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Gargoyles

<h2>9</h2> "Love the stars. Love people's faces. Buildings and faces. What do I know about 'em? God knows. Rotten streets.... Life's a great harlot that men keep chasing. That gives herself to men—all men, everybody. I want her. I want her." He walked angrily, a cap on his head, a pipe clenched between his teeth. He was thinking as he walked. Emotions came out of his heart and burst crests of words in his mind. Angry emotions. There was an anger in him. He was overcoming a feeling of futility as he walked. The street was a carnival fringe. Cheap burlesque theatres, arcades, museums, saloons. This was blurred. He saw no lithographs. One side of the street followed along at his elbow—a slant of pinwheel lights. On the other side across the street, pin points. But he saw nothing. Things passed unresistingly through his eyes. He remembered now a mile of walking. The business section asleep on Sunday evening. He had walked through that. Darkened windows, ghastly inanimations. Why was he angry? "Aw huh!" he snarled. He was cursing something. He asked questions and answered them. This got him nowhere. Stars, buildings, faces—he wanted to knock them over. That was inside him, a wish to knock 'em over. More than a wish. A necessity. But he could only walk. The world scratched at his elbow. He could bite on his pipe. This thing hurt him. People, rotten people. Crazy jellyfish with jellyfish hearts, jellyfish brains. He could swear at 'em like that. But why? He didn't know. Only this thing in him made him blow up. It was easier when he worked. His father calmed him. His father stood over the bench planning the fine-grained wood. A great man because he loved the wood he cut and carved into pieces of furniture. But jellyfish sat in the chairs they made in his father's shop. Damn 'em. "Love people. Say something. What? Say something. Get it out. Aw, the dirty, filthy swine." That was the way he thought as he walked. A long furious mumble in him, this man walked and saw nothing but light slants, spinning windows. He was young and he wore a cap. He would get it out of him ... Show 'em! Ah, a nip to the air. Spring blowing his heart up like a balloon. All they wanted was women. And all women wanted was to be wanted. No. That was wrong. Damn! Always wrong! His feet talked better than his head. Clap, clap on the pavement. Where were the others going? He didn't hate them. Someday it would all come out like swans swimming. Very majestic. He would talk easy and smooth. But now people kept him from putting it over. They wrapped him up. Ideas wrapped up his words and killed them. Streets, buildings, stars chewed at him. He must knock 'em over and get himself free. Put his hands on things and knock Hell out of 'em. "Love 'em. Love 'em. How the Hell ... why the Hell? Lindstrum! Lindstrum! That's my name.... I got a name. I'm the greatest man in the world. The world's greatest all-around individual on two legs walking, smoking. Damn...." But what could he do? Saw wood, smear varnish on wood, monkey around with wood. That didn't get it out. When he wrote it came out. But rotten. He wrote rotten, crazy rotten. If he was the greatest man why in God's name! He'd show 'em. A long breath brought the night into him like a sponge. It drained something out of him. He could grin. A very evil grin at a saloon window. He could look around and notice. That's what eyes were for. Look—people walking. Poor, sad, broken people. So sad.... Ah, tired eyes in the street that looked for lights outside themselves. "I'm going nuts. That's what—nuts." But the mumble went on. Questions and answers in a circle, biting their own tails. God forgive them, all these people. He must do something. Arms around them whispering to their hearts something that would say, "Yes, yes. I know it all about you. How you think one way and feel another. And how everything ends. How everything ends in a little cry that goes up." Love their faces. Damn it! Love 'em.... He'd show 'em. He'd talk to the lights in the street. Why not? "Do you know what? Do you know? It's all a humpty dumpty. Egg-heads falling off a wall and smashing. But I know what. I got your number. Wait...." There was something to say. Why? Damn it ... not that way. Hit poor, sad ones on the head. Better the dirty swine in the City Hall. Aw huh! Wring their necks. What for? Wrong. Something else. They were like him. Brothers, everybody. You could kill the whole of them and there would be something left behind that was good—Life. But a better way than that.... Don't hit. Arms around them, lips to their hearts and talk like that. Make the hyenas sigh. Make the jellyfish weep softly. Make the stars dance in their idiot thoughts. Sing them songs. If only the songs came out. It was evening, spring evening in a dirty lighted street, and he walked biting his pipe. He said to himself, "What's there to this thing? Let us study it. Many people in many houses and many streets. And each of them a known thing. But when you take all of them together, that's an unknown thing. If you know me, if you know one—what then? Nothing. It remains only one known. There is still everything else to know. One man multiplied by a million isn't a million men but an infinitude of millions." He would get the hang of them all though, all the millions. He would think it out, get his fingers on something that didn't exist for fingers to touch. That was art. It was easy when you figured it that way. He walked along often figuring it that way and understanding something that had no words, living with something that was like a strange phantom in a great dark deep. This phantom was a stranger inside him. A phantom like an insane companion that had a way of putting its arms around him, inside him, and a way of holding him like a horrible mother. Then when it did, he stopped calling himself nuts ... nuts. He became silent then and vanished. The phantom devoured him. All there was of him that everybody knew, that even he knew, all that vanished. The phantom devoured him and it was easy then. But the phantom let him go, took its arms off him, and he came back, out of the deep. Then he felt himself leaping up with a choke in his lungs, leaping through layers and layers with no surface to reach. He must go up, up from the easy embrace of the phantom and keep on raging, yelling out to himself that something had sent him shooting up. Now he walked and it was easy. The night blotted out his eyes and he lived with himself down deep where the easy embrace waited. Such moments came when he walked and he must be careful. That was writing, being careful and watching the little words that danced high up and that he could watch when he raised his eyes from the embrace. Skyrockets far away, he watched them breaking in crazy spatters of light against the top of things where the sky came to an end. He was thinking like that now. Lucid thoughts that he later stared back upon and wondered, "What the hell were they? I had something, what was it?" Now he was thinking them with this deceptive lucidity as if they were something. He was thinking how when he was younger, when he was a boy, he used to run down country roads. Apples trees and rivers and growing fields that sang at night were there. And yet, there was nothing. What did that mean? That was easy to answer. There was nothing because it was all outside him in a marvelous way. When he was a boy long ago, so long ago, and he lay on his back and looked at the night and the night was nothing in his head, the night was a song that chanted itself to him. The stars were something he had spoken. Darkness was a sentence echoing off his lips. And the world was marvelously outside and it gave itself to him. The boy lying on his back handed the world to himself as a gift. There was nothing to want, everything to have. Long ago when he was a boy watching the day and night without thinking. But it all went away. Now what was it? That was easy to answer. The night that had been a song chanting itself, the stars that had been his words dancing, the darkness, clouds, trees, river and roads, the fields and the people crawling with tiny steps under the cornfield sky—these went away all together and he couldn't find them any more. These things he had said without speaking, these all went away. Beautiful familiars, they misunderstood something in him and vanished from him. That was long ago. Now he could remember them and his remembering them was like hearing them again. That's what made him angry. He could hear them as if they were calling, "Find us ... find us...." And he said back, "All right, I'll find you. Wait. I'll come after you somehow. You're my old friends. I'll get you back. Christ knows how—but, wait...." But this made him think he was laughing at himself, kidding himself. He knew better. The things that had gone away were in the faces of people, in buildings, in lights, in streets under his feet. Christ! why couldn't he lay hands on them again since they came so close they choked him and made him howl inside with choking. He was letting go now again. The easy embrace was shooting him up and he began to know again he was nuts. He hung on to himself a little by saying words.... "Easy boy.... Easy...." He stopped walking for a second and a happy smile came to his set mouth. The smile said it was over. He was Lief Lindstrum again and nobody else. He could become calm like this. It was like blowing a fire out with a grin. His head was clear and he was happy. The street was like a merry-go-round. The night had a smell of life in it. That came from the lake. Whatever living might be and whatever the choke inside him was, a man was a fool to forget this other—the calm, grinning strength of muscles and the way his nose buzzed when he drew his breath in. Now he was Lief Lindstrum walking to call on his girl. And he could think of others, the poor little others, the superfluous others. Only he didn't have to get angry at them. Or he didn't have to fall in love with them. It was just thinking straight. Well, the way men talked to each other was funny. The way they swapped lies was funny. Poor, rich, happy, sad, broken, bawling ones—they all made the same lies to each other. The government was a lie. God was a lie. And all the gabble about good and bad and what-not-to-do and what-to-do, and all the laws and everything beginning from the beginning and going ahead as far as you wanted, it was all lies. So many of them that all the philosophers had never been able to begin straightening things out. And if somebody found out something true, what then? Well, they grabbed it and made it into a lie, pronto! used it as a lie. The poor little crawling ones on the earth made up lies to explain things but most of all they made up lies to keep alive. If they didn't lie to each other they would all fall apart and vanish because nature would have it that way. So they must go contrary to nature and keep on surviving. Nature demanded the elimination of the unfit. But it was the unfit that desired most to live. So the unfit made laws and rules and institutions, and inside them, protected by them, kept alive. So the will to live was the thing that created lies. But the worst lie the little people told was when they called themselves life. That was the chief lie, the Grand Sachem and High God of all lies. Because they were not life. They were part of something inexplicable that altogether might be called life. But each of them separately was a dead one, a dead one buried deep in life. That was the difference about him, Lindstrum. He wasn't buried in life. There were moments when he shot up like a man shooting through layers of graves. The others let the thing called life pile up on them and it became a mystery of graves that reached to the farthest star. But with him there was no piling up. He would keep on shooting out of it till he had lifted himself up where there were no graves. "Shh, shh," he murmured to himself, "let's not be nuts tonight. Plenty of nights for that. Let's talk about other things. About her." Her face was beautiful. Dark eyes, dark hair, silent, that was like she was. The thought of her made him grimace inside with pain. He wanted her as much as that. But what did he want her for? God knows. What does one want for? In order to get rid of wanting. Nothing else. Kiss her? Bah! She was a victory. He wanted her like that. When he was near her they didn't have to talk or hold hands. They came together in a different way. She was so beautiful.... "I love her," he said quietly. He wanted to be quiet so he spoke quietly. She was marvelous. He would like to cut himself up into bits and give himself that way to her. He would like to die a thousand different ways and say, "Here, I destroy everything I am in order to become a gift for you." That was like placing oneself on a burning altar—the ecstacy of the sacrificed one. That was it. Some nights like this the world became too small to live in. The city swept away from his senses and everything in the city seemed like a room full of cheap little broken toys he had outgrown. He would sit in a room within this bigger room, a lamp on his table and write. Or he would strike out like this time and walk to her—miles across streets. "I want her," he said. His thought paused. "But what do I want of her?" he asked. "I don't know. But I want to give myself to something." And he began thinking over how many ways there were to die as a gift. This lighted window was her house. The curtains were down but light spurted through the sides. The sight of the house with its light-fringed windows depressed him. It was a disillusionment. She wasn't a woman then like he was a man but she was a part of things. He saw her as he walked up the stone steps, saw her talking to people. She had parents. In his mind she lived as an entity. A beautiful one without background or lighted windows or stone steps. Someone for him. Nobody else. He rang. The door opened. A man like himself stood blinking in the lighted hall. "Good evening," said Lindstrum. His voice was deep for his age. He spoke in a drawl that seemed edged with anger. "Is Doris in?" "Oh, hello," Basine exclaimed. "Yes, she's in. Come right in." People were talking in the next room. "Company?" said Lindstrum. He didn't want to go in. But Basine was leading the way. The supper had ended ten minutes ago. The company looked up at him. They were all dressed well. Their faces were dressed well, too. They wore carefully tailored satisfactions in their eyes. When they smiled their mouths postured like ballet dancers in a finale. They were rich people. Their hands were soft. The room blurred before Lindstrum. There was no reason for it now because he wasn't thinking or caring but a rage crept into his senses. He breathed in deep with his mouth opened and the feel of the air on his teeth and tongue made his jaw set. Because he would have to be careful what he said. Because he was saying inside to himself, "Damn 'em. The scum!" His eyes brought pictures into his anger. They stared with deliberation into other eyes and brought back messages. He was being introduced. He was saying to himself deep down, "They're all alike. Like peas in a pod. They smirk and talk alike. And they're all stuck on themselves alike. And they're all liars—damn liars, all alike." He would have to take care and not argue. He would sit down. Doris was upstairs and she would appear in a minute. Then they would go for a walk and shake this room out of their eyes. They chattered like monkeys. Satisfied with themselves. Yes, know-it-alls, tickled to death with themselves. An old man with a heavy pink face and sleepy eyes, a well dressed old man they called Judge—if he could punch this guy in the face, let his fist smash into his jellyface, God! what a thrill! A flushed girl, Doris' sister, wiggling her body in a chair. What she needed was somebody to grab hold of her and say, "Come on kid." A square, hard-faced old woman talking of society. What she needed was someone to walk up behind her and kick her hard. And when she raised her glasses to look, laugh like Hell and spit in her eye. That would make her human! And this smart-aleck Basine.... Hm! What he needed was somebody to tie him to a stake in a dark prairie and let the wind and rain go over him till he got hungry and began to whine. That's what they all needed—wind and rain to bring them back to life. But he must be careful and say nothing. There was Doris' mother. She wasn't so bad. But this other guy, this writing guy, talking about books! God! Why didn't somebody choke the life out of him! What did he know about books? And he talked about writing! What was good writing? He asked that, this guy did! He would have to be careful what he said to this guy and keep himself from jumping up and murdering him. Hell take all of them and make 'em burn. That's what they needed. He hated all of them. They were rich. Damn 'em! He must sit and grin at them, these jellyfish who wiggled in their graves and called their wiggles by great names, who were dead ... dead.... How dead they were! And happy about it! Happy.... Didn't they know how dead they were? Doris was like them. He was a fool for coming to see her. As if she were any different from them. She belonged with this filthy crew. She was a filthy little tart like the rest of them. Let her go to Hell. He'd tell her to go to Hell when he saw her. She was one he could talk to. Uh huh, they were giving him the up and down. His shoes were dirty. His collar soiled. His clothes weren't pressed. That was the way with these dead ones, they made standards of their clothes because clothes were all they had. And their idea was to make people feel inferior who were inferior to their clothes or to their manners or to their other artificialities. But he didn't have to feel inferior if he didn't want to. He was the kind who could stand up in a graveyard like this and say "Go to Hell" to the pack of them and grin and walk away and forget all about it. He noticed they looked at him not quite as they looked at each other. That was right. They knew he had their number. Mrs. Basine, too, was looking. She asked: "I understand you write, Mr. Lindstrum?" Books all bound and pretty standing in a row with your name in the papers as a young writer of note and invitations to speak at women's clubs—was what she meant. That was what writing was to people, to jellyfish. "I try to write," he answered, making the correction softly so that his words purred. "You should know Aubrey Gilchrist," said Basine. "Do you know his work?" "I do not," said Lindstrum still purring. "What does he write?" Basine chuckled inside. His unaccountable aversion for Aubrey was growing. "Novels," said Basine. "Oh," said Lindstrum dragging the syllable out and placing a huge granite period after it. "What writers do you like?" Fanny inquired with a successful attempt at social artlessness. She was looking for something in this friend of Doris'. She was in awe of him because he was dirty looking and because he swayed as he sat in his chair. He kept swaying as if he were on secret springs and would jump up any minute. He frightened Fanny. "I read good books," said Lindstrum, "books written by men." Mrs. Gilchrist sat up stiffly. Her husband peered out of his glasses. He liked Lindstrum. He wanted to talk to him. But he got no further than clearing his throat several times. The judge interrupted with a glower. He was given the floor, eyes turning to him. A defender. But he merely glowered. That was his decision, that settled it. If he glowered this moujik was done for. He glowered Lindstrum off the face of the earth. But Lindstrum turned full on him and thrust his face forward as if he were going to come closer. "What kind of books do you read?" he asked the glowerer. The snap in his voice startled Henrietta. She was afraid for a minute this strange looking creature waiting for Doris would do something and she turned appealingly to Basine. "All kinds, sir," the judge answered in his most effective baritone. Lindstrum nodded his head slowly and a grin came into his eyes. He kept looking at the judge and grinning and nodding his head and just as the judge was going to say something Lindstrum abandoned him. He had turned to Aubrey. Aubrey had grown eager. A confusion inspired by an impulse toward garrulity was in his eyes. He wanted to talk to this Lindstrum and discuss things beyond everybody in the room. Lindstrum thought he was a soda-water clerk. One of those radicals with unbalanced ideas. But he wanted to talk to him. Perhaps they had something in common? Aubrey felt himself growing angry. But it was not an anger of silences. An anger of words. He wanted to talk, to reason with Lindstrum and put himself over with Lindstrum. Lindstrum was like a conscience. "Hello!" The arrival stood up and looked at Doris. He forgot about calling her names. She was smiling at him like a fresh wind blowing through his heart. The roomful dropped out of sight. "Do you want to go for a walk?" he asked slowly. "It's nice and cold outside." She nodded and Lindstrum, with a long, deliberate stare at the company spoke to them. "Good night," he said. When he had said it he continued to stare as if he were weighing the matter over carefully and should say something more. The pause grew embarassing but not to him. Without nodding his head he repeated the result of his deliberations. "Good night," he said in the same voice. That was enough. He left them sitting in their chairs—a general calmly marching off the field of victory. He left behind a silence. The company was uncomfortable. Mrs. Gilchrist and the judge stared hard at the doorway through which Lindstrum had passed. They wanted to insult the doorway. Lindstrum's visit had had a curious effect upon Ramsey. He had sat silent and avoided the young man's eyes. But he had felt himself becoming animated as if something were exciting him. When the young man had glanced at him for a moment he had blushed and an odd nervousness had made his thin body tremble. Now that Lindstrum was gone he felt the room had become empty and entirely lacking in interest. "How do you like him?" Mrs. Basine whispered at his side. She was worried. "Him? Oh yes, the young man," Ramsey muttered. "He ... he has nice eyes." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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