The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories (67 page)

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Authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald

BOOK: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories
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She sat upon her hands and watched him.
He was wonderful. When he talked his lips moved.
She sat upon the stove and watched him.
Suddenly there came a blood-curdling scream. The Tantrums rushed to the windows.
It was the Doldrums.
They had hitched their steers to trees and concealed themselves behind the bushes and flowers, and soon a perfect rattle of stones and bricks beat against the windows, bending them inward.
“Father! father!” shrieked Jemina.
Her father took down his slingshot from his slingshot rack on the wall and ran his hand lovingly over the elastic band. He stepped to a loophole. Old Mappy Tantrum stepped to the coalhole.
A MOUNTAIN BATTLE
The stranger was aroused at last. Furious to get at the Doldrums, he tried to escape from the house by crawling up the chimney. Then he thought there might be a door under the bed, but Jemina told him there was not. He hunted for doors under the beds and sofas, but each time Jemina pulled him out and told him there were no doors there. Furious with anger, he beat upon the door and hollered at the Doldrums. They did not answer him, but kept up their fusillade of bricks and stones against the window. Old Pappy Tantrum knew that as soon as they were able to effect an aperture they would pour in and the fight would be over.
Then old Heck Doldrum, foaming at the mouth and expectorating on the ground, left and right, led the attack.
The terrific slingshots of Pappy Tantrum had not been without their effect. A master shot had disabled one Doldrum, and another Doldrum, shot almost incessantly through the abdomen, fought feebly on.
Nearer and nearer they approached the house.
“We must fly,” shouted the stranger to Jemina. “I will sacrifice myself and bear you away.”
“No,” shouted Pappy Tantrum, his face begrimed. “You stay here and fit on. I will bar Jemina away. I will bar Mappy away. I will bar myself away.”
The man from the settlements, pale and trembling with anger, turned to Ham Tantrum, who stood at the door throwing loophole after loophole at the advancing Doldrums.
“Will you cover the retreat?”
But Ham said that he too had Tantrums to bear away, but that he would leave himself here to help the stranger cover the retreat, if he could think of a way of doing it.
Soon smoke began to filter through the floor and ceiling. Shem Doldrum had come up and touched a match to old Japhet Tantrum's breath as he leaned from a loophole, and the alcoholic flames shot up on all sides.
The whiskey in the bathtub caught fire. The walls began to fall in.
Jemina and the man from the settlements looked at each other.
“Jemina,” he whispered.
“Stranger,” she answered.
“We will die together,” he said. “If we had lived I would have taken you to the city and married you. With your ability to hold liquor, your social success would have been assured.”
She caressed him idly for a moment, counting her toes softly to herself. The smoke grew thicker. Her left leg was on fire.
She was a human alcohol lamp.
Their lips met in one long kiss and then a wall fell on them and blotted them out.
“AS ONE.”
When the Doldrums burst through the ring of flame, they found them dead where they had fallen, their arms about each other.
Old Jem Doldrum was moved.
He took off his hat.
He filled it with whiskey and drank it off.
“They air dead,” he said slowly, “they hankered after each other. The fit is over now. We must not part them.”
So they threw them together into the stream and the two splashes they made were as one.
APPENDIX
For the table of contents to the first edition of
Tales of the Jazz Age,
Fitzgerald wrote comments on each of the stories noting their inception, publication history, and other contextual matters. These comments are reproduced below as they originally appeared.
MY LAST FLAPPERS
THE JELLY-BEAN
This is a Southern story, with the scene laid in the small city of Tarleton, Georgia. I have a profound affection for Tarleton, but somehow whenever I write a story about it I receive letters from all over the South denouncing me in no uncertain terms. “The Jelly-Bean,” published in “The Metropolitan,” drew its full share of these admonitory notes.
It was written under strange circumstances shortly after my first novel was published, and, moreover, it was the first story in which I had a collaborator. For, finding that I was unable to manage the crap-shooting episode, I turned it over to my wife, who, as a Southern girl, was presumably an expert on the technique and terminology of that great sectional pastime.
 
THE CAMEL'S BACK
I suppose that of all the stories I have ever written this one cost me the least travail and perhaps gave me the most amusement. As to the labor involved, it was written during one day in the city of New Orleans, with the express purpose of buying a platinum and diamond wrist watch which cost six hundred dollars. I began it at seven in the morning and finished it at two o'clock the same night. It was published in the “Saturday Evening Post” in 1920, and later included in the O. Henry Memorial Collection for the same year. I like it least of all the stories in this volume.
My amusement was derived from the fact that the camel part of the story is literally true; in fact, I have a standing engagement with the gentleman involved to attend the next fancy-dress party, to which we are mutually invited, attired as the latter part of the camel—this as a sort of atonement for being his historian.
MAY DAY
This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the “Smart Set” in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my own story I have tried, unsuccessfully, I fear, to weave them into a pattern—a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation.
 
PORCELAIN AND PINK
 
“And do you write for any other magazines?” inquired the young lady. “Oh yes,” I assured her. “I have had some stories and plays in the
‘Smart Set,' for instance——”
The young lady shivered.
“The ‘Smart Set!' ” she exclaimed. “How can you? Why, they publish stuff about girls in blue bathtubs, and silly things like that!”
And I had the magnificent joy of telling her that she was referring to “Porcelain in Pink,” which had appeared there several months before.
 
FANTASIES
THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ
 
These next stories are written in what, were I of imposing stature, I should call my “second manner.” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” which appeared last summer in the “Smart Set,” was designed utterly for my own amusement. I was in that familiar mood characterized by a perfect craving for luxury, and the story began as an attempt to feed that craving on imaginary foods.
One well-known critic has been pleased to like this extravaganza better than anything I have written. Personally I prefer “The Off Shore Pirate.” But, to tamper slightly with Lincoln: If you like this sort of thing, this, possibly, is the sort of thing you'll like.
 
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain's to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical plot in Samuel Butler's “Note-books.”
This story was published in “Collier's” last summer and provoked this startling letter from an anonymous admirer in Cincinnati:
“Sir—
I have read the story of Benjamin Button in Collier's and I wish to say that as a short story writer you would make a good lunatic. I have seen many pieces of cheese in my life but of all the pieces of cheese I have ever seen you are the biggest piece. I hate to waste a piece of stationary on you but I will.”
 
TARQUIN OF CHEAPSIDE
Written almost six years ago, this story is a product of undergraduate days at Princeton. Considerably revised, it was published in the “Smart Set” in 1921. At the time of its conception I had but one idea—to be a poet—and the fact that I was interested in the ring of every phrase, that I dreaded the obvious in prose if not in plot, shows throughout. Probably the peculiar affection I feel for it depends more upon its age than upon any intrinsic merit.
 
O RUSSET WITCH!
When this was written I had just completed the first draft of my second novel, and a natural reaction made me revel in a story wherein none of the characters need be taken seriously. And I'm afraid that I was somewhat carried away by the feeling that there was no ordered scheme to which I must conform. After due consideration, however, I have decided to let it stand as is, although the reader may find himself somewhat puzzled at the time element. I had best say that however the years may have dealth with Merlin Grainger, I myself was thinking always in the present.
It was published in the “Metropolitan.”
 
UNCLASSIFIED MASTERPIECES
THE LEES OF HAPPINESS
 
Of this story I can say that it came to me in an irresistible form, crying to be written. It will be accused perhaps of being a mere piece of sentimentality, but, as I saw it, it was a great deal more. If, therefore, it lacks the ring of sincerity, or even of tragedy, the fault rests not with the theme but with my handling of it.
It appeared in the “Chicago Tribune,” and later obtained, I believe, the quadruple gold laurel leaf or some such encomium from one of the anthologists who at present swarm among us. The gentleman I refer to runs as a rule to stark melodramas with a volcano or the ghost of John Paul Jones in the rôle of Nemesis, melodramas carefully disguised by early paragraphs in Jamesian manner which hint dark and subtle complexities to follow. On this order:
“The case of Shaw McPhee, curiously enough, had no bearing on the almost incredible attitude of Martin Sulo. This is parenthetical and, to at least three observers, whose names for the present I must conceal, it seems improbable, etc., etc., etc.,” until the poor rat of fiction is at last forced out into the open and the melodrama begins.
 
MR. ICKY
This has the distinction of being the only magazine piece ever written in a New York hotel. The business was done in a bedroom in the Knicker-bocker, and shortly afterward that memorably hostelry closed its doors forever.
When a fitting period of mourning had elapsed it was published in the “Smart Set.”
 
JEMINA
Written, like “Tarquin of Cheapside,” while I was at Princeton, this sketch was published years later in “Vanity Fair.” For its technique I must apologize to Mr. Stephen Leacock.
I have laughed over it a great deal, especially when I first wrote it, but I can laugh over it no longer. Still, as other people tell me it is amusing, I include it here. It seems to me worth preserving a few years—at least until the ennui of changing fashions suppresses me, my books, and it together.
 
With due apologies for this impossible Table of Contents, I tender these tales of the Jazz Age into the hands of those who read as they run and run as they read.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
As tales of an “age,” the stories collected in
Flappers and Philosophers
and
Tales of the Jazz Age
contain dozens of references to contemporary events, personalities, sites, and objects, as well as to the literary works that Fitzgerald read as a Princeton undergraduate and to which he referred in his novels and stories throughout his career. The notes gloss a representative number of these in order to provide a cultural context for the reading of the stories. I have not provided commentary for those references sufficiently explained within the context of a given story, nor have I done so for references (such as to Shakespeare and Newton) that will be already familiar to the reader.
The title of Fitzgerald's first collection,
Flappers and Philosophers,
refers to one of the chief icons of the Jazz Age, the flapper—the new, free woman who defied convention (by smoking and drinking), openly expressed her sexuality, bobbed her hair, and typified the frenetic activity of the Roaring Twenties in hectic dancing and fast-paced talking.
 
“THE OFFSHORE PIRATE”
1
The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France:
Anatole France was the 1921 Nobel Laureate in literature;
The Revolt of the Angels
(1914) is an allegorical novel of nineteenth-century French culture written by an author known for the eloquence, biting wit, and stylistic grace of his writing.
2
demi-monde:
On the fringes of respectable society.
3
Narcissus ahoy!:
The name of the boat refers to the mythological figure Narcissus, who drowned in his own image; the reference is clearly to Ardita's own self-infatuation.
4
I thought the country was dry:
A reference to Prohibition, or the Twenty-First Amendment (the Volstead Act) to the U.S. Constitution, which prevented the sale, transportation, and consumption of alcoholic beverages; the Twenty-First Amendment was in effect from 1919 until it was repealed in 1933.
5
Stonewall Jackson:
Thomas Jonathan Jackson (1824-1863), Confederate general and war hero know for his daring and brilliance as a military tactician.
6
the revenue boat that takes you up to Sing Sing:
A reference to the federal agents who pursued those transporting illegal alcohol during Prohibition; Sing Sing is the infamous federal penitentiary in upstate New York. The pirate of the story's title is purportedly a thief and rum runner.
7
the Winter Garden and the Midnight Frolic:
Popular nightclubs.
8
Booker T. Washington:
African-American leader and educator (1856- 1915) whose autobiography,
Up from Slavery
(1901), and
Life of Frederick Douglass
(1907) are controversial classics recounting the movement from slavery to emancipation in the nineteenth century; in the context of the blatant racism exhibited by Carlyle in “The Offshore Pirate,” the reference is, at best, ironic.

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