Bright Flows the River

  So James told him, his voice tightly held and monotonous. He looked into his glass, as he spoke. Between sentences he sipped the whiskey. The storm screamed outside and seemed a counterpoint to the desperate narrative. Emil listened, asking no questions, not speaking. When James had finished, Emil still remained silent, and looked only at his friend. There was really nothing to say. Words of comfort would only enlarge this pain, or only tend to make it trivial, only mock it. But there was enormous comfort, to James, in Emil’s silence, the acceptance of horror, this understanding. Emil lit his pipe. He refilled James’s glass. He prepared a drink for himself. Then he went to the window and looked out at the storm for a long time.

  “Hell,” he said at last, and some of the renewed anguish subsided in the stricken man. “God damn,” said Emil.

  “Yes,” said James.

  They went down to meet Emma in the warm well-lighted lobby. The old chandeliers glittered and swung a little. Emma was waiting for them, in a gown James particularly admired. It was a crimson velvet, very revealing of her fine figure, and there were rubies at her throat and at her ears. Emil’s first thought was: What a splendid woman. And a noble one. She was gracious and charming to Emil, but she knew James had already told him. She said, “I want to thank you for being so kind to this old dog of mine. He wrote me about you, Dr. Grassner.”

  “Emil,” said Emil.

  “Yes. Well. Emil.” She smiled at him and he saw all her charm.

  He said, “The food here isn’t what you’re accustomed to, my lady.”

  “Good. I often cook for Jimmy, when I can chase Simon, my chef, out of the kitchen, which is a hard thing to do. We both have plebeian appetites. I made kidney-and-steak pie for this rascal, rarebit, kippered herrings, and toad-in-the-hole. It reminds him of Eton.” Emil was fascinated by her rich laughing voice. “He’s very sentimental about Eton, even including the strapping, Emil.”

  There was nothing in her demeanor, her voice, her eyes, which told Emil anything about her present suffering. He decided she was not in the least afraid. When she glanced at James her expression was one of absolute love, amused love, tender love. A lucky man, thought Emil. But Emil had seen the dilation of her pupils. Demerol, he suspected. She was not one to whimper at torture; she would not resort to the final drugs until the last, for she wished to be alive and aware. Emil knew all this, instinctively.

  They enjoyed their dinner, or at least Emil and Emma did. James found that food choked him. He listened to the conversation of the others. Emma was relating some of her risible, and ribald, anecdotes to Emil, and he was laughing, sincerely. People looked at her from other tables, and found her enchanting, and smiled with pleasure.

  Emil thought of his dead wife. She had been this gallant, too, when she faced death. But it had been a quick death, and a comparatively easy one, and Emil, for the first time, was grateful.

  Emma said, “Jimmy insists on us getting married, almost immediately, Emil.”

  “An excellent idea, Emma.”

  “I’m not so certain. I think I read once that marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.”

  She looked about the big red, white, and gilt dining room, the old room. She said, “I think this is wonderful. So many of the great ancient hotels are being destroyed these days, in the name of ‘progress.’ Progress to what? Uglitude. Very efficient, but very barren and cold, the newer hotels. People are sick of ‘progress.’ They want something substantial, solid, soothing, and it can only be found in the established old, the secure, the pleasant, rooms enfolding and warm and full of tradition. It is a strange thing, but it is not the young who are destroying the old landmarks, the old ways, the old strengths. It is the elderly, the middle-aged. Perhaps they think destruction is really living, and that by destroying the old they spuriously extend their own lives. How very sad.”

  But white lines of pain and fatigue were coming out about her lively eyes and Emil glanced at his watch and said, “I’m sorry, but I have a very complicated case I must attend to tomorrow. James? Will you go out to Mountain Valleys with me tomorrow, as usual?”

  No, James wanted to say. I don’t want to leave Emma. But Emma was looking at him with a smile, and he said to her, “Old Jerry, you know. I think he is coming along a bit.”

  She nodded and smiled, as if relieved at his answer. “And I will unpack, and read. I am really quite tired. The ‘jet lag,’ you know. Dear me, I wish we had all the fine old liners we once had. So luxurious. So restful. You arrived from your journey rejuvenated. Now even the liners rush, and congratulate themselves when they can cut off an hour or two from their last run.”

  “We live in a very sterile age,” said Emil. “All the color has gone out of the world, all the happy denials, all the joyousness. And that’s a bad omen.”

  When James and Emma were alone she spoke with enthusiasm of Emil. “He is so placid, in a way, so content. That means he has endured a lot. Those who have known sorrow rarely appear sad.”

  “‘I laugh that I might not weep,’” James said.

  “Oh, you and your sententious platitudes, Jimmy. Let’s go to bed.”

  He slept little that night, with Emma at his side. Once or twice in her uneasy drugged sleep she moaned and moved her hands in a gesture of pain. He listened to the shouting of the wind, the lonely winds of midnight, and it seemed to him that he had come to the end of his life.

  26

  “Man is a symbol-making animal,” Tom had once said to his son. “He invents symbols by which he lives, or they are given to him. It is almost impossible for him to see his life clearly and in whole without illusions or delusions, once he accepts symbols in place of reality. He comes into this world symbol-free, but he is not permitted to live in that pristine state. Perhaps he can’t live without symbols, which, to him, make sense of a senseless existence, a senseless universe. Yet, in their way, some symbols do have a certain beauty, even if they are illusionary. Poetry, for instance, is pure symbolism, and so, in most ways, is all art. The cross is not only a symbol of Christianity; it symbolizes life and death, resurrection, faith. In short, symbols are code words.”

  He pointed his pipe at the young Guy. “You’re full of symbols, son. You use the code words ‘duty,’ ‘responsibility.’ By that, you mean grim self-sacrifice, self-denial, meaningless work, absence of joy and contentment. You use the code and you don’t know what it means. Maybe your ma’s black and cruel symbolism did impress it on you. I tried to teach you different. Me? I think I’m pretty free of symbols and codes. Took me a time to get rid of them, and live. I did it, though, and that’s why I love living, and love love, and enjoy every minute I am alive—with no code at all.” He laughed. “Maybe symbols are a substitute for living in its full sense. They don’t demand that you think. You just have to accept, and that’s easier than using your mind.” He paused. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear.”

  “You’re not,” said Guy, seventeen years old. His father shrugged. “Who can? We use the same words but they’re not in the same context.”

  Guy was remembering this now, this wild stormy winter day. He was alone. Emil Grassner thought that his retreat was a protection against thinking things through, but in truth Guy was facing fully what he now knew he must face, once and for all. But what his ultimate choice would be, he did not as yet understand, or did not want to understand. The choices were, for the first time, clear and ruthless and there could be no compromise. Once chosen, they were inexorable.

  He was seeing his life in whole, and he was full of pain. He did not ask himself: Where did I go wrong? He knew now; yet, could he have taken a different way? If he had taken that would he now, in this year of his life, be regretting it? He was not sure. No life was free of regret, of wondering, of conjecturing. He only knew that six months ago he had found his barely tolerable life intolerable. Up to almost recently he had endured it, accepted it, as inevitable and cast in stone. He had told himself he had a better life than most men, a more
successful one, even if there was no joy in it. (Joy was the babbling of children.) What more, he had asked himself, could a man ask than health and wealth and success, and the freedom these bring? He now knew he had not been free at all. He had only been afraid.

  Beth had never advised him what to do. She had never criticized except to say that he had never reached his potential. She had listened with the deep sympathy and understanding of love. She had silently consoled, and with compassion unspoken. He had talked with her only as he had once talked with his father, without restraint, without judiciousness, without false words—code words. She knew, he saw now, that he was frightened by what he had made of his life, but even more frightened at the thought of abandoning it for something he had always wanted. There was, in a way, safety in fear. It kept a man’s feet on the ground—on the way others thought he should go. No, he thought, I’ve done with lying. I chose the way myself and there is no one to blame, not even poor Ma, though I’ve been blaming her for years.

  He could even admire his mother now. Though he had forced luxury on her—no, let’s tell the truth—she had not been “forced.” She had liked it, had reveled in it. She felt it was a reward for her virtuous life, for had she not been taught that material rewards were God’s gifts to just men? A man of misfortune, she had been taught from childhood, was a man of whom God disapproved. She could point to excerpts in the Bible to justify this belief, but she never saw the context. A Job was not a man whose faith was being tested. He was a man who had offended God, though she was not certain how or why. The subtleties of the testing, of the battle between God and Lucifer for a man’s soul, were beyond her comprehension. Job had been relieved of his afflictions, she believed, when he was “born again.”

  So, she had been reasonably happy in her condition. Yet, she had retained her boardinghouse to the very last, though she no longer lived there. However, she visited it almost daily, to be sure that the “manager,” an elderly woman, “was doing things right and that the rents were collected on time.” Lucy had been mortified, Guy amusedly disgusted. But on this stormy day of his life he felt a profound and smiling admiration for his mother. She had lived without hypocrisy in her grim fashion. She had lived in accordance with her beliefs, however arduous they were, however life-denying, however stringent. Tom himself had never accused her of hypocrisy. In her way, then, she had been an entirely honest woman. That she had distorted another soul, had denigrated its struggle for freedom, she had not known. Her way was her way; she saw no reason to doubt its verity not only for herself but for others also. If they departed from what she believed was truth and righteousness she condemned them, not out of meanness but out of conviction.

  In her strange fashion she had been free, free as Tom had been free. They had chosen their lives, and had had great satisfaction in them. But he had been less strong, and so was suffering.

  Even now, though, the thought of poverty horrified him. It always had, since he had been sixteen. A poor man was a poor miserable creature. That much he had accepted from his mother’s teachings. He had not seen the wholeness of his mother’s reasoning, which for herself was valid. That it was not valid for others she had not known. Nor did I, he said to himself bitterly.

  Up to a few months ago he had compromised with life, had been reasonably happy when with Beth. She was his surcease, his consolation, his refuge. He had been able to endure Lucy’s vapidity to some extent; at least, she had no longer irritated him to the furious hatred he had felt for her so long. He had learned not to think of his children, to goad himself with his bitter resentment. Through Beth, he had learned a cold tolerance, a complete indifference. He suppressed all his emotions concerning them. He did not know that he had merely buried an abscess until it had burst forth one summer day four months ago, in all its fetidness, all its stench, all its putrid agony.

  He had been in his offices in Cranston when one of his secretaries came in to tell him, with distaste, that “an old, old man” was asking to see him. A shabby old man, she said, “but nice and clean.” A senior citizen. His name was Sam Kurtz. “Sam Kurtz?” Guy repeated, frowning. “I don’t know—” Then he stopped. But surely it wasn’t Sam Kurtz, of the sawmills, who had married—Sal? If Sam were alive he would be almost eighty! It could not be the same Sam. Guy sat at his desk while his secretary waited, and he was filled with memories so sharp and clear that they might have been only in the immediate past. He had not thought of Sam and Sal for many years; he had never wanted to see them again, but why, he did not know, except they reminded him of a drab life, of uselessness, of hopelessness, of animal acceptance of their poor lives, of meagerness, of mediocrity.

  Guy hesitated, then he said, “Well, send him in.” He sat back in his chair and he was again a youth, determined that his life would not be one of meanness, of ugly survival only. He waited for the old contempt, for the old repudiation. They did not come. He rubbed his forehead. He was feeling his middle age, he thought, its tiredness, its bone-weariness, its dissatisfactions. But he had not been in the best of health these months. He was subject to nightmares, to obscure pains, to acute restlessness, to suppressed despair, to a sensation of being trapped. Only when with Beth did he feel vital, and even this vitality was beginning to diminish, for when he left Beth now it was not with the old renewed strength and fortitude. He hated to leave her, as he had never hated leaving before. He felt, when leaving her, that he was leaving life and courage and color, and was returning to what was—loathsome? Yes, loathsome.

  He heard a door open and close, and opened his eyes with a start. He looked at the very old man facing him, a bent thin old man with thin white hair and a face carved out of a brown stone. Only the brown eyes were bright and clear. The old man stood before the desk and the two men looked at each other. Neither smiled. Sam’s expression was stern and remote. He said, “Well, Guy.”

  Guy stood up. “Sam?” he said, almost incredulous.

  “The same. I won’t take up your time.” His voice was tremulous yet had a certain strength to it. “I brought something for you.” He fumbled with a brown bag and his trembling fingers began to withdraw something. It was a battered black notebook, small and creased. He laid it on the desk. “That’s all. Sal wanted you to have it, when she died.”

  “Sal?” said Guy. He felt sick and curiously stricken. “Sal’s dead?”

  Sam had been turning away. Now he looked at Guy steadfastly. “Don’t we all die? Yes. It was her time. No sickness. She just—died. She had a stroke in her sleep. Healthy to the last, my Sal. And I guess I’ll soon be going to her. Can’t wait.” The steadfast regard did not change, or waver. Was there condemnation in it, or contempt? Contempt!

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” said Guy. His voice was dull.

  “Sorry for what? She had a good life, Sal. Always did. Better than most. Happy to the last. Always singing. Always working. Never was a woman like Sal. When I had the cancer, she wouldn’t let me die. She made me live. Doctors said I couldn’t live, after the operation, twenty years ago. But she made me live. Kind of a miracle. Laughed me out of it, you could say. They made me retire. Made me sick. What’s a man without work? He ain’t anything. So, even if I did have a good pension, and the savings, I got me a job. Night watchman in a little plant. Sal made me do it. That’s when I started to get better. Useful. Now I got a little land in the country. Raise chickens and vegetables. Useful.”

  Guy’s mind repeated: Useful. But, he thought through a sharp pain in his head, I’m not useful. Perhaps I never was. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the pain. He was again startled when he saw that Sam was still there. He had forgotten him. He was dazed, as if something had moved, shifted, had become fluid and was running away, and he was sick and undone.

  “Well,” said Sam. He pointed to the notebook. “Your dad—he gave that to Sal. Full of his writing. It was hers. But she wanted you to have it, after she was dead. She died a month ago.” There was no sorrow in that old voice, only love and tenderness, and the crumpled
brown face smiled slightly. “Pretty place, in St. Anthony’s Cemetery. Got two graves.”

  “Is there something I can do for you, Sam?” asked Guy.

  The old man stared at him, as if amazed. The clear brown eyes became keen and thoughtful, studying, understanding. “For me? No, sir. Not for me! But you sure look like you could do something for yourself, boy. You sure could, looks like. Sal knew it all the time, though you never came to see us. She’d say, ‘I love that boy like my own flesh and blood, and I’m sick about him.’ Never told me why. Women are funny. Maybe they see things we don’t. I do now, though. Goodbye.”

  “Sam,” said Guy, and held out his hand. But the old man went through the door and was gone.

  Guy sat down heavily. He had not felt remorse for many years, or regret. He felt them now, aching, acrid, sad. He suddenly knew that he had not avoided Sam and Sal because of their obscurity, because of the “meaningness” of their satisfied lives. He had avoided them because he was afraid! Afraid of their perspicacity, their lucid understanding, their affection for him. He was afraid they might speak of his father. He had avoided thinking of Tom for decades, until these last weeks when the memories had come on him like flashing lightning which revealed everything. His useless life. His meaningless life. His arid life. His tormented life. The lightning had shown him a desert in which there was only one oasis: Beth. And he had fled the oasis—in fear again, fear that the water would revive him and make him think.

  He picked up the notebook and opened it. It was full of Tom’s writing, now faded and browned, sharp small writing like engravings. Most were quotations, meticulously recorded, and with love. Guy had heard many of them, spoken in Tom’s voice long ago. Some were his own meditations, acidly humorous or sad. Some were crude poems. Tom had never told his son that he wrote poetry. Why?

  I am a stranger here. I always was.