“A believer in perfection.”
“A believer.”
“Perfection.”
“Rich happiness, that such a son is drowned.”
The five people crossed the meadow, stepping carefully among the fishing nets which Mr. Riley had spread out to dry. The hot sun drew a salt smell out of them, marshy and rich, fish-scaly. Passing under the arrowy-leaved ailanthus tree, and then rounding the sand-banked corner opposite Mr. Black’s forge (Mr. Black was shoeing a horse) they stepped upon the wooden bridge, tripartite, the first and third sections of which crossed the two branches of the forked river, the intermediate section being merely a built-up road-bed on the tongue of marsh. The telegraph wires were singing multitudinously in the wind, a threnody. A metal windmill clanked. They crossed the first section of bridge, looking into the deep and rapid water, and seeing the red sponges that wavered deep-down on the pediments of barnacled stone; and then paused on the squeaking path of trodden and splintered scallop shells, which was bordered with starry St. John’s Wort, coarse sappy honeysweet goldenrod, and scarlet-blistered poison ivy. Leaning then on the red wooden railing, they watched the two Rileys and Mr. Ezra Pope, the town constable, rowing the dirty dory toward a point at the farther end of the marsh. Low water. Sea gulls rose in a screaming cloud as they approached. The younger Riley, in red rubber boots, jumped out and pulled the dory up into the eelgrass. The two others got out, and all three moved slowly into the marsh, lifting high their knees. They were stooping over. Then they rose again, carrying something. It was Charlie Riehl, who had drowned himself rather than appear as a witness at the trial. Klio klio! At five in the morning it was: there among those red sponges. Feet first; with his pockets full of lead. Klio!
“Those are holes that were his eyes,” murmured Smith. “Nothing of him but hath fed—”
“Narcissus! He sees himself drowned, like this Charlie Riehl. And pities himself. Well, why not? That’s normal enough …”
Faubion held up her hands, on which the blue corposants were beginning to fade.
“Scavengers!” she cried. “That’s what we are. Devourers of the dead: devourers of ourselves. Prometheus and the vulture are one and the same. Well! I will not countenance it. Any more than Demarest does.”
She gave a little laugh, and the others laughed also, lightly and bitterly. Something had gone wrong with the scene. Disruption. Dislocation of affects. Quarrel of ghosts. Fecal coloring of imagery. The night falling over like a basket, spilling miscellaneous filth. No! Only the atom in the brain! falling infinitesimally, but by accident wrecking some central constellation. The five ghosts quarreling on the deck with harsh voices were the five sea gulls in Trout River. Charlie Riehl was himself. Drowning was consummation. It was all very simple — you turned a screw, and everything at once changed its meaning. Klio, said Cynthia. Klio, klio, sang the mad nymphs for Dido, ululating; and the vulture, tearing with sadistic beak at the liver of Prometheus—klio, klio! it cried, turning the Semitic profile of Silberstein … But this was disturbing! One must pull oneself together — set the basket of stars on end again. What was it that had caused this trouble, this quick slipping brain slide, vertigo, that sent everything skirling and screaming raucously down the abyss? Whirlpool. Cloaca. Groping for trout in a peculiar river. Plaster of warm guts. Clyster. Death, with your eyes wide open. Christ!.. He leaned hard on lifeboat No. 14 (the motor lifeboat — they took off the canvas cover to test the engine, and stepped a little wireless pole in the bow thwart) and shut his eyes. Think. Project. Sublimate. Everything depends on it. In the sweat of your brow, the ventricle contracted, the dew dripping—
“Is it not possible, then”—he cried—“this perfection of understanding and interchange? Cynthia?”
“Oh, as for that—” Cynthia’s voice seemed to come from farther off, floatingly.
“As for that!” jeered Silberstein.
“That!” quacked Smith.
He opened his eyes. The four figures, in the now almost total darkness, were scarcely perceptible — mere clots in the night. The stars had been engulfed.
“He came to me with a shabby chessboard under his arm! And he had forgotten to button—”
“Please adjust your dress before leaving …”
“He permitted me to pay his fare in the bus! Yes, he did! You may not believe it, but he did!”
“Rear seat reserved for smokers … Lovers with umbrellas at the top—”
“And do you know what he said when I asked him if he would like to come one afternoon to hear my brother William play Bach on the piano? Do you know what he said, delicious provincial little Yankee that he is and always will be?… ‘You bet!’”
“Ho ho! Ha ha! He he!”
“Suppress that stage laughter, please. Silence! His impurial highness—”
“I beg you,” said Faubion, “I beg you not to go on with this!”
“Silence! His impurial highness, greatest failure as a dramatist that the world has ever known, supreme self-devouring egotist, incomparable coward, sadist and froterer, voyeur and onamist, exploiter of women — William Demarest, late of New York, and heir of all the ages—”
“Stop!”
“What’s the matter with Faubion? Is she in love with the idiot?”
“Perhaps she’s right. We ought to be sorry for him. More to be pitied than blamed. After all, he’s an idealist: a subjective idealist.”
“Who said so? An automaton like the rest of us. Nigger, blow yo’ nose on yo’ sleeve, and let dis show pro-ceed!”
“You must remember that we are only figments of his—”
Klio! klio! klio!
The gulls, the waves, the corposants, all screamed at once. The wave in Caligula’s dream. The sea ghost, seaweed-bearded, with arms of green water and dripping fingers of foam. Oo — wash — oo — wallop—are you awake — King Buskin?… And he never said a mumbalin’ word. The blood came twinklin’ down. And he never said a mumbalin’ word … Tired, tortured, twisted; thirsty, abandoned, betrayed.
“—Silence! The transfiguration scene will now begin. Dress rehearsal. Special benefit performance for Mr. Demarest. At the first stroke of the bell, Miss Battiloro, arch snob and philanderer, several times engaged, virgin in fact but not in thought, she who stood on a June day perspiring and admiring, adoring and caloring, before the unfinished Titian, will take her place beneath the mainmast, on the port side, facing the stern. Her head will be bowed forward meekly, and in her hands she will clasp lightly, with exquisite Rossetti unlikelihood, a waxen lily. At the second stroke of the bell, the five angelic corposants will unite in the air above her, singing softly, as they tread the wind, the verses written by Mr. Demarest for the occasion—King Caligula. No weeping, by request. Listening to this heavenly music, with its message of healing for all mankind, Miss Battiloro will lift her eyes, in the attitude of one who sees, at long last, the light that never was on land or sea. While she is in this attitude, the third stroke of the bell will be given by the shipboy; and on the instant Miss Battiloro will be transformed, for all time, into a stained-glass widow. Beg pardon, I mean window. Now is everything in readiness, please? Shipboy, are you there?… He says he is there. Is Miss Battiloro ready to make this noble and beautiful sacrifice?”