Prose (82 page)

Roger Rappaport was rather old for his age, as children who are left to themselves are apt to be, and so he was thinking somewhat along these lines as he looked out through the pouring rain. He was waiting for his father to come home from the Monday afternoon Faculty Meeting, for although unpopular, Professor Rappaport was very proud of the collegiate tradition and made a great point of never omitting a detail of his professorial life, no matter what it cost him. Poor papa, thought Roger, he has such a bad time. Why it seems only yesterday that there was a fair number of animals around at the various institutions and papa's work was alive and exciting. And now everyone thinks there's nothing left of it except a lot of old pictures with names underneath.

He pushed his forehead bitterly against the window until the cold glass gave him a sharp pain between the eyes. Out on the lawn, just below the window, stood a life-size cast-iron deer, with its right hoof forward to tap the grass, and its nose raised proudly into the rain. In front of it was a little wooden block, like those on business men's desks, which said
DEER
. Roger could remember when the deer had come to take his stand on their lawn. It had been three years ago: some people excavating around Salem had struck with a pick into the head of this creature, just a foot or so below the surface of the ground. When they had dug out one antler they became tremendously excited, thinking, of course, that they had come across an ossified animal in fine condition, and they sent a long and frantic telegram to Professor Rappaport. He had started off early the next morning, too excited to eat any breakfast, carrying several little black leather instrument bags. It had been a heart-breaking affair when the deer, by undeniable proof, had turned out to be not stone, but iron. The Professor, however, had made the best of a bad bargain, and decided to purchase the deer, anyway, for the honor of his college, and it followed him home on the next freight train.

It had been Professor Rappaport's idea, too, to paint the deer in natural colors, and Roger had sat on the front steps most of each day for a week, while his father daubed away with brushes of assorted sizes, several reference books opened at the Colored Plate Section, lying around him on the lawn with stones on the pages to hold them down. The deer was done in two inch stripes of yellow and fawn, and the fawn stripes contained many white spots bordered with black rings. The eyes were dark with green spots, the antlers deep brown, and the scut was painted with phosphorescent paint, because according to the best authorities deer had followed each other by means of watching the tail of the deer ahead,
which shone in the dark.
Of course at the beginning of every college year, the deer was an object of considerable merriment on the part of the incoming Freshmen: they hung their caps on its antlers, and once, indeed, had dressed it in a complete suit of clothes and a pair of spectacles and labelled it: Old Rappy—but by November the novelty usually wore off. Anyway, the deer stood there firmly, as if to advertise the profession of the man who lived in the house behind him.

When Roger had been staring gloomily at the deer and the trees and the rain for some three-quarters of an hour he suddenly realized that in their place he was staring at a man walking by the path to the house. Not the Professor, but an old man, a country man dressed in a cap and dirty blue jeans and carrying a large-sized straw basket on his arm, with some sheets of newspaper stuck through the handle to keep the rain out. Roger was extremely excited, he had never seen the man before, and he had still the childish belief that things coming in baskets were probably presents for
him.
He rushed to the door and let the man in.

“Is this Mr. Rappaport's house?” the old man asked Roger, taking off his cap, but still holding on to the basket. Roger shut the front door quickly so that he had the man inside, at least.

“Yes,” he said in his rather unpleasant way, “and I'm Mr. Rappaport's little boy. What do you want? What's in your basket?” He led the way into the parlor.

The old man said, “Well, perhaps you'll do. Your father's the man who knows about those animals, isn't he?”

Roger said he was, and that he, Roger, would most certainly do. The old man sat down, holding the basket on his knees.

“Well, I'll tell you my boy, I've got something here for your father. I've found,—by golly, I've found a
animal.
”

Roger gave an incredulous gasp. Once or twice when he was younger he had tried this same trick on his father, with poor effect. But the old man was pulling the newspapers away from the basket. “There you are,” he muttered and reached in with both hands and dragged out what certainly did look like some sort of animal. Roger almost fainted away. The old man set the animal down on the floor and Roger made as if to snatch it, but he was pushed back onto his chair.

“Leave it alone. It don't run much. Now look at that. Ain't that the damndest thing you ever did see? It's a real honest-to-goodness animal, living and breathing.”

The animal just sat there on the carpet, breathing, certainly, and rather fast at that. It was perhaps two feet long, rather stumpy and rounded, and all covered with a kind of straw-grey fur, very thick and fine. It had a pointed nose and whiskers and close round ears, and extremely large dark eyes that were full of tears. In fact, anyone who knew anything about animals might have felt it was rather pretty—until he looked closely at the tail, which was short and scaly and had a few long hairs on it. Roger didn't bother to think whether he really took to the animal: it became an object of divinity to him immediately, and he knelt beside it on the floor. He patted its round back gingerly and the animal shed one tear, which was at once replaced by another.

“Where did you find it? What kind do you suppose it is? Will it die?” Dying was the chief characteristic of all the animals Roger had known.

“Well, I was just starting to do my spring plowing and I ran the plow into a sort of little hole and there sat this thing, snug as you please, looking out at me. Must have been there all winter long. I haven't heard tell of a animal for a good many years now, so I thought I'd just bring it along to your pa to see what he made of it. Well now, if you'll just sort of keep your eye on it till your pa comes home, why I'll be getting along.”

The old man got up and took his basket and left the room, but Roger, absorbed in the animal, didn't pay the slightest attention. He patted it and stroked it and spoke in its round ears and the animal lay perfectly quiet and occasionally shed tears on the carpet. It was rather sad to see Roger's gentleness and discretion with the creature. Born at an earlier day he would probably have made one of those people who cannot mingle comfortably with their own sort, but in the society of animals became at once charming and lovable. However, as things were, Roger, except for this short while, was destined to go through life never appearing at his best and always rather disliked.

Finally the animal's tears ceased and it even showed faint signs of pleasure in Roger's company. It arched its short neck to his hand, and switched its tail around on the floor. Roger vaguely remembered that to be the sign of gratitude on the part of some animal, but he could not think which one. He peered into the creature's eyes. Should he feed it? And what? Could it understand what he was saying? It seemed rather lifeless on the whole, but papa would be extremely pleased anyway. He waited patiently stroking the creature rhythmically, which was the manner, he had decided, it liked best.

Professor Rappaport had never had even a modest success in his life, and now of course, he had a triumph. He sent the old farmer who had brought the animal twenty-five dollars. In the backyard of the Professor's house were two little houses with wire pens attached to them where several years ago he had kept one or two other animals, and this one was promptly assigned the larger house. All the professors came to see it first, by invitation, then the student body was allowed to troop through the backyard and stare. Professor Rappaport, though not exactly popular, did come to be a campus character of some stature. He even gave a tea, the most important feature of which was a close view of the animal for all the guests, and a brief lecture on it by the Professor.

1934

Dimensions for a Novel

The lines are straight and swift between the stars.

—Wallace Stevens

 

Perhaps to give the above title to a paper is as ridiculous as it would be to make measurements for a suit of clothes and then grow the body to fit them. Bright ideas about
how
to do a thing are to be mistrusted, and the only bright idea which ever proves its worth is that of the thing itself. The discovery, or invention, whichever it may be, of a new method of doing something old is often made by defining the opposite of an old method, or the opposite of the sum of several old methods and calling it new. And the objective of this research or discovery is rather the new method, the new tool, than the new thing. In the come and go of art movements, movements in music, revolutions in literature, and “experiments” in everything, we often see this illustrated. The modern French composers who devised the ingenious and seemingly pregnant method of using two or three or more keys against each other, where one alone had been used before, are often very disappointing because despite the possibilities suggested by poly-modality and poly-tonality the themes in themselves are meagre and uninteresting.

It is a very common theory, and, I think, a true one that the substance of a piece of writing defines its form. By this I mean more than classification—essay, story, poem, etc.—the actual shape the writing takes within its particular
genre.
For example, say,
The Return of the Native
takes place within the limitations of a year and a day and follows a definite scheme of chorus, action, chorus, action, not because Hardy thought that was an interesting new way of writing a book (although he undoubtedly did), but something in the story itself suggested that form, made it the only possible one for the book. I remember reading quite a while ago an essay by Julian Huxley on “The Size of Living Things.” I have forgotten the scientific reasons or speculations underlying it, but I can remember how strangely it struck me for the first time that although the size of living creatures varies from the germ to the elephant and each species shows variations in itself—yet there is really no danger that I shall ever get much beyond six feet, or stop growing at the size of seven. Even the lobster cannot shrink to crayfish size or ever exceed the capacity of the ordinary lobster pot. Whatever this mysterious regulating power may be, there is another power somehow corresponding to it, and as mysterious in its way, which I believe regulates, or should regulate, the forms of writing. Before a genuine change in form takes place, maybe quite a while before, the actual substance, the protoplasmic make-up of the writing must be changed. A novel can be forced into all sorts of forms (built up from manipulating
opposites
of preceding forms) just as I could, or the lobster, and yet they would improve it little more than I should be improved by being trained in an S, unless this first inner change had made the forms imperative.

I am saying all this because it will appear that I am attempting to be one of the inventors or discoverers, with a bright idea for doing something but no ideas as to the thing itself. It is presumptuous, but I must ask you to believe that at the back of my mind are the changing ideas which make me want to write on the dimensions for a novel as their result, rather than as an exercise in inventiveness.

I

Mr. T. S. Eliot in his essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” speaks in this way of the individual artist's duty to the past:

The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not onesided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the
whole
existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.

Mr. Eliot is of course speaking of the placing of works of art in their place in the line of tradition, but by changing the subject of the paragraph I find it puts into words, exactly, a certain aspect of the novel. Novels as we know them are still fairly linear; they go
along,
in some sort of army style; I can think of none to which the march figure could not be applied. We may have halts and retreats and flights in disorder—but that we are moving from one point (usually in time) to another is always certain. The author guides us along this line of march, marshals and directs.

This is Sunday. If I try to think of Friday I cannot recreate Friday pure and simple, exactly as it was. It has been changed for me by the intervening Saturday. A certain piece of work that on Friday I planned to have finished on Saturday I did not finish, so that now looking back from Sunday I discover a certain ironic tinge about Friday evening. Someone came to see me Friday afternoon whom I was delighted to see; but since that time many things have come back to mind and it is impossible to look at the visitor with the eyes of Friday. Saturday will always intervene, and Friday and Saturday will come between me and Thursday. A constant process of adjustment is going on about the past—every ingredient dropped into it from the present must affect the whole.

Now what Mr. Eliot says about the sequence of works of art seems to me to be equally true of the sequence of events or even of pages or paragraphs in a novel. I have mentioned what I call the “march” of the novel, implying movement and a linear sequence to the writing; but I know of no novel which deliberately makes use of this constant readjustment among the members of any sequence. (Perhaps characters occasionally think back over their relationships with one another and reinterpret actions or speeches, but I am speaking here of reinterpretation as an integral part of the whole book, not the proper working out of the story.) It seems almost too simple to say that in the existing novel the ending throws back no light on the beginning, but (excepting of course the rough example of the detective story!) I think it is true. Present events run both forwards and backwards, they cannot be contained in one day or one chapter. All the past forms, to use a musical expression, a frame of reference for the future, and the two combine to define and expand each other. “… for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the
whole
existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values … toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.”