sure that I am not making any progress, that I'm sinking deeper and deeper. « You'll never get anywhere,» he says. «You're like me— you're weak, you have no ambition.» We have one ambition in common, which we make light of: to write. There was more hope for us fifteen years ago, when we were writing letters to one another. Fort Oglethorpe was a good place for Stanley; it made him a drunkard, a gambler, a thief. It made his letters interesting. They were never about the army life but about exotic, romantic writers whom he tried to imitate when he wrote. Stanley should never have come back North; he should have gotten off the train at Chickamauga, wrapped himself in tobacco leaves and cowdung, and taken himself a squaw. Instead he came back North to the funeral parlor, found himself a fat Polish wench with fertile ovaries, saddled himself with a brood of little Poles, and tried in vain to write standing up over the kitchen tubs. Stanley rarely talked about anything in the present; he preferred to spin incredible yarns about the men he loved and admired in the army.
Stanley had all the bad traits of the Poles. He was vain, vitriolic, violent, generous in a false way, romantic as a brokendown hack, loyal as a fool and deeply treacherous to boot. Above all, he was simply corroded with envy and jealousy.
There is one thing I like about the Poles—their language. Polish, when it is spoken by intelligent people, puts me in ecstasy. The sound of the language evokes strange images in which there is always a greensward of fine spiked grass in which hornets and snakes play a great part. I remember days long back when Stanley would invite me to visit his relatives; he used to make me carry a roll of music because he wanted to show me off to these rich relatives. I remember this atmosphere well because in the presence of these smooth-tongued, overly polite, pretentious and thoroughly false Poles I always felt miserably uncomfortable. But when they spoke to one another, sometimes in French, sometimes in Polish, I sat back and watched them fascinatedly. They made strange Polish grimaces, altogether unlike our relatives who were stupid barbarians at bottom. The Poles were like standing snakes fitted up with collars of hornets. I never knew what they were talking about but it always seemed to me as if they were politely assassinating some one. They were all fitted up with sabres and broad-swords which they held in their teeth or brandished fiercely in a thundering charge. They never swerved from the path but rode rough-shod over women and children, spiking them with long pikes beribboned with blood-red pennants. All this, of course, in the drawing-room over a glass of strong tea, the men in butter-colored gloves, the women dangling their silly lorgnettes. The women were always ravishingly beautiful, the blonde houri type garnered centuries ago during the Crusades. They hissed their long polychromatic words through tiny, sensual mouths whose lips were soft as geraniums. These furious sorties with adders and rose petals made an intoxicating sort of music, a steel-stringed zithery slipper-gibber which could also register anomalous sounds like sobs and falling jets of water.
On the way home we always rode through dreary, sombre patches of land studded with gas tanks, smoking chimneys, grain elevators, car barns and other bio-chemical emulsions of our glorious civilization. The way home bore in on me the fact that I was just a shit, another piece of stinking offal like the burning garbage piles in the vacant lots. All the way in there would be the acrid stench of burning chemicals, burning refuse, burning offal. The Poles were a race apart and their language clung to me like smoking ruins from a past I had never known. How was I to guess, then, that one day I would be riding through their outlandish world in a train filled with Jews who shivered with fear when ever a Pole addressed them? Yes, I would be having a fight in French (me the little shit from Brooklyn) with a Polish nobleman—because I couldn't bear to see these Jews cowering in fear. I would be traveling to the estate of a Polish count to watch him paint maudlin pictures for the Salon d'Automne. How was I to imagine such an eventuality, riding through the swamp lands with my savage, bile-ridden friend Stanley? How could I believe that, weak and lacking ambition, I should one day tear myself away, learn a new language, learn a new way of living, like it, lose myself, sever all ties, look back on this which I am riding through as if it were a night-mare told by an idiot in a railway station on a bitter cold night when you change trains in a trance?
On this particular night little Curley happened to drop in. Maude had no use for Curley either, apart from the thrill he gave her when he slyly caressed her bottom as she stooped to put the meat in the oven. Curley always thought he did these things without any one noticing him; Maude always let people do these things to her as if they happened by accident; Stanley always made it very clear that he saw nothing, but under the table you could distinctly observe him pouring nitric acid over his rusty brass knuckles. Myself, I noticed everything, even the new cracks in the plaster wall which I stared at so intensely when alone that, if I were given time, I could read back at top speed, without missing a comma or a dash, the whole history of the human race leading up to the particular square inch of plaster on which my eyes were focused.
This particular night it is warm outdoors arid the grass is velvety. There is no reason to stay indoors and silently murder one another. Maude is eager for us to evacuate; we are polluting the sanctuary.
Besides, she is going to menstruate in a day or two and that makes her more than ever weepy, miserable and despondent. The best thing would be for me to step outdoors and accidentally walk into a fast truck; that would be such a marvelous relief to her that it seems incredible to me now why I never did a little tiling like that to oblige her. Many a night she must have sat alone and prayed that I would come back to her on a stretcher. She was the sort of woman who, if a thing like that were to occur, would say very frankly—«Thank God, he's done it at last!»
We walked to the park and lay flat on our backs in the short grass. The sky was friendly and peaceful, a bowl without limits; I felt strangely at ease, detached, serene as a sage. To my surprise, Stanley was whistling a different tune. He was saying that I owed it to myself to make a break, that as a friend of mine he was going to help me do what I couldn't do alone.
«You leave it to me,» he muttered, «I'll fix it for you. But don't come to me afterwards and say that you regret it,» he added.
How was he going to fix it? I demanded.
That was none of my business, he gave me to understand. «You're desperate, aren't you? You want to get rid of her, that's all, isn't that so?»
I shook my head and smiled, smiled because it seemed utterly preposterous that Stanley, of all people, could be so confident of arranging such a decisive coup. He acted as if he had plotted it all out a long time ago, as if he had merely been waiting for the opportune moment to broach the subject. He wanted to know more about Mara— was I absolutely sure of her?
«Now about the kid,» he said, in his usual cold-blooded way, «that's going to be tough on you. But you'll forget about her after a time. You were never meant to be a father. Only, don't come to me and ask me to fix it up again, understand? When I do this job it's going to be settled once and for all. I don't believe in half-way measures. Now, if I were you I'd go to Texas or some place like that. Don't ever come back here! You've got to start all over again, as if you were just beginning your life. You can do it, if you want to.
«Don't take him along, whatever you do!» Stanley blurted savagely. «He's no good—he'd be in the way, that's all. Besides, he's not to be trusted.» Curley was hurt and he showed it. «Listen, don't rub it in,» I said. «I know he's no good, but what the hell...»
«I don't mince matters,» said Stanley bluntly. «As far as I'm concerned, I don't want to see him ever again. He can go away and die for all I care. You're soft—that's why you're in such a lousy mess. I haven't any friends, you know that. I don't want any. I don't do anything for anybody out of pity. If he's hurt it's too bad, but he'll have to swallow it as best he can. I'm talking seriously. I mean business.»
«How do I know I can trust you to handle this right?»
«You don't have to trust me. One day—I won't say when—it'll happen. You won't know how it happened. You'll get the surprise of your life. And you won't be able to change your mind because it'll be too late. You'll be free whether you like it or not—that's all I can tell you. It's the last thing I'll do for you—after that you take care of yourself.
Don't write me that you're starving because I won't pay any attention to you. Sink or swim, that's the size of it.»
He got up and brushed himself off. «I'm going,» he said. «It's settled then?»
«O.K.,» I said.
«Give us a quarter,» he said, as he was about to walk off.
I didn't have a quarter on me. I turned to Curley. He nodded, to indicate he understood, but made no move to hand it over.
