“Say, Gus, how long will it take you to get it finished?”
He raised his face, suspending his knife blade. They were twins: just as there was something masculine about her jaw, so was there something feminine about his.
“For God’s sake,” he exclaimed, “let me alone, can’t you? Go away and pull your clothes down. Don’t you ever get tired of waving your legs around?”
A yellow negro in a starched jacket stepped silently around the corner. When they looked up he turned without speaking. “All right, Walter,” she said. But he was gone. They followed, leaving the cigarette to lift its unwavering plume and a thin smell of burning wicker into the somnolent air.
9
fool fool you have work to do o cursed of god cursed and forgotten form shapes cunningly sweated cunning to simplicity shapes out of chaos more satisfactory than bread to the belly form by a madmans dream gat on the body of chaos Ie garçon vierge of the soul horned by utility o cuckold of derision.
The warehouse, the dock, was a formal rectangle without perspective. Flat as cardboard, and projecting at a faint motionless angle above it, against a lighter spaciousness and a sky not quite so imminent and weary, masts of a freighter lying against the dock. Form and utility, Gordon repeated to himself. Or form and chance. Or chance and utility.
Beneath it, within the somber gloom of the warehouse where men had sweated and labored, across the empty floor lately thunderous with trucks, amid the rich overripe odors of the ends of the earth — coffee and resin and tow and fruit — he walked, surrounded by ghosts, passing on.
The hull of the freighter bulked, forecastle and poop soaring darkly sharp, solid, cutting off vision, soaring its superstructure on the sky. The unseen river continued a ceaseless sound against the hull, lulling it with a simulation of the sea, and about the piles of the wharf.
The shore and the river curved away like the bodies of two dark sleepers embracing, curved one to another in slumber; and far away opposite the Point, banked lights flickered like a pile of yet living ashes in a wind.
Gordon paused, leaning over the edge of the wharf, staring down into the water. stars in my hair in my hair and beard i am crowned with stars christ by his own hand an autogethsemane carved darkly out of pure space but not rigid no no an unmuscled wallowing fecund and foul the placid tragic body of a woman who conceives without pleasure bears without pain what would i say to her fool fool you have work to do you have nothing accursed intolerant and unclean too warm your damn bones then whisky will do as well or a chisel and maul any damn squirrel keeps warm in a cage go on go on then israfel revolted surprised behind a haycock by a male relation fortitude become a matchflame snuffed by a small white belly where was it i once saw a dogwood tree not white but tan tan as cream what will you say to her bitter and new as a sunburned flame bitter and new those two little silken snails somewhere under her dress horned pinkly yet reluctant o israfel ay wax your wings with the thin odorless moisture of her thighs strangle your heart with hair fool fool cursed and forgotten of god He flung back his head and laughed a huge laugh in the loneliness.
His voice surged like a dark billow against the wall behind him, then ebbing outward over the dim, formless river, it died slowly away… then from the other shore a mirthless echo mocked him, and it too died away. He went on treading the dark resin-scented wharf.
Presently he came to a break in the black depthless monotony of the wall, and the wall again assumed a pure and inevitable formal significance sharp against the glow of the city. He turned his back to the river and soon was among freight cars black and angular, looming; and down the tracks, much further away than it appeared, an engine glared and panted while filaments of steel radiating from it toward and about his feet were like incandescent veins in a dark leaf.
There was a moon, low in the sky and worn, thumbed partly away like an old coin, and he went on. Above banana and palm the cathedral spires soared without perspective on the hot sky. Looking through the tall pickets into Jackson square was like looking into an aquarium — a moist and motionless absinthe-cloudy green of all shades from ink black to a thin and rigid feathering of silver on pomegranate and mimosa — like coral in a tideless sea, amid which globular lights hung dull and unstraying as jellyfish, incandescent yet without seeming to emanate light; and in the center of it Andrew’s baroque plunging stasis nimbused about with thin gleams as though he too were recently wetted.
He crossed the street into shadow, following the wall. Two figures stood indistinguishably at his door. “Pardon me,” he said touching the nearer man peremptorily, and as he did so the other man turned.
“Why, here he is now,” this one said. “Hello, Gordon, Julius and I were looking for you.”
“Yes?” Gordon loomed above the two shorter men, staring down at them, remote and arrogant. Fairchild removed his hat, mopping his face. Then he flipped his handkerchief viciously about his head.
“I don’t mind the heat,” he explained fretfully. “I like it, in fact. Like an old racehorse, you know. He’s willing enough, you know, but in the cool weather when his muscles are stiff and his bones ache, the young ones all show him up. But about Fourth of July, when the sun gets hot and his muscles loosen up and his old bones don’t complain any more, then he’s good as any of ’em.”
“Yes?” repeated Gordon looking above them into shadow, The Semitic man removed his cigar.
“It will be better on the water to-morrow,” he said.
Gordon brooded above them. Then he remembered himself. “Come up,” he directed abruptly, elbowing the Semitic man aside and extending his latchkey.
“No, no,” Fairchild demurred quickly, “We won’t stop.
Julius just reminded me: we came to see if you’d change your mind and come with us on Mrs. Maurier’s boat to-morrow? We saw Tal—”
“I have,” Gordon interrupted him. “I’m coming.”
“That’s good,” Fairchild agreed heartily. “You probably won’t regret it much. He may enjoy it, Julius,” he added. “Besides, you’ll be wise to go on and get it over with, then she’ll let you alone. After all, you can’t afford to ignore people that own food and automobiles, you know. Can he, Julius?”
The Semitic man agreed. “When he clutters himself up with people (which he can’t avoid doing) by all means let it be with people who own food and whisky and motor cars. The less intelligent, the better.” He struck a match to his cigar. “But he won’t last very long with her, anyway. Hell last even a shorter time than you did,” he told Fairchild.
“Yes, I guess you’re right. But he ought to keep a line on her, anyhow. If you can neither ride nor drive the beast yourself, it’s a good idea to keep it in a pasture nearby: you may some day be able to swap it for something, you know.”
“A Ford, for instance, or a radio,” the Semitic man suggested. “But you’ve got your simile backward.”
“Backward?” repeated the other.
“You were speaking from the point of view of the rider,” he explained.
“Oh,” Fairchild remarked. He emitted a disparaging sound. “Ford’ is good,” he said heavily.
“I think ‘radio’ is pretty good, myself,” the other said complacently.
“Oh, dry up.” Fairchild replaced his hat. “So you are coming with us, then,” he said to Gordon.
“Yes. I’m coming. But won’t you come up?”
“No, no: not to-night. I know your place, you see.” Gordon made no reply, brooding his tall head in the shadow. “Well, I’ll phone her and have her send a car for you tomorrow,” Fairchild added. “Come on, Julius, let’s go. Glad you changed your mind,” he added belatedly. “Good night. Come on, Julius.”
They crossed the street and entered the square. Once within the gates they were assailed, waylaid from behind every blade and leaf with a silent, vicious delight.
“Good Lord,” exclaimed Fairchild, flipping his handkerchief madly about, “let’s go over to the docks. Maybe there ain’t any nautical ones.” He hurried on, the Semitic man ambling beside him, clamping his dead cigar.
“He’s a funny chap,” the Semitic man remarked. They waited for a trolley to pass, then crossed the street. The wharf, the warehouse, was a formal rectangle with two slender masts projecting above it at a faint angle. They went on between two dark buildings and halted again while a switch engine drew an interminable monotony of cars up the track.
“He ought to get out of himself more,” Fairchild commented. “You can’t be an artist all the time. You’ll go crazy.”
“You couldn’t,” the other corrected. “But then, you are not an artist. There is somewhere within you a bewildered stenographer with a gift for people, but outwardly you might be anything. You are an artist only when you are telling about people, while Gordon is not an artist only when he is cutting at a piece of wood or stone.
And it’s very difficult for a man like that to establish workable relations with people. Other artists
