From this point on we saw almost nothing of O’Mara. No quarrel. Going different ways, that’s all.
I borrowed a typewriter from Mr. Rawlins, who displayed a touching eagerness to be of service to a man of letters. To be sure, I had handed him quite a line regarding the books I had written, as well as about the magnum opus which was in progress. We ate well in his cosy little restaurant. There were all sorts of side dishes which he thrust upon us gratis, in further recognition, no doubt, of the man of letters. Now and then he put a good cigar in my breast pocket or insisted that we accept a pint of ice cream, to eat when we got home.
It turned out that Rawlins had been a professor of English at the local High School. Which explains the royal sessions we held over the Elizabethan writers. But what endeared me to him most, I do believe, was my love of the Irish writers. The fact that I had read Yeats, Synge, Lord Dunsany, Lady Gregory, O’Casey, Joyce, led him to accept me as a boon companion. He was dying to read my work, but I had sense enough to keep it out of sight. Besides, there was really nothing to show him.
At the rooming house we struck up an acquaintance with a lumber man from West Virginia, Matthews was his name. He was a Scot through and through, but a gallant one. It gave him the utmost pleasure, a sincere pleasure, to drive us about the country in his beautiful car on his off days. He had a liking for good food and good wines, and he knew where they were to be found. It was at Chimney Rock one day that he blew us to a meal of which I can truthfully say that only twice since have I enjoyed anything like it. I must say this of Matthews, that from the very beginning he divined our true situation; from the very beginning of our relationship he made it clear that, whenever we were:; with him, we were never to put our hands into our pockets.
To say only this about him would be to give a false impression of the man. He was not a wealthy man, nor was he what we call a sucker. He was a sensitive, highly intelligent individual who knew almost nothing about books, music or painting. But he knew life—and of nature, animals particularly, he was extremely fond. I said that he was not wealthy. Had he wished to, he could have become a millionaire in no time. But he had no desire to become rich. He was one of those rare Americans who is content with his lot. To be in his company was like being with your own brother. Often, in the evening, we sat on the front porch and talked for five and six hours at a stretch. Easy talk. Restful talk … But the writing … Somehow it wouldn’t come. To finish a simple story, a bad one at that, took me several weeks. The heat had something to do with it. (In the South the heat explains almost everything, except lynching.) Before I could get two lines written my clothes would be drenched with perspiration. I’d sit at the window and stare at the chain gang—all Negroes—working away with pick and shovel, chanting as they worked, the sweat rolling down their backs in rivulets. The harder they worked the less effort I was able to make. The singing got into’ my blood. But what disturbed me even more was the looks of the guards; just to glance into the faces of these human bloodhounds sent the shivers up my spine.
To vary the monotony Mona and I would make an excursion on our own occasionally, selecting some distant spot, any old spot, which we would get to by hitch-hiking. We made these excursions merely to kill time. (In the South time flies like lead.) Sometimes we took the first car that came along, not caring which direction it was taking. Like that, observing one day that we were headed for South Carolina, I suddenly recollected the name of an old school chum who, from last reports, was teaching music in a little college in South Carolina. I decided that we would pay him a visit. It was a long ride and, as usual, we had not a cent in our pockets. I was sure, however, that we could count on having a good lunch with my old friend.
It was a good twenty years since I had last seen this good old chum. He had left school ahead of us in order to study music in Germany. He became a concert pianist, traveled all over Europe, and then returned to America to accept an insignificant post in this little Southern town., I had had a few cards from him—and then silence. As I mused I began to wonder if he could have forgotten who I was. Twenty years is a long time.
Every day, on our way home from school, I would stop at his home to listen to him play. He played all the compositions I was later to hear in concert halls, and he played them (to my youthful mind) as well as the maestros. He had the size and the reach to command attention. On his forehead was a budding growth which, when he grew inspired, looked almost like a short horn. He towered over me by a good foot. He looked like a foreigner and he spoke like a European of the upper class who had learned English with his mother tongue. Add to this that he usually wore striped trousers and a soft black coat. It was in the German class that we struck up a friendship. He had taken German, which he knew perfectly, in order to have that much less to study. The teacher, a delightful, flirtatious young woman with a keen sense of humor, was really taken by him. She pretended, however, to be annoyed with him. Every now and then she gave him a sly dig. One day, incensed by the perfect translation he had just delivered aloud, and without preparation, she asked him why he hadn’t chosen to learn some other language. Hadn’t he any desire to learn something new? And so on. Putting on a malicious smile, he replied that he had better things to do with his time.
Oh you have, have you? Like what, may. I ask?
I have my music.
So! You’re a musician? A pianist—or perhaps a composer?
Both, he said.
And what have you composed thus far?
Sonatas, concertos, symphonies and operas … plus a few quartets.
The class burst into an uproar.
You’re even more of a genius than I thought you were, said she, after the hubbub had died down.
Before the lesson was over he handed me a note which he had hastily scribbled and folded up. I had no more than read it when I was ordered up front. I handed it to her face open. She read the message, blushed crimson, and threw it into the waste basket. All it said was: Sic ist wie eine Blume.
I thought of other things in connection with this genius. How he despised everything American, for example, how he detested our literature, how he mimicked the professors, how he loathed any form of exercise. But above all, I remembered the freedom he enjoyed in his own home and the respect shown him by his parents and brothers. There wasn’t another chap like him in the whole school. How delighted I was when I got my first letter from him, dated Heidelberg. He was thoroughly at home, he wrote, even more of a German than the Germans. Why was I staying in America? Why didn’t I join him and become a good German poet?
I was just thinking how odd it would be if he should say—I don’t remember you—when I realized that we had entered the town. It took less than no time to learn that my old friend had left the day before to tour the East. What luck! We were famished, it being long after noon. In desperation I held on to the Dean, a brittle, querulous old lady, trying to impress upon her the fact that we had made a tremendous detour, on our way to Mexico—our car having broken down some miles away—expressly for the purpose of greeting my dear boyhood friend of long ago. By dint of holding on, chewing her ear off, I managed to get across to her (telepathically) that we were in need of refreshment. With bad grace she eventually ordered up tea and scones for us.
We walked to the edge of the town, to stretch our legs. There we caught a lift homeward in a battered Ford. The driver, a veteran and somewhat cracked, also a bit spifflicated—in the South everyone drinks like a fish—said he would be passing through Asheville. He didn’t seem to know very definitely where he was going, except northward. The conversation which we carried on during the long ride back to Asheville was absolutely crazy. The poor devil had not only been banged up
