mother had something on the bed, and she was anxiously doing something to it. Luggage? Was she packing a small case?

  His father stood at a window, staring out, his big hands in the pockets of his hairy tweed jacket. He was saying, “Love, I have to go, you know. I have to.” His mother turned to him quickly and said, “Yes, I know you do. But that doesn’t keep me from being terrified for you, my darling.” His father turned from the window and literally ran to her, hugging her in his mighty arms and crying, “O God!” he said. “O God.”

  The wavering and disjointed pieces fell apart. James looked at them in horror. But out of a dimming of light his father said to him, “Jimmy, it’s up to you, a long, long time from now.” His voice was hollow and echoing, as if from a deep well into which he had fallen.

  James woke up, trembling even in the cold bedroom. Was the dream a memory, or had it happened? He could not remember. He never saw his father again. Where had he died? In some concentration camp in Germany? How had he died? Who had killed him? Had he suffered? Had he been shot or had he perished in some gas chamber?

  If it had not been a dream, then it was a memory? What had his father meant when he had said to a youth barely sixteen, “It’s up to you, a long, long time from now.” The time had been late August, a dull rainy August, of 1939. He could remember that. Or was that just part of the dream?

  What have I been shutting out all these years? he asked himself.

  He thought: I should never have come here. Something’s happened to me here, something’s upsetting me. My lovely life. He shivered in the cold of the room. He had all that a man could desire, the love of a most unusual and fascinating woman, money, fame, respect, health, success, comfort in spite of the horrific taxes, and in general, peace of mind and a contented cynicism. He had once heard, “Life is a tragedy to the man who feels, a comedy to the man who thinks.” He had been a thinking man. Coming down to it, he thought, I haven’t felt much lately.

  Once his mother had said, “This world will either break your heart or turn it to stone.” It had broken his mother’s heart. Was it turning his own to stone? A petrified man—perhaps I am a petrified man, he thought—does not feel. He may think, out of his stony isolation, but he does not feel. Have I lost the art of feeling?

  Then he said to himself, out loud now, “Why, I’m running away from something, just as Jerry is running, God help us both!” But what it was that he was running from he did not know, just as he did not know from what Guy Jerald was running. A dim ripple ran across his mind, exciting a spiritual pain, but from what thrown rock had the ripple come?

  For the first time in many years he could not eat breakfast. He drank only a cup of coffee. Emil had left his car, and his chauffeur, for his personal use, for which James was grateful. During the night there had come a warmish rain, and the blameless snow was pitted with dark melting spots and there was a stringent scent in the air. The sky tumbled with gray clouds and out of it came a bitter wind. He was taken to Mountain Valleys. Tonight he would meet the children of his friend. Lucy had invited him to dinner in that ghostly Georgian house where no one lived.

  James felt very disheartened. True, in some way he had moved Guy, but how and with what words was still hidden from him.

  The nurse told him, “We’ve had a very bad night. I hear he didn’t sleep at all.” The thought came to James like a shock: It’s about time he stopped sleeping! And a second thought: And perhaps it’s time for me, too!

  Guy was sitting in the wing chair. He was neatly trimmed and shaved, and he wore a white shirt, a blue tie, and a gray flannel suit. “We took a nice little walk on the open terrace today!” said the nurse, very brightly. “Then we looked at television for a while, didn’t we, Mr. Jerald?”

  Guy did not answer. Then James noted, with dread, that Guy’s right hand showed the mark of teeth. The nurse saw James’s expression and sighed, and shook her head. She left the room. James sat down near the throbbing artificial fire from which came a diffused faint heat. He felt weary to the heart, and could not remember that he had ever felt this way before. He said, “You’re getting to me, Jerry, blast it!” His voice was accusing, almost despairing. It’s that dream I had, he thought. He looked at the bitten hand of his friend.

  He spoke aloud again, hardly knowing what he was saying. “I had a dream last night, a terrible dream. About my father. Or was it a memory? I never saw him again. He—he was smuggled, in some way, into Germany; I never knew how. It was just before the war. He went to rescue some people; he had been doing that for a considerable time. But that was the last time. He was murdered.”

  No movement, no sound, from the stricken image in the chair.

  “My father was a great man, a noble man, though he never did learn to speak English without an accent. He was a boisterous and laughing man, with thick red cheeks and bright blue eyes, like blue crystal, and curling red hair, as mine used to be. He was a powerful man, a wise one. You don’t see his like anymore. He had the heart of a lion, the mind of a philosopher, the soul of a hero—and a blasphemous tongue. He made a lot of money, and often wondered how he did it. Money was nothing to him, though he regarded it as a reward, not as something to hide behind because he was afraid of life—”

  Guy stirred. He lifted his head, stared intently into space as if listening, not to James, but to someone else. For an instant his face was lighted with anguish. Then the light died and his face dulled and his eyes closed.

  “You’ve got to make money in this world,” Mary Jerald was saying to her sixteen-year-old son. “People hate you if you don’t have money. Not that I blame them, though the Good Book says the lust for money is the root of all evil. But I did hear, once, in church, that if you was good the Lord rewarded you, and you never starved. If you did your duty and worked and worked and worked honestly and hard—you got rewarded. God takes care of His own. Duty, work, work at anything, and you won’t want, Guy. Besides, people hate you and despise you if you don’t have money. That don’t mean a fortune, I don’t think. But making money as fast as you can. Some folks think money is evil. It isn’t. It’s a blessing from God, if you earn it and use it wisely. Look at your father. Penniless. Hardly ever had two dollars to rub together. He said he wasn’t afraid of not having money. But I tell you, Guy, not having money is a terrible thing. It shows you aren?
??t in the Lord’s favor, and you know what He said about the grasshopper.”

  She added, with bitterness, “Your pa’s a grasshopper, and no wonder folks laugh at him and hate him. You’ve got to have money, Guy, you just got to have it, or the world’ll eat you alive. I know.”

  For the first time the listening youth, who had been faintly smiling, was afraid. He looked at his own neat but shabby clothes. He looked about his mother’s house.

  It was a tall thin house wedged closely between its neighbors; there were hardly three feet on each side. It was built of old wood, gray and somber, and was three stories tall, with little arched windows and a splintery porch; it had a lawn about twelve feet by ten, which was ruthlessly cut, with a few spindly bushes near the basement walls. Located in a very poor neighborhood, it was clean and tidy, if dreary, and was in a section known as Old Germantown, for here lived indigent and elderly Teutons who worked endlessly in order to live; their wages were very meager and hardly kept them alive, and there was not a man on the street who was less than sixty years old. But they worked. Depression or not, these old people could always find “something to do,” for they had pride. Though chronically hungry, they had not gone on “relief” in the worst of days. For weeks at a time they had lived on scrapple and a tiny portion of pork, with no bread or fruit or vegetables. Yet they were hardy and proud and there was a nobility in their desperate poverty. Their clothes were neatly patched, and they went to church of a Sunday and asked the pity of none, and would have refused any offered help with outrage.

  Abandoned by children who were often as desperate as themselves, they talked together sparingly in their guttural “low Dutch,” and kept their windows shining, their porches swept, their lawns cut, their tiny gardens in perfect order. Mary Jerald, at forty-seven, was the youngest among them, and they highly approved of her diligence, her cleanliness, her pride, and her unremitting work. Of German stock herself, she often exchanged a curt nod with her neighbors and a few brief words. Sometimes, when she could afford it, she would take a loaf of bread she had just baked and would receive, with thanks, whatever little they gave her in return. They all had one thing in common: They distrusted and feared President Roosevelt, for he was a Democrat and they were all Republicans, and he was promising to relieve the nation of its awful plight. “Plight?” they would say among themselves with suspicion. “We’ve got roofs over our head, haven’t we, thanks to the Gross Gott, and something on bur tables.” But their greatest fear was of “that Hitler, with his threats of war.” They had fled, as little children, with their parents, from the rule of Bismarck, and they remembered their elders’ tales of Socialism. Most were Catholic, but they were very tolerant of Mary, with her evangelism, because she was so “young,” as they said, even when she tried to “convert” them.