The Unpossessed (15 page)

The flag broke up as Firman rose again; behind him the woolly parts waved as though the same wind blew them all. The pose of angry unconcern fell from Firman's face; the very lines that made it ugly made it, for a moment, fine. The eagerness in those lidded eyes, unaccustomed as they were to holding light, was singular and moving; Bruno warmed despite himself. An ugly Shelley, the boy stood, raised by some inward urge, forgetful at last of a world forever hostile; and behind him his small army stood solid.

“Doctor Leonard. The Black Sheep need a mouthpiece of their own. We want a chance to speak. Not on such little issues as football—that's just a symbol, so far as we're concerned.” (Take that, Leonard, Bruno told himself; these kids are smart; maybe they
apply
their lingo.) “And not just to the students of this campus. We feel that college students don't live in glass houses, the campus is a miniature fascist state, run by the same lousy factors that the outside world is run by. We want to open students' eyes. We want to talk to all the students in the country. . . .”

Excitement mounted among the Sheep. They leaned forward, their eyes alight on Bruno. Firman at their head looked like a tough little Jewish Napoleon—Bruno felt himself drawing back from their concerted onslaught. Young Emmett squirmed, his eyes swinging like a nervous pendulum from Firman's face to Bruno's.

“We'd like to strike a bargain with you, Doctor Leonard. We'd like to volunteer to work for you, free, do all the dirty work, the grubby odds and ends, on your Magazine. If you'd let us, in turn,” here Firman's passion made him shy; “if you'd let us—I suppose you think we have a hell of a lot of nerve—if you'd let us have one department in it. A student forum, run by students, you see, run for them. If you'd let us run it,” he concluded bravely. He fell back and became a private in his own army again.

The Sheep leaned forward, their eyes big with their daring and their hope, and shouted.

“relate collegiate topics” “apply Marxism” “correlate” “emphasize” “denounce” “teach” “explain”

Twelve years had passed since Bruno and
his
friends had grown so heated. Twelve years since Bruno the valedictorian had remained behind to be instructor, then professor, in their hated Alma Mater; since Elizabeth had said (she was fifteen then; precocious but sentimental; impelled trustfully to always speak her mind): I hope you won't get glued behind that desk, I hope you won't grow fat and jowly and sad like our fathers. No, he had not got glued; this he told himself sternly now; and all this week he had been feeling in himself (since his cable to Elizabeth, since her quick response) the strength stored up in all these dozen years.

He suddenly resented Firman and his devoted army as though they threatened the twelve-year dead triumvirate of Bruno, Jeffrey, Miles; as though they eagerly dug graves for the generation fifteen years their senior. Into their smug united strength he felt impelled to hurl a knife.

“Spare my aged ear-drums,” he dropped his words heavily on the bold and budding flower of their zeal. “Sheep in wolves' clothing I call it—you want to get in on the ground floor, do you? and buy the old man out?” But his irony was heavy, without meaning even to himself. In young Firman's fierce pale eyes was coldly marked acceptance of the fifteen years which separated them. The army of the younger generation, led against him by his counterpart, the bitter Jew. He longed for autonomy of contemporaries; for Elizabeth, so close a reflection of himself. He resented Emmett, the boy's imagination fired, hanging between two armies, between two generations.

“But I don't know, you see—” He found himself hesitating; but he discovered that he knew he would accept them; to include them was peculiarly fitting, ironically just; but also he felt vaguely apprehensive. “You might all get kicked out of school,” he threatened them lightly.

“We don't give a damn,” the younger generation cried. He could see Emmett barely suppressing a smile of pride for his colleagues.

“I'll have to think it over,” he said; he knew he sounded like an irritating and unreasonable parent; but his mind was made up. “I'll have to put it to the others too. There's plenty of time anyway,” he said uneasily.

“There isn't plenty of time,” they shouted back. “We want to do something—NOW.” They stood, a half-dozen lean and half-grown children; but Bruno saw their banner waving; their numbers multiply.

“All I can do,” he said firmly, “is put your suggestion before Flinders and Blake”; but he knew the Black Sheep must be voted in; they would lend a life and a fury and off-set the tired-radical element.

“Thanks, Doctor Leonard.” “Three cheers!” “Hurray!” they cried, accepting it as a matter settled in their favor; and rose like a triumphant army moving on to conquer further fields. The parts of the flag sprang together; moved in a swirling mani-colored block toward the door. “We'll work like hell, Doctor Leonard,” said Cornelia Carson in her boy-and-woman voice.

Emmett had leaped off his perch to the floor; stood hesitantly beside the desk; for a moment Bruno thought he made an odd gesture forwards, incomprehensibly, perhaps from habit, as a child automatically rises and follows its class out of assembly, to join his generation. Bruno touched his arm; he fell back quickly. “If you can put up with my company, Emmett—we might go over the manifesto again; we might even play chess.” Emmett brightened; smiled ostentatiously at the backs of the departing Sheep.

The little bastard Firman, Bruno thought; the smart wisecracking little Jew;
is there a Magazine
? the nerve of the little devil. But
was there
? It was up to Elizabeth. The door closed on Firman's army; the room was ten shades darker. “Get out the masterpiece, Emmett,” he said; “it's filed under something or other. We'll go over it with Jeffrey's red pencil.”

OH HAVE another drink, Elizabeth! Thanks Elizabeth, I will. “The same, please,” she said to the riddled steward who like a eunuch moved indifferently to serve desires he no longer felt; and did not add “And hurry! hurry! for God's sake hurry, between drinks one falls to thinking—and thinking, from the old Chinese, my boy, is a viper in the chest.” And a cigarette, my dear, can I tempt you? And another lover, can I find one quick enough? Chain drinker, chain smoker, chain lover, chain rover—let the chain sag somewhere and you will have a pain in the lung from cigarettes, a pain in the brain from Pernods, and God knows your soul will ache from undigested unloved lovers. But the steward has forgotten pain with joy, if he ever knew it he's lost the need for quick oblivion; the God damned steward doesn't hurry. My good steward you are a stranger to me but I must tell you all: only this morning he gave me the sack, the gate, le congé, he gave me the bum's rush steward, he gave me back my own toothbrush, he gave me all he had to give and all he had was a bright red copy of Ulysses and my own American toothbrush. Life is the longest distance between two points my good man (even on board my fast express, my rollicking jittery fast express, my twentieth century sex-express), the bar is filled with strangers, all non-lovers, and Denny, my parenthetical Denny, is gone, gone, gone. Close parentheses bravely on the poor little unsatisfactory detour-amour. . . .
Steward a drink for the lady!

You find yourself in the middle of the ocean, mademoiselle? Between two continents so to speak? A case of sink or swim at twenty-six? What is the object of your game, sister? Why have you left one island, why are you crossing madly (all aboard the fast express) to the other? Why will you eagerly seek on the second what you eagerly bid goodbye to on the first? All over the cockeyed world you have carried your tough little American body and your lamb-profile (so like Bruno's)—and what has it got you, Elizabeth, if you will pardon a personal question? what have you today at twenty-six as over and above the ambiguous hopes you entertained six years ago when you left the first gay gent (name of Ferris, good old Ferris, good old art-colony Ferris) and trekked with your toothbrush to the second? Why, I am an emancipated lady, Elizabeth, I play the game like a man, Elizabeth—you donkey, you sentimentalist, you cry-baby, you sissy—what in hell do you want, every damn thing that's going? The answer is Yes, Yes, Yes! But choice involves sacrifice, is largely a matter of elimination, Bruno pedantically said—oh quite some time ago, some years ago in fact, certainly before one started this endless chain, this fast non-stop express, of drinks and unloved lovers. Elizabeth your mind is a slop-pail, all odds and ends and floating twisted orange peels (goodbye, my dear Denny, we're all washed up), orange peels and broken corks and busted truisms—from the damned Chinese—and you tell me my eyes have grown hard, my poor Denny—(
steward will you hurry hurry hurry
). And the only thing you've saved out of the fire my dear is your nasty destructive beloved wit, he said it was sharp as a razor-blade (who said it, which one said that to Elizabeth, was it Brownlow, good old Brownlow—what! mixing your drinks and mixing your lovers, Elizabeth!), he said I was Delilah going around stabbing men with my sharp razor-wit. Ah, here comes my double Scotch!

Set it up, my boy, my riddled ancient eunuch steward, your desires are dead but the melody—oh let's not quote, Elizabeth! Let's not quote and let's not think, let's never do anything but drink. Here's to you Denny my darling, you can't hold your liquor and you can't hold your gals. Maybe if we had an understanding, he said politely, you know, hell with the romantic twaddle-twaddle, do you want me to get on my knees you fool, let's have an understanding. Ah yes, the understanding that passeth love, arrangement instead of relationship—thanks darling, I'd rather have the toothbrush. So long Denny, so long France, so long Florence, Italy—hold everything, America, your wandering daughter's coming home. Home is where you hang your hat and drop your skirt, my dear by the time I'm thirty I'll be at home anywhere in this cockeyed world, I speak the universal language, the twentieth century snappy dead language, of no-love loving, of lust without love, I belong anywhere and nowhere (self-pity is the lowest form of wit), a gal without a country, a ship without a port—never mind America, I'm coming back to stay! Love without lust and lust without love, kisses don't touch you, without them you're lost. . . . Ah stranger, I see you, at yon corner table, give me the glad eye, the sad eye, the mad eye—professional glad girl, hysterical sad girl, the old army game is beginning again. Hold off a bit stranger, where's your technique?

In the strange half-gloom of rainy attic afternoon, now that you're in de-part-ment-al, Bruno said—and of course it was raining that day so they couldn't go out to the carriage-step, so they sat there (are you sure your mother's out? why yes, she went shopping with yours) sat there and talked in the strange half-gloom. Now that you're in de-part-ment-al, Bruno said—and didn't he just tell her what men could do to girls. But can't the women do it back (
steward one more of the same
), she said: if I were a woman I would. But Bruno said no, oh Bruno said no, he said it was up to the man. But the girl can say no if she wants to, Bruno? That floored him a bit, he squirmed and scratched. Then he shot out, She better not—no one might love her and ask her again. So probably love is all that counts (she asked it then and she asked it again). She said would he do it to her; he said no. Of course not, he said. You're crazy, he said, growing angry. She said there was nobody else she loved, no other man except her father, nobody else she knew so well. Bruno said she was practically his kid sister and everybody knew that cousins didn't ‘love' that way. She grew mad and indignant, she reminded him bitterly how he sneaked into the nursery at night and tried to scare her, telling her she was an adopted child and not her own mother's baby at all, not his cousin, not her own nice uncle's niece; if she was adopted surely it was all right? And Bruno said if she told anybody what he told her in the strange half-gloom of rainy attic afternoon he'd pull her damn braids out and he said further that he'd tell how she had shown him where women were different and then he ran downstairs and she ran after him and he jumped on his new two-wheeler and pedalled fiercely down the street and she ran a little way after him and then stopped and stood crying before the house.

Probably love is all that counts (in the long slow days of the carriage-step, in the gently rolling endless days before one boarded the fast express) probably love is all that counts? It took him seven years to answer that one, by that time my hair was up in braids, yes Bruno I know it's high time I know I ought to go off the deep end but all the boys I see are stupid, I don't like any of them, it's true I'm going to be an artist and I have to be free to be an artist, but what can I do if the boys are all stupid? The sooner you get rid of sentimental notions, kid, he said; you're not in de-part-ment-al any more, he said; don't be obsessed by inhibitions, don't be possessed by superstitions; you've got to be free, my dear, free, as free as a man, you must play the man's game and beat him at it; read the books Betsey, you'll see, it's a matter of health mental and physical, a small fact of science, of scientific friction; romantic frustration—the hell with all that; be light, be free, be casual; why don't you try an art colony, kid? no use postponing, no use frustrating, freedom's the password the byword the slyword, don't get possessed, cruise around kid, see what it's about; listen to me Elizabeth, I'll make a man of you yet! Love without lust and lust without love, poor haywire play-girl, drink-sodden gay girl (stick around stranger, have patience, stranger)—hell with it, steward—
one more of the same!

Steward a drink for the lady—the lady is lost, the lady has boarded the fast express, all aboard ladies and gay modern gents, try an art colony first, all aboard, no stops no halts no brooding there, all aboard the twentieth century unlimited, hell-bent for nowhere, the only non-stop through express, try and get off it kid once you're on board, no peace for the young, no rest for the restless, the rollicking jittery cocktail express, nothing can matter so wear down, you nerves, no brakes, no goal, no love, on we go glittering jittering twittering, try and get off it kid once you're on board, it'll rattle you shatter you, if you jump out you're lost, stick with it girl, where's all your masculine guts? The smart young adages race down the tracks, the train runs on theory, the passengers' nerves, the train roars on no stop no change, no love just lust, goodbye home and hello France, goodbye France, I'm coming, home—love without lust and lust without love, the country's on the breadlines, the deadlines, the redlines, have a heart America, I'm coming home to stay.