The Fires of Spring (51 page)

But David had eyes for only one thing when he reached Lafayette Street in the morning. He would turn and look south to the skyscrapers. They were beautiful in the morning, like an etching by Piranesi. Pinnacles leaped into the air, superbly high and secure, forming mysterious shapes. And whenever David saw this congregation of leaping beauty he thought: “They’re talking over my day for me.” At such moments he fancied himself to be Balzac watching the roofs of Paris, for those skyscrapers, whispering together, were the gossips of the city, relishing the scandals of the previous night.

At night David walked back to Mom Beckett’s by way of Fourth Street. It was not so interesting as Third, but it invariably yielded one moment of sheer physical joy, for it broadened out into Washington Square, and David never grew satiated with that beautiful enclave within the great city. The Square was well proportioned and seemed always to be filled with people: students from the university, bums sitting along the fountains, boys playing ball, poets dozing on benches, pretty girls, scrawny maids with other women’s children, vendors of this and that, young girls and old prostitutes engaged in the same business of waiting, bored policemen, Fifth Avenue bus drivers arguing the politics of their harried company, worried professors, and elderly women living upon niggardly incomes. The Square was the city, and no matter how tired he was at night, the sight of this tree-filled
open space with its trivial humanity made him feel good. The Square was of deep significance to him: he could never fool himself that the petty business of Lafayette Street or the frigid skyscrapers of Wall Street were the end of man; they were mechanical and nothing; but the sprawling people at rest and dreaming and arguing and loving in the Square, they were the end of life, the meaning of the universe.

So there was always a moment of joy for David as he burst, like a lover, into the Square. Like a million other visitors to the city, he felt that the Square was in some peculiar way his own; but immediately he came upon it at night he experienced also a pang of hunger, for just off the Square, at Mom Beckett’s, Alison Webster would be waiting.

She would have little to do with him. She was working, she always said. She put in long hours at
Fashion
and was becoming one of the “women to be watched” in that organization. At night she stayed in her room and wrote: stories, articles, novelettes, anything. And she became steadily slimmer and more desirable. A friend at
Fashion
had shown her a new hair-wash which brought out the golden flashes of her red hair. Another friend had sought out heavy brocaded cummerbunds with embroidered designs which accentuated Alison’s attractive figure. She no longer put her arms through her coat sleeves, and she spent much of her salary on expensive woolen dresses that had both a tailored and a casual air.

Like an affectionate pup, David insisted on tagging after Alison. In spite of rebuffs, he asked her to dinner. “You can’t afford it,” she usually replied, but once in a great while she would assent. “Now don’t take me to some ritzy place,” she commanded, but David was so pleased to know a handsome girl in New York, so happy to be with her, that he spent most of his meager salary on their dinners together. This both flattered and dismayed Alison. Finally, in fairness to David she said bluntly, “Dave, I don’t want to go out with you any more. You’re spending your money and … well … frankly, you’re not going to get anything for it.”

“Being along with you is plenty,” David persisted. Then he added a foolish explanation of his behavior: “Besides, I don’t know anyone else in New York.”

“That’s what I mean,” Alison laughed. “If you continue to waste your money on me, you’ll never meet any girls. Dave, it’s no fun for a girl to say this, but I’m never going to fall in love with you. I’m not even going to let you kiss me. Not because I’m mean. I like you, but we’re going in two different
ways. Rather, I’m going up. I’m going to be a great writer. I don’t know where you’re going.”

“Oh … I …”

“If you had any guts, Dave, you’d quit Tremont Clay’s. They’ve taught you all you need to know. I can get you a job uptown. Maybe if we worked together, if we had the same ambitions … Look, Dave! I’m sure that Miss Clint will commission you to do a series of smart stories on your hoboing around the United States.” Again the girl’s bright vision conjured up whole lay-outs for stories. “You could do one on Santa Fe, with Indians and pueblos. San Francisco with the funny little cable cars and a smashing view of the bridge they’re putting up.”

David leaned back in the expensive restaurant chair and waited while the busboy placed fresh pats of butter on the silver plates. “None for me,” Alison said. When the man left, David watched the retreating white coat, cut in a flashy way so as to resemble a footman at the court of Louis XIV.

He said, firmly, “I don’t want to write like that, Alison.”

She dropped the subject completely and said, “Dave, you ought to pay more for your suits. You’re in New York now. I’ll bet this skirt I’m wearing cost more than your whole suit.”

“Alison!” David protested. “That’s a shocking thing to say! If you want to know, I paid $22.50. Down on Delancey Street.”

“It looks it.”

The coldness of her observation bewildered David. “Why do you say things like that?” he pleaded, more in protection of her than of himself. “Why do you boast about the way you made a fool of Miss Clint at the office? Why do you make yourself more important than you are?”

She pursed her lips and studied David, wondering how far she could goad him. “I wouldn’t say I gloated over success, because I haven’t had any yet. Not compared with what’s ahead. But I do mourn over your failure.”

“My failure!” David cried. “I’m only twenty-four!”

“Joe Wismer’s twenty-four and he’s sold stories already.”

“From what I’ve heard you say about Joe Wismer I don’t want to be like him.”

“He’s doing what you say you want to do.”

“Alison! I’d never measure myself against Joe Wismer. When I write, it won’t be like him.”

“What you mean is that Joe and I write tripe.”

“I didn’t say that!” David protested. The waiter brought
rolls to the table and David nervously began to pick at one. As soon as the waiter disappeared Alison snapped, “But you mean it’s tripe, don’t you?”

“Alison!” David pleaded. “We have nothing to fight about! Your writing is very clever.”

“You say
clever
very distastefully.”

“I didn’t mean to,” David apologized. “I wish I could write as well.”

“You’re a moody snob,” Alison replied, ignoring the apology. “All you do is sit and dream. You loaf in the restaurant and talk with that damned fool Claude. And all the time you’re doing that I’m upstairs working. When I’ve written a best seller, you’ll be sitting in some place like this you can’t afford, pontificating to some girl who thinks you’re wonderful because you want to write. You’ll lean back and say, ‘Alison’s story really isn’t much good. You know, she just bats them out. Now Dostoevsky …’ ” She tossed her red hair provokingly. “Isn’t that what you’ll be saying, David?”

David’s face hardened into a hurt mask. “Why don’t you go home?” he asked harshly. “You want to fight with me to build yourself up. Get out!”

Slowly Alison rose from the table and with a beautiful, flashing smile looked down upon the bewildered young man. “I’ve told you a dozen times, Dave, there’s no point in your taking me to dinner. Now do you believe me?” She turned abruptly and left the restaurant.

At this moment the footman-waiter appeared with two plates of soup. David looked up at him beseechingly and half-laughed. “She walked out!” he said.

The waiter carefully placed the soup on the table. “You’d be surprised how often that happens in a joint like this,” he whispered.

David felt less a fool. “Really?” he asked.

“Sure!” the waiter confided. “Prices are so high here people are under a strain. I saw one young fellow pour a cup of cold consomme on a girl’s head.”

“What shall I do?” David asked. “I’m not hungry.”

The waiter took a furtive glance about the gilded room and whispered, “To hell with the management! Walk out! I’ll say you canceled the order.”

“Could I do that?” David asked, imploringly.

“Well, not rightfully, but the management here is bloodsuckers. Screw the management!” The tense waiter busied himself with brushing away crumbs so the head waiter would
not suspect him of sabotage. Nonchalantly David rose, but the footman tugged at his sleeve. “It would be proper to leave a small tip. After all, I do lose my table this way.”

David fumbled with his coins. “Would thirty cents be all right?”

The footman smiled and said, “Thirty cents would be very decent.” Then he dropped his voice to a confidential murmur and whispered, “Never lose heart! The revolution is coming!” At the door the head waiter surveyed David suspiciously and began to ask what … But David bolted out the door and down the street.

He was bewildered. It was apparent that Alison had set out to cure him of his infatuation, and yet he could not understand her harshness. He walked home and arrived at his room in great agitation. He tried to read a book Doc Chisholm had sent him from Texas,
The House with the Green Shutters
, a minor Scottish novel which was rumored to have been the victim of plagiarism. It was heavy and plodding, but it merited that precious word of Doc Chisholm’s: it was mordant. Yet its very quality of passionate life made David restless. Slowly he felt himself being caught up in the spell of his own words and ideas.

Reluctantly, like a bride moving toward an unknown chamber, he went to his typewriter. He sat for a long time, staring at the paper. “Of all the things I’ve seen,” he mused, “what …” Across the white paper came a vision of Old Daniel, Morris Binder solving a murder, his Aunt Reba, the wonderful Quaker girl Marcia Paxson who was now hurtingly Marcia Moomaugh. He recalled the unshared things that had happened to him while he hoboed around America after Chautauqua. But when he actually started to peck out words they came not as a flood but one at a time, painfully, and they related to no one of the magnificent things he had experienced: not the days with Sousa, nor his moment of courage in the burning tent, nor the grandeur of Colorado mountains in deep winter. He was picking words from far back in his memory to describe a smell, the most evocative smell he could recall. Toothless Tom was visiting him at night with four slices of new-baked bread and a great chunk of store cheese.

He became lost in his writing, and toward three in the morning Mom Beckett banged on his door. “You’re keepin’ folks awake,” she said. She came into his room and sat on his bed. “You burnin’ up the pages with immortality?” she
joked. When she saw David gather his sheets protectingly to him she laughed, “Don’t worry! I never read any of that crap. Books is for people that can’t see MacDougal Street with their own eyes.”

David leaned over his typewriter and studied the neat, corseted woman with the perfect hair and the rasping voice. “You don’t fool me,” he laughed. “Some day you’ll write a book yourself. But it’ll be so vulgar nobody’ll publish it.”

“I don’t write ’em. I live ’em!” she replied. Then her voice took on a serious note. “I see you and Alison go out to dinner. I see her come back alone and start to write like mad. Then I see you come back and do the same. Fight?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t …”

“Dave? Tell me one thing. Honestly. You gettin’ any good out of datin’ that mean, tense, little bitch?”

“No.”

Mom Beckett had a wisecrack for every situation, but this time she kept her mouth shut. She was very sorry for all the people in the world who love and love and who get nothing out of it. Like Alison, earlier in the evening, she turned abruptly from David and left him. Ten minutes later the poet Claude climbed up with a tray of food.

“Mom said for you to eat this,” the thin bearded man reported.

“Claude, what do you think a novel is?”

“It’s a book,” the poet said.

“But I mean, in form? Does it have to have a set story?”

As if the room had suddenly changed, Claude put aside the tray of food and stared for a moment at the dark night outside the solitary window. “A novel,” he said, “is a golden kettle into which you pour all of experience.” His slim hands began to wave in the darkness. “You can toss in great chunks of meat and fragrant bones and stock left over from the meals before. You can add fragments of character or the whole man. You can have scenes that fill a quarter of the book and others that flash by in a fleeting glance. In a novel there’s nothing you can’t do, if you do it with passion.”

All his life David had heard talk about books, but this was the first that made complete sense. Eagerly he made a place for Claude and when the poet was seated he asked, “If you feel that way, why don’t you write novels?”

Claude laughed and tugged at his beard. “A poet tries to say it all in a few lines. If everyone who writes could write supremely well, they would all write poetry. But most people
don’t understand words, or feelings either. So they cover up their deficiencies by writing long books.”

“You mean that poems are distillations of books?”

“Good poems are. That’s why poor novelists always title their books with jagged bits of poetry. The whole novel has already been said in the poem. But fools have to write it out so that other fools can understand.”

David was truly burning to prolong this conversation, but Claude had said enough for one night. With a twinkle in his eye he picked up the tray and started downstairs. Instinctively, David grabbed for the food, but the poet shied away and said, “Mom told me you had been knocked out by love, so she wanted you to eat something. But I see it wasn’t love. It was the desire to write. And a man with that desire upon him is crazy if he stuffs himself with a lot of food.” He kicked the door shut after him, and in the morning David found in the hallway Mom’s tray of food. It made an excellent breakfast.

In the succeeding days David forgot his first attempt at writing, for Morris Binder promoted him to the editorship of
Passionate Love
. “Your pay’s $24 a week,” the hulking man announced, “and I want the sexiest magazine in New York.”