Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
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with insane sing-song repetition, he began to mutter over and over again: “Whoever You Are, be good to Ben to-night. Show him the way . . . Whoever You Are, be good to Ben to-night. Show him the way . . .” He lost count of the minutes, the hours: he heard only the feeble rattle of dying breath, and his wild synchronic prayer.
Light faded from his brain, and consciousness. Fatigue and powerful nervous depletion conquered him. He sprawled out on the floor, with his arms pillowed on the bed, muttering drowsily. Eliza, unmoving, sat across the bed, holding Ben’s hand. Eugene, mumbling, sank into an uneasy sleep.
He awoke suddenly, conscious that he had slept, with a sharp quickening of horror. He was afraid that the little fluttering breath had now ceased entirely, that the effect of his prayer was lost. The body on the bed was almost rigid: there was no sound. Then, unevenly, without rhythm, there was a faint mutter of breath. He knew it was the end. He rose quickly and ran to the door. Across the hall, in a cold bedroom, on two wide beds, Gant, Luke, and Helen lay exhausted.
“Come,” cried Eugene. “He’s going now.”
They came quickly into the room. Eliza sat unmoving, oblivious of them. As they entered the room, they heard, like a faint expiring sigh, the final movement of breath.
The rattling in the wasted body, which seemed for hours to have given over to death all of life that is worth saving, had now ceased. The body appeared to grow rigid before them. Slowly, after a moment, Eliza withdrew her hands. But suddenly, marvellously, as if his resurrection and rebirth had come upon him, Ben drew upon the air in a long and powerful respiration; his gray eyes opened. Filled with a terrible vision of all death to the dark spirit who had brooded upon each footstep of his pillows without support — a flame, a light, a glory — joined at length in death to the dark spirit who had brooded upon each footstep of his lonely adventure on earth; and, casting the fierce sword of his glance with utter and final comprehension upon the room haunted with its gray pageantry of cheap loves and dull consciences and on all those uncertain mummers of waste and confusion fading now from the bright window of his eyes, he passed instantly, scornful and unafraid, as he had lived, into the shades of death.
We can believe in the nothingness of life, we can believe in the nothingness of death and of life after death — but who can believe in the nothingness of Ben? Like Apollo, who did his penance to the high god in the sad house of King Admetus, he came, a god with broken feet, into the gray hovel of this world. And he lived here a stranger, trying to recapture the music of the lost world, trying to recall the great forgotten language, the lost faces, the stone, the leaf, the door.
O Artemidorus, farewell!
36
In that enormous silence, where pain and darkness met, some birds were waking. It was October. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. Eliza straightened out Ben’s limbs, and folded his hands across his body. She smoothed out the rumpled covers of the bed, and patted out the pillows, making a smooth hollow for his head to rest in. His flashing hair, cropped close to his well-shaped head, was crisp and crinkly as a boy’s, and shone with bright points of light. With a pair of scissors, she snipped off a little lock where it would not show.
“Grover’s was black as a raven’s without a kink in it. You’d never have known they were twins,” she said.
They went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Well, Eliza,” said Gant, calling her by name for the first time in thirty years, “you’ve had a hard life. If I’d acted different, we might have got along together. Let’s try to make the most of what time’s left. Nobody is blaming you. Taking it all in all, you’ve done pretty well.”
“There are a great many things I’d like to do over again,” said Eliza gravely. She shook her head. “We never know.”
“We’ll talk about it some other time,” said Helen. “I guess every one is worn out. I know I am. I’m going to get some sleep. Papa, go on to bed, in heaven’s name! There’s nothing you can do now. Mama, I think you’d better go, too —”
“No,” said Eliza, shaking her head. “You children go on. I couldn’t sleep now anyway. There are too many things to do. I’m going to call up John Hines now.”
‘Tell him,” said Gant, “to spare no expense. I’ll foot the bills.”
“Well,” said Helen, “whatever it costs, let’s give Ben a good funeral. It’s the last thing we can ever do for him. I want to have no regrets on that score.”
“Yes,” said Eliza, nodding slowly. “I want the best one that money will buy. I’ll make arrangements with John Hines when I talk to him. You children go on to bed now.”
“Poor old ‘Gene,” said Helen, laughing. “He looks like the last rose of summer. He’s worn out. You pile in and get some sleep, honey.”
“No,” he said, “I’m hungry. I haven’t had anything to eat since I left the university.”
“Well, for G-G-G-God’s sake!” Luke stuttered. “Why didn’t you speak, idiot? I’d have got you something. Come on,” he said, grinning. “I wouldn’t mind a bite myself. Let’s go uptown and eat.”
“Yes,” said Eugene. “I’d like to get out for a while from the bosom of the family circle.”
They laughed crazily. He poked around the stove for a moment, peering into the oven.
“Huh? Hah? What are you after, boy?” said Eliza suspiciously.
“What you got good to eat, Miss Eliza?” he said, leering crazily at her. He looked at the sailor: they burst into loud idiot laughter, pronging each other in the ribs. Eugene picked up a coffee-pot half-filled with a cold weak wash, and sniffed at it.
“By God!” he said. “That’s one thing Ben’s out of. He won’t have to drink mama’s coffee any more.”
“Whah-whah-whah!” said the sailor.
Gant grinned, wetting a thumb.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Helen, with a hoarse snigger. “Poor old Ben!”
“Why, what’s wrong with that coffee?” said Eliza, vexed. “It’s GOOD coffee.”
They howled. Eliza pursed her lips for a moment.
“I don’t like that way of talking, boy,” she said. Her eyes blurred suddenly. Eugene seized her rough hand and kissed it.
“It’s all right, mama!” he said. “It’s all right. I didn’t mean it!” He put his arms around her. She wept, suddenly and bitterly.
“Nobody ever knew him. He never told us about himself. He was the quiet one. I’ve lost them both now.” Then, drying her eyes, she added:
“You boys go get something to eat. A little walk will do you good. And, say,” she added, “why don’t you go by The Citizen office? They ought to be told. They’ve been calling up every day to find out about him.”
“They thought a lot of that boy,” said Gant.
They were tired, but they all felt an enormous relief. For over a day, each had known that death was inevitable, and after the horror of the incessant strangling gasp, this peace, this end of pain touched them all with a profound, a weary joy.
“Well, Ben’s gone,” said Helen slowly. Her eyes were wet, but she wept quietly now, with gentle grief, with love. “I’m glad it’s over. Poor old Ben! I never got to know him until these last few days. He was the best of the lot. Thank God, he’s out of it now.”
Eugene thought of death now, with love, with joy. Death was like a lovely and tender woman, Ben’s friend and lover, who had come to free him, to heal him, to save him from the