Waldo David Frank

“ Fanny sat trembling. She saw him, as he oldens in the cant moulds of his ideals. Harry, pious, weak, stale ... leading the life of her child. What did she have of her father?—If she is like her father let her rot! But now would she not surely be like him? She alone could save her child from that. She alone could, who could not. ... The train ran.... Fanny saw the Town, it would be the world of her child growing, of her child learning to live in the world. World of such women! Edith’s blue eyes, open beneath the dimpled softness of her brows, behold a world of such women ... the only world! ”

“ Fanny saw her long dark face, haggard now and pale with heavy eyes. She saw the hand that feeding trembled a bit.
“You are not a mother. Yet I am your child. Just a little longer. For you are not a mother. I am a mother.”
Her eyes shone happy with an unuttered promise: “I shall be a mother to you. You shall see.” But Fanny dared not speak. For she knew when her words came, there would come from within her, deeper within her, her words’ denial.
Clara’s strong hands, tense like a cord, soothed her gown, clutched her shoulders, lifted her so that she could drink. ”

“ The smokey man of God, the white seeker of color moved down the cavern of Chatham Square where the high houses dimmed away like stalactytes and the “L” thrust its lance into the belly of a world too weary to cry, too worn to bleed. Before him Harry Luve held his white dry hand. “My finger,” he muttered. “Yes,” said the man of God. “I see ... your pointing finger....”
He sat in a quiet room. Coffee and a sandwich rolled in his raw stomach. “That tastes good, eh?” said the man of smoke. “Hot, eh? Whiskey makes you shiver, I’ll bet.” ”

“ Without you what could Clara’s naked love have done? Without you wouldn’t she be dead as I was? Your milk, your covers, your warmth ... lies: O my still bed, O sun that falls about the grey of my shoulders like a lawn of Spring upon an autumn earth—bless you, for there is quiet in you yet, and it has let me think.
... When I am at last all in thought, I am in the way of the end. To end is to be healed. I understand that. Life is a wound that only life can heal. ”

“ A man-form, vague, bore down upon her belly. Fanny could see no more. She feared to sense that if she dared see more she might see Johns! She saw a desecration as if the talons and beak of a great bird tore at the thighs of Clara ... strips of the flesh of herself. She could not bear it. Her palms clutched over her eyes and ears. She turned writhing upon her stomach. She was still.
—Poor Harry!...
“No,” she said aloud. “You wanted her to follow and she did not. She respects you too much. Can’t you respect yourself? What you said to Clara was true ... the long and terrible Way that you must go. ”

“ And Clara’s been an angel.”
“She is an angel,” said the tall woman, as if Fanny had not meant it.
“O ... she’s a good thing,” said Tessie Liebovitz. Her black eyes lay on Fanny’s.—There is no misunderstanding! They were soft. “We love Clara,” she said. “We say yes ... just automatically ... to Clara’s friends.”
“Thank you,” Fanny looked sternly at Susan Sennister. “That’s a beginning at least.” She wanted to smile. This woman was so very stiff. She must be very stern.—How can I tell? What are they?... She went on: “I say Yes to the friends of Clara—but with all my heart.” ”

“ The wall of ice plunges against my room. My room alone. I am not hungry. To-morrow I have a job so I cannot be hungry. Lamp and stove, tell me, are you burning my cheeks red too?... are you going to singe my eyebrows? are you going to sear my eyes?
—New York! New York! why am I here, frozen and empty in your leaping arms, peering into your bowels? Women with burnt faces walk your streets. Women wander like dreams denied through your pent streets. There are in New York men and women who worship God. Christians only, Jews only. Worshipers, only of God. Are you New York, you worshipers of God? ”

“ Fanny stood beside her bed. It loomed like a white sucking mouth—white lips. She pulled a quilt away, sank to the floor. With knees high huddled in her arms, near her chin, and the quilt lightly touching her bare toes, her knees, her mouth, she slept on the floor. The world’s blackness, the ghost-grained night of her sleep was not the world, not her sleep ... was the bed above her. Blackness was spun white threads come to rest: each thread beside the other, each thread of white not touching any other. ”

“ Among the Black men, among the Yellow men, among the Red men, yes. They still have living limbs. They still have living eyes. We stiffen with Death. Death creeps up, Death creeps down ... into the heart of the dying Western World.
... There was a pause. The eyes of all gazed into the shadow where a long thin head, wild-haired, wild-throated, cast out words upon them. The eyes of all turned: Fanny was out of her chair. She moved to the bottle-littered table under the gas. The yellow light lay heavy on her hair, made her face glow pallid about her eyes that were dark within themselves. ”

“ I leap gaily clapping my hands, my Love. I leap on Pain, on the shadow of Doubt I leap. What can I do with you?
She was on her knees: her arms embraced his legs, her cheek was hot against his cold shoes.
—Under the Pain is there sunlight for dancing? Under the doubt is there a solid world?
“She loves me,” said to himself Harry Howland Luve. “Blessed sweet!”—Well, I’ve married her. She’s married to a Luve. She’s leaping, dancing on a joy I can understand. ”

“ She knew she was not to die. She knew there was nothing wrong.
“Does God send clean creatures to a death like this? Death in a stinking room where no one comes to see what is the matter after days and days. Starving to death alone, in New York.... O how rotten you must have been!”
She knew she was not rotten.
“Is there nothing left? No one single thing? Mother, I can’t find you. Edith, I can’t see you. Harry—Edith—all gone. Is there nothing left? Yes: one thing left.”
Fanny lifted her shoulders faintly from the bed with straining elbows. ”

“ Fanny thought of the ugly prejudices which still lay rooted in her mind. She could praise Lucy if she patronized her too. Take away the condescension and at once she looked into a pool, misted by childhood fears and girlish passion, of black distrust.
—No use thinking of all that. I believe I had a mind: it might have amounted to something, too. A woman’s mind at work ... as a woman’s mind ... not as a lawyer’s or a doctor’s ... like some men’s minds: what’d the world have said to that? ”

“ When men dance like little trees full of Springtime,
There you are, God. Here.... I am unafraid.
You cannot kill me, for I am part of your Spring.
* * *
In the warm smoke shadow of the room the chandelier thrust its gas tongues weakly. Beneath it on the table stood bottles of whiskey and gin and syphon water. Night. The backyards swathed silence: the shut of a window, the call of a cat were in the Night like little breaks in a close textured weave.
A slight man with heavy sparse-haired head on thin shoulders, frail chest, spoke in a singing voice. ”

“ 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{114} love. You cannot. One hate? O I love this world of little people dragging through pain, mired in it, sinking in pain. ”

“ Her body endured like a bar of steel. It was solid death in a melted world that was dying.
There were days and there were nights. There were nights and there were days. The world winked open, the world winked shut. Rain dribbled into her window: sunbeams deflected lay like gold dust against it. Below, in the houses, feet fell; voices rose, fell; shadows of human will writhed up the twisted stairs to her white room: no substance followed. ”

“ Will you come, Harry, so you can see the woman who has been born?
She stood long, looking at her naked self. She was clad in a bloom. She was a hard young world in its first Spring. She found that she was laughing. She pressed her laughing fingers into her firm breasts.
“I am good,” she said, very sober. She caught up her child. Cheek upon hers she swayed, very still, very sober. “O we are good. Good, we two! Won’t you hurry, Man?” ...
“Now I see you. Clear! Never has any woman seen her love as I see you. I am a woman born. Edith dear, look at your Mother. You are a child born.... ”

“ I am a girl with short black hair and hands that are strong. I peer down on my knees at the fissures of New York. I kick my slippered feet behind me, peering down. My legs are solid in their white silk stockings and when I toss my slippers Jack and Harry see my legs to the knees: good legs: their eyes are bright, looking, they swallow thick.... I look down into the heart-beat of the City.
—I am not hungry. Look at me, Fan, look at me huddling to-night around an oil stove and a lamp, both on the floor and myself on the floor. ”

“ The long gray room full of the streaking stains of the white sick. Clara’s black hair and the wan sheet and the bars of the iron bed. Clara’s clasping arms, moist, shutting out life.—Let me die with you!... The fading eyes of Clara.
“You forgive me? forgive me? I should not have brought you in, O Fanny. I am glad to pay for that, I was mad! But there were six years.... I have loved you. Now, you, what are you going to do?”
“You forgive me, Clara? What becomes of any of us? I have loved you also.”
... “I murdered her. For what?... White Clara for a dirty Jew! Mangel is dead at any rate ... ”

“ She looked on a neat little world of Time: Time ran upon steel tracks, Time carried mites of human life rigidly down a tiny way. The trains, the houses, the streets, the wisps of sunny cloud through the roof’s gap ... all was a pasty toy-world: make-believe: the world of Time and Space. She gazed on it in passionate condescension within her sooty workroom, hands paying, brow in search paying.... ”

“ Fanny’s eyes shut once more. She saw the white neck of Susan Sennister: on its side the little birthmark like the print of a black foot ... clear because her neck was white. She heard her voice: the resonant low voice of one who speaks often with herself. She saw the black eyes of Tessie upon her: the full lips, redder than rouge, the crowded high-pressed brow, the child-hands....
Clara sat still.—She will go to sleep now. ”

“ Fanny: But if we want to be sane—
Scome: We want to be too many things. Loyden’s right. We want the truth—and we’re afraid of being mad. There we are caught, again, half way—half way between what is really One.
Loyden: We’re not caught when we sing ... not when we dance—
Statt: You old scarecrow, what are you preaching about? Who ever heard your voice? Who ever saw you shake a leg?
Loyden: I have forgotten how to—without the Music.
Tessie: Don’t talk about music! You get on my nerves.
Loyden: You see? It gets on her nerves. The weakling. Music oozed out of her, died down to her hands. ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ The world was a sunny field and the young mother walked in it and was herself. Each thing was itself, stood clear up in the sunny field of the world. Black ant over a tuft of grass held the sun in its blackness. Grass threw sparkle of sun against a blue sky dazed with sunniness.—I too walking and carrying the sun. I am very sharply myself, like an ant, like a leaf, throwing with them the sun in a vast gold shower upward into the sky....
Leon was gone: there would be no word of any sort further between them.
Fanny had a way of sitting on her porch and pinching the flesh of her bared arm. Solid! ”

“ Man moved her not at all. She thought of the body of man without memory, without desire. She bought a Bible. She bought a copy, bound in crumbling black Levant, of a certain Pascal’s Thoughts she had found once, browsing. It was Englished from the French. She liked him, whoever he was. He knew life. Yet he seemed young.{225}
As her face grew sallow and the roundness of her cheeks sagged long, as her hair became hard and her knees went stiff, all of this resilience of fire drew to the eyes of Fanny. They were larger, blacker. ”

“ 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.{129} 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. ”