— No?
— No.
— Then where’s your mother.
— Ah, ha! The cloven hoof. I knew I’d get you down to that at last.
— Down to what.
— The mother.
— Speak for yourself, Andy. I’m only trying to help you.
— Yes yes yes yes. So you are. Good old Bill. Top hole. But this death business. This dying, this piecemeal dying. This death that creeps in from the extremities, slowly, slowly — and up from the unconscious, too, darkly — these dreams of death, corruption, rot — it’s all been said, I know, I’m tiresome. But it’s real, just the same. To lie in massed corruption, and to stink. To walk through cold corruption, and to speak. To think through foul abstractions, and to live. You know what I mean. I hate you, but I’ll tell you. Shall I tell you? Yes, I’ll tell you. You don’t deserve it. You understand nothing, you have no perceptions, you’re a fool, a well-meaning fool, a failure, but I’ll tell you. What is it gives you such a power over the subtle, Bill? Your pseudonymous calm? No doubt. Your rare combination of muscle and breadth of brow. Brawn and brains. But the brains, not so hot. Not so hot. Why, with your stupidity and my brains, Bill, we’d rock the world. Let me see — I was going to tell you something. What was it. Oh, yes, it was my dream last night. This will be easy for you, and I make you a present of it, gratis. How did it begin? I was asleep with Bertha, that was it — and she woke me. She said we must go upstairs. So I got up and followed her upstairs, taking my pillow with me. It seemed to be a strange house, and yet somehow familiar. At the top of the stairs we went into a dark bedroom, and there, in a wide double bed, with a single bed beyond, were my mother and father. My father was in the single bed, and Bertha walked around to it. Meanwhile, I myself — tee-hee — crept softly into the wide bed with my mother, who was asleep. Isn’t this a beauty? Could consciousness go further in deliberate self-torture? I lay on my side, facing my sleeping mother, drew up my knees, and by accident touched her flank with one of my hands. I felt very small, my head and hands were small, my hair was close-cropped and thick (you see how young I was) — and also, suddenly, I was filled with horror. I got up hastily, and spoke to Bertha, who was somewhere in the dark. Told her I was going. She answered from the dark: “Do you call this a MARRIAGE?” I ran out into the hall, and darted down the stairs, which were dark, and there I discovered a strange thing — the stairs were strewn with the family silver — forks and knives and spoons were scattered all up and down, some of them still sliding slowly and heavily, as if only just launched downard by the burglar, who, I assumed, must be still in the house — a nameless ghost-like horror came over me, and I woke up. I woke up. Sweating.
— Jupiter and Semele.
— I don’t get you, but we needn’t go into it. Every man to his own interpretation, all of them correct. Oedipus complex, castration complex, anything you like.
— What about that silver.
— My family silver, that’s all.
— You recognized it.
— You bet. Acanthus pattern and everything.
— I suppose you have it?
— Of course I have it. It came down to me from my mother!.. Hot dog.
— Pretty good. I don’t seem to know much about your mother. You’ve never spoken much about her, have you.
— Why should I.
— How did she die.
— She was drowned.
— How old were you.
— Twelve. Anything else? I’d got all my second teeth. I knew how to read and write. My favorite book was Jackanapes. After that, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. As you might expect.
— You said it, Andy! You’re helpless. None so blind as those who see and doubt it. You know all this, but you won’t let it do you any good. Isn’t that it? Think it over.
— Oh, for God’s sake, Bill.
— Anything you like. That’s a swell dream.
— Isn’t it, though? By God, yes. I knew you’d like it. But wait till I tell you the one about the bones.
— Why not go into this one a little more, first.
— Oh, no, what’s the use. It’s all as plain as a codpiece.
— It is to me. I’m not so sure it is to you.
— Take my word for it. I know what you mean — don’t be stupid! Sure, I’ll have a cracker and a drink. Why, hello, Michel, old fellow! Are you still there? My God, if I could only sculp — is that the word? — I’d twist the whole damned college yard into a single group of agonized gods that would send the northstar west. What a chance, what a chance. I’d squeeze Appleton Chapel with one squeeze into such a shape of hypocrisy and cold slow sweat as even Cambridge would recognize … Take it from me, kid, take it from me.
— So you’re resisting again, eh.
— Why not. I believe in resistance. Why acquiesce.
— There’s a lot to be said for acquiescence, Andy — and you know it. Don’t you.
— Oh, have it your own way. You want every one to be a yes-man. A pitiful dirty little yea-sayer. No ironies, no doubts. Everything for the best. God is good, the snail’s on the heart. And all that kind of honeycomb tripe. If you feel sick, why, yes, that’s good, that is, and all the swarm of sick lights in the brain that go with it, now to port and now to starboard. I see them now. Maggots. What the hell. Put your head down. No, I’ll open the window.… Thanks.… That’s better.… How they drift, Bill, how they drift, did you ever notice? In little slow streams, and then hot swarms, and then little slow streams again and then all swooping upward like a lost meal. Woops, my dear. I’ll put my lunch out into Massachusetts Avenue, shall I? A nice warm waffle for some nocturnal policeman to study. If he were really intelligent, he’d know what I’d been thinking, wouldn’t he.
— Go on, try the feather.
— Get the hell out of here.
— Just as you like.
— Of course it is. This is just what I like. A cold band of air on my pituitary body. That intersteller current of the soul. Birdwings, too, and the albatross, and the arctic sponge of nescience.… This is free association.
— So I see.
— See something else for a change. Go fry yourself.
— Go kill yourself. Jump out, why don’t you.
— I would for a nickel.
— Here’s the nickel.
— Let me see it. Why it’s actually a nickel.
— Why not cut out the melodrama for a change and settle down to a little hard thinking?
— You mean hard drinking, Bill. I’ve thought too much.
— You’ve behaved like a spanked child.
— Well, why not, that’s what I am.
— You needn’t be. And you needn’t think only of yourself.
— So you’re going to preach again.
— I’m just telling you the truth.
— Keep the truth for yourself. What I want is darkness. I want to sleep. I want the sea and the moon. Above all, the sea. Did you ever think of it. Did it ever really terrify you and delight you. You know, at midnight, under a brown wild moon, with a warm south wind, and a surf running. So that the surf is all of sinister curled bronze, and the sound fills the whole damned night, and the beach looks like a parchment on which nothing has been written. Nothing. Wide silver. Smooth. I know just where it is, too. North of the Gurnett. Not far from Clark’s Island. The seals are on it, and I rowed there in the dark. I had a tin can to bail with. Did you ever row a dory, Bill. I had one, it was named Doris, and a little four-pronged anchor, which I buried in the beach. I love the feeling of a sea-soaked rope, a salt-water painter. And the slow sluggish slushy grind of the flat bottom as it slides up the sand and pebbles and swings to one side.… What was I saying.