OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
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— My people were better people than your crowd ever hoped to be-we’ve been here longer and we’re better people — and as for the tombstone-cutter’s son, my father was the best damned stone-cutter that ever lived — he’s dying of cancer and all the doctors in the world can’t kill him — he’s a better man than any little expolice court magistrate who calls himself a judge will ever be-and that goes for you too — you —
Why, you crazy fool! I never said anything about your father —
To hell with you, you damn little bootlicking —
Come on Gene come on you’ve had enough you’re drunk now come on.
Why God-damn you to hell, I hate your guts you —
All right, all right — He’s drunk! He’s crazy — Come on, Bill! Leave him alone! — He don’t know what he’s doing —
All right. Good night, Gene. . . . Be careful now — See you in the morning, boy.
All right, Robert, I mean nothing against you — you —
All right! — All right! — Come on, Bill. Let him alone! Good night, Gene — Come on — let’s go to bed! —
To bed to bed to bed to bed to bed! So, so, so, so, so! Make no noise, make no noise, draw the curtains; so, so, so. We’ll go to supper i’ the morning: so, so, so.
And Ile goe to bedde at noone.
Alone, alone now, down the dark, the green, the jungle aisle between the dark drugged snorings of the sleepers. The pause, the stir, the sigh, the sudden shift, the train that now rumbles on through the dark forests of the dream-charged moon-enchanted mind its monotone of silence and for ever: Out of these prison bands of clothes, now, rip, tear, toss, and haul while the green-curtained sleepers move from jungle depths and the even-pounding silence of eternity — into the stiff white sheets, the close, hot air, his long body crookedly athwart, lights out, to see it shining faintly in the coffined under-surface of the berth above — and sleepless, Virginia floating, dreamlike, in the still white haunting of the moon —
— At night, great trains will pass us in the timeless spell of an unsleeping hypnosis, an endless and unfathomable stupefaction. Then suddenly in the unwaking never-sleeping century of the night, the sensual limbs of carnal whited nakedness that stir with drowsy silken warmth in the green secrecies of Lower Seven, the slow-swelling and lonely and swarm-haunted land — and suddenly, suddenly, silence and thick hardening lust of dark exultant joy, the dreamlike passage of Virginia! — Then in the watches of the night a pause, the sudden silence of up-welling night, and unseen faces, voices, laughter, and farewells upon a lonely little night-time station — the lost and lonely voices of Americans:—“Good-bye! Good-bye, now! Write us when you get there, Helen! Tell Bob he’s got to write! — Give my love to Emily! — Good-bye, good-bye now — write us, soon!”— And then the secret, silken and subdued rustling past the thick green curtains and the sleepers, the low respectful negroid tones of the black porter — and then the whistle cry, the tolling bell, the great train mounting to its classic monotone again, and presently the last lights of a little town, the floating void and loneliness of moon-haunted earth — Virginia!
Also, in the dream — thickets of eternal night — there will be huge steamings on the rail, the sudden smash, the wall of light, the sudden flarings of wild, roaring light upon the moon-haunted and dream-tortured faces of the sleepers!
— And finally, in that dark jungle of the night, through all the visions, memories, and enchanted weavings of the timeless and eternal spell of time, the moment of for ever — there are two horsemen, riding, riding, riding in the night.
Who are they? Oh, we know them with our life and they will ride across the land, the moon-haunted passage of our lives for ever. Their names are Death and Pity, and we know their face: our brother and our father ride ever beside us in the dream-enchanted spell and vista of the night; the hooves keep level time beside the rhythms of the train.
Horsed on the black and moon-maned steeds of fury, cloaked in the dark of night, the spell of time, dream-pale, eternal, they are rushing on across the haunted land, the moon-enchanted wilderness, and their hooves make level thunder with the train.
Pale Pity and Lean Death their names are, and they will ride for evermore the moon-plantations of Virginia keeping time time time to the level thunder of the train pounding time time time as with four-hooved thunder of phantasmal hooves they pound for ever level with the train across the moon-plantations of Virginia.
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum as with storm-phantasmal hooves Lean Death and Pale Pity with quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum . . . campum . . . quadrupedante . . . putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem as with sonitu quatit ungula campum quadrupedante putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem quadrupedante quadrupedante quadrupedante putrem putrem as with sonitu quatit ungula campum quadrupedante putrem . . . putrem . . . putrem putrem putrem . . . as with sonitu quatit ungula campum quadrupedante putrem . . . ungula campum . . . campum . . . ungula . . . ungula campum . . .
v
At day-break suddenly, he awoke. The first light of the day, faint, grey-white, shone through the windows of his berth. The faint grey light fell on the stiff white linen, feverishly scuffed and rumpled in the distressful visions of the night, on the hot pillows and on the long cramped figure of the boy, where dim reflection already could be seen on the polished surface of the berth above his head. Outside, that smoke-grey light had stolen almost imperceptibly through the darkness. The air now shone grey-blue and faintly luminous with day, and the old brown earth was just beginning to emerge in that faint light. Slowly, the old brown earth was coming from the darkness with that strange and awful stillness which the first light of the day has always brought.
The earth emerged with all its ancient and eternal quality: stately and solemn and lonely-looking in that first light, it filled men’s hearts with all its ancient wonder. It seemed to have been there for ever, and, though they had never seen it before, to be more familiar to them than their mother’s face. And at the same time it seemed they had discovered it once more, and if they had been the first men who ever saw the earth, the solemn joy of this discovery could not have seemed more strange or more familiar. Seeing it, they felt nothing but silence and wonder in their hearts, and were naked and alone and stripped down to their bare selves, as near to truth as men can ever come. They knew that they would die and that the earth would last for ever. And with that feeling of joy, wonder, and sorrow in their hearts, they knew that another day had gone, another day had come, and they knew how brief and lonely are man’s days.
The old earth went floating past them in that first gaunt light of the morning, and it seemed to be the face of time itself, and the noise the train made was the noise of silence. They were fixed there in that classic design of time and silence. The engine smoke went striding out upon the air, the old earth — field and wood and hill and stream and wood and field and hill — went stroking, floating past with a kind of everlasting repetitiveness, and the train kept making on its steady noise that was like silence and for ever — until it almost seemed that they were poised there in that image of eternity for ever — in moveless movement, unsilent silence, spaceless flight.
All of the noises, rhythms, sounds and variations of the train seemed to belong to all the visions, images, wild cries and oaths and songs and haunting memories of the night before, and now the train itself seemed united to this infinite monotone of silence, and the boy felt that this land now possessed his life, that he had known it for ever, and could now think only with a feeling of unbelief and wonder that yesterday — just yesterday — he had left his home in the far mountains and now was stroking eastward, northward towards the sea.
And against the borders of the East, pure, radiant, for the first time seen in the unbelievable wonder of its new discovery, bringing to all of us, as it had always done, the first life that was ever known on