Seventh Street + 

Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts, + 

Bootleggers in silken shirts, + 

Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs, + 

Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks. + 

Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington. Wedges rust in soggy wood⁠ ⁠… Split it! In two! Again! Shred it!⁠ ⁠… the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a bloodred smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgment Day. Who set you flowing? + 

Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts, + 

Bootleggers in silken shirts, + 

Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs, + 

Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks. + 

Rhobert + 

Rhobert wears a house, like a monstrous diver’s helmet, on his head. His legs are banty-bowed and shaky because as a child he had rickets. He is way down. Rods of the house like antennae of a dead thing, stuffed, prop up in the air. He is way down. He is sinking. His house is a dead thing that weights him down. He is sinking as a diver would sink in mud should the water be drawn off. Life is a murky, wiggling, microscopic water that compresses him. Compresses his helmet and would crush it the minute that he pulled his head out. He has to keep it in. Life is water that is being drawn off. + 

Brother, life is water that is being drawn off. + 

Brother, life is water that is being drawn off. + 

The dead house is stuffed. The stuffing is alive. It is sinful to draw one’s head out of live stuffing in a dead house. The propped-up antennae would cave in and the stuffing be strewn⁠ ⁠… shredded life-pulp⁠ ⁠… in the water. It is sinful to have one’s own head crushed. Rhobert is an upright man whose legs are banty-bowed and shaky because as a child he had rickets. The earth is round. Heaven is a sphere that surrounds it. Sink where you will. God is a Red Cross man with a dredge and a respiration-pump who’s waiting for you at the opposite periphery. God built the house. He blew His breath into its stuffing. It is good to die obeying Him who can do these things. + 

A futile something like the dead house wraps the live stuffing of the question: how long before the water will be drawn off? Rhobert does not care. Like most men who wear monstrous helmets, the pressure it exerts is enough to convince him of its practical infinity. And he cares not two straws as to whether or not he will ever see his wife and children again. Many a time he’s seen them drown in his dreams and has kicked about joyously in the mud for days after. One thing about him goes straight to the heart. He has an Adam’s-apple which strains sometimes as if he were painfully gulping great globules of air⁠ ⁠… air floating shredded life-pulp. It is a sad thing to see a banty-bowed, shaky, ricket-legged man straining the raw insides of his throat against smooth air. Holding furtive thoughts about the glory of pulp-heads strewn in water⁠ ⁠… He is way down. Down. Mud, coming to his banty knees, almost hides them. Soon people will be looking at him and calling him a strong man. No doubt he is for one who has had rickets. Lets give it to him. Lets call him great when the water shall have been all drawn off. Lets build a monument and set it in the ooze where he goes down. A monument of hewn oak, carved in nigger-heads. Lets open our throats, brother, and sing “Deep River” when he goes down. + 

Brother, Rhobert is sinking. + 

Lets open our throats, brother, + 

Lets sing Deep River when he goes down. + 

Avey + 

For a long while she was nothing more to me than one of those skirted beings whom boys at a certain age disdain to play with. Just how I came to love her, timidly, and with secret blushes, I do not know. But that I did was brought home to me one night, the first night that Ned wore his long pants. Us fellers were seated on the curb before an apartment house where she had gone in. The young trees had not outgrown their boxes then. V Street was lined with them. When our legs grew cramped and stiff from the cold of the stone, we’d stand around a box and whittle it. I like to think now that there was a hidden purpose in the way we hacked them with our knives. I like to feel that something deep in me responded to the trees, the young trees that whinnied like colts impatient to be let free⁠ ⁠… On the particular night I have in mind, we were waiting for the top-floor light to go out. We wanted to see Avey leave the flat. This night she stayed longer than usual and gave us a chance to complete the plans of how we were going to stone and beat that feller on the top floor out of town. Ned especially had it in for him. He was about to throw a brick up at the window when at last the room went dark. Some minutes passed. Then Avey, as unconcerned as if she had been paying an old-maid aunt a visit, came out. I don’t remember what she had on, and all that sort of thing. But I do know that I turned hot as bare pavements in the summertime at Ned’s boast: “Hell, bet I could get her too if you little niggers weren’t always spying and crabbing everything.” I didnt say a word to him. It wasnt my way then. I just stood there like the others, and something like a fuse burned up inside of me. She never noticed us, but swung along lazy and easy as anything. We sauntered to the corner and watched her till her door banged to. Ned repeated what he’d said. I didnt seem to care. Sitting around old Mush-Head’s bread box, the discussion began. “Hang if I can see how she gets away with it,” Doc started. Ned knew, of course. There was nothing he didnt know when it came to women. He dilated on the emotional needs of girls. Said they werent much different from men in that respect. And concluded with the solemn avowal: “It does em good.” None of us liked Ned much. We all talked dirt; but it was the way he said it. And then too, a couple of the fellers had sisters and had caught Ned playing with them. But there was no disputing the superiority of his smutty wisdom. Bubs Sanborn, whose mother was friendly with Avey’s, had overheard the old ladies talking. “Avey’s mother’s ont her,” he said. We thought that only natural and began to guess at what would happen. Someone said she’d marry that feller on the top floor. Ned called that a lie because Avey was going to marry nobody but him. We had our doubts about that, but we did agree that she’d soon leave school and marry someone. The gang broke up, and I went home, picturing myself as married. + 

Nothing I did seemed able to change Avey’s indifference to me. I played basketball, and when I’d make a long clean shot she’d clap with the others, louder than they, I thought. I’d meet her on the street, and there’d be no difference in the way she said hello. She never took the trouble to call me by my name. On the days for drill, I’d let my voice down a tone and call for a complicated maneuver when I saw her coming. She’d smile appreciation, but it was an impersonal smile, never for me. It was on a summer excursion down to Riverview that she first seemed to take me into account. The day had been spent riding merry-go-rounds, scenic-railways, and shoot-the-chutes. We had been in swimming and we had danced. I was a crack swimmer then. She didnt know how. I held her up and showed her how to kick her legs and draw her arms. Of course she didnt learn in one day, but she thanked me for bothering with her. I was also somewhat of a dancer. And I had already noticed that love can start on a dance floor. We danced. But though I held her tightly in my arms, she was way away. That college feller who lived on the top floor was somewhere making money for the next year. I imagined that she was thinking, wishing for him. Ned was along. He treated her until his money gave out. She went with another feller. Ned got sore. One by one the boys’ money gave out. She left them. And they got sore. Every one of them but me got sore. This is the reason, I guess, why I had her to myself on the top deck of the Jane Mosely that night as we puffed up the Potomac, coming home. The moon was brilliant. The air was sweet like clover. And every now and then, a salt tang, a stale drift of seaweed. It was not my mind’s fault if it went romancing. I should have taken her in my arms the minute we were stowed in that old lifeboat. I dallied, dreaming. She took me in hers. And I could feel by the touch of it that it wasnt a man-to-woman love. It made me restless. I felt chagrined. I didnt know what it was, but I did know that I couldnt handle it. She ran her fingers through my hair and kissed my forehead. I itched to break through her tenderness to passion. I wanted her to take me in her arms as I knew she had that college feller. I wanted her to love me passionately as she did him. I gave her one burning kiss. Then she laid me in her lap as if I were a child. Helpless. I got sore when she started to hum a lullaby. She wouldnt let me go. I talked. I knew damned well that I could beat her at that. Her eyes were soft and misty, the curves of her lips were wistful, and her smile seemed indulgent of the irrelevance of my remarks. I gave up at last and let her love me, silently, in her own way. The moon was brilliant. The air was sweet like clover, and every now and then, a salt tang, a stale drift of seaweed⁠ ⁠… + 

The next time I came close to her was the following summer at Harpers Ferry. We were sitting on a flat projecting rock they give the name of Lover’s Leap. Someone is supposed to have jumped off it. The river is about six hundred feet beneath. A railroad track runs up the valley and curves out of sight where part of the mountain rock had to be blasted away to make room for it. The engines of this valley have a whistle, the echoes of which sound like iterated gasps and sobs. I always think of them as crude music from the soul of Avey. We sat there holding hands. Our palms were soft and warm against each other. Our fingers were not tight. She would not let them be. She would not let me twist them. I wanted to talk. To explain what I meant to her. Avey was as silent as those great trees whose tops we looked down upon. She has always been like that. At least, to me. I had the notion that if I really wanted to, I could do with her just what I pleased. Like one can strip a tree. I did kiss her. I even let my hands cup her breasts. When I was through, she’d seek my hand and hold it till my pulse cooled down. Evening after evening we sat there. I tried to get her to talk about that college feller. She never would. There was no set time to go home. None of my family had come down. And as for hers, she didnt give a hang about them. The general gossips could hardly say more than they had. The boardinghouse porch was always deserted when we returned. No one saw us enter, so the time was set conveniently for scandal. This worried me a little, for I thought it might keep Avey from getting an appointment in the schools. She didnt care. She had finished normal school. They could give her a job if they wanted to. As time went on, her indifference to things began to pique me; I was ambitious. I left the Ferry earlier than she did. I was going off to college. The more I thought of it, the more I resented, yes, hell, thats what it was, her downright laziness. Sloppy indolence. There was no excuse for a healthy girl taking life so easy. Hell! she was no better than a cow. I was certain that she was a cow when I felt an udder in a Wisconsin stock-judging class. Among those energetic Swedes, or whatever they are, I decided to forget her. For two years I thought I did. When I’d come home for the summer she’d be away. And before she returned, I’d be gone. We never wrote; she was too damned lazy for that. But what a bluff I put up about forgetting her. The girls up that way, at least the ones I knew, havent got the stuff: they dont know how to love. Giving themselves completely was tame beside just the holding of Avey’s hand. One day I received a note from her. The writing, I decided, was slovenly. She wrote on a torn bit of notebook paper. The envelope had a faint perfume that I remembered. A single line told me she had lost her school and was going away. I comforted myself with the reflection that shame held no pain for one so indolent as she. Nevertheless, I left Wisconsin that year for good. Washington had seemingly forgotten her. I hunted Ned. Between curses, I caught his opinion of her. She was no better than a whore. I saw her mother on the street. The same old pinchbeck, jerky-gaited creature that I’d always known. + 

Perhaps five years passed. The business of hunting a job or something or other had bruised my vanity so that I could recognize it. I felt old. Avey and my real relation to her, I thought I came to know. I wanted to see her. I had been told that she was in New York. As I had no money, I hiked and bummed my way there. I got work in a shipyard and walked the streets at night, hoping to meet her. Failing in this, I saved enough to pay my fare back home. One evening in early June, just at the time when dusk is most lovely on the eastern horizon, I saw Avey, indolent as ever, leaning on the arm of a man, strolling under the recently lit arc-lights of U Street. She had almost passed before she recognized me. She showed no surprise. The puff over her eyes had grown heavier. The eyes themselves were still sleepy-large, and beautiful. I had almost concluded⁠—indifferent. “You look older,” was what she said. I wanted to convince her that I was, so I asked her to walk with me. The man whom she was with, and whom she never took the trouble to introduce, at a nod from her, hailed a taxi, and drove away. That gave me a notion of what she had been used to. Her dress was of some fine, costly stuff. I suggested the park, and then added that the grass might stain her skirt. Let it get stained, she said, for where it came from there are others. + 

I have a spot in Soldier’s Home to which I always go when I want the simple beauty of another’s soul. Robins spring about the lawn all day. They leave their footprints in the grass. I imagine that the grass at night smells sweet and fresh because of them. The ground is high. Washington lies below. Its light spreads like a blush against the darkened sky. Against the soft dusk sky of Washington. And when the wind is from the South, soil of my homeland falls like a fertile shower upon the lean streets of the city. Upon my hill in Soldier’s Home. I know the policeman who watches the place of nights. When I go there alone, I talk to him. I tell him I come there to find the truth that people bury in their hearts. I tell him that I do not come there with a girl to do the thing he’s paid to watch out for. I look deep in his eyes when I say these things, and he believes me. He comes over to see who it is on the grass. I say hello to him. He greets me in the same way and goes off searching for other black splotches upon the lawn. Avey and I went there. A band in one of the buildings a fair distance off was playing a march. I wished they would stop. Their playing was like a tin spoon in one’s mouth. I wanted the Howard Glee Club to sing “Deep River,” from the road. To sing “Deep River, Deep River,” from the road⁠ ⁠… Other than the first comments, Avey had been silent. I started to hum a folk-tune. She slipped her hand in mine. Pillowed her head as best she could upon my arm. Kissed the hand that she was holding and listened, or so I thought, to what I had to say. I traced my development from the early days up to the present time, the phase in which I could understand her. I described her own nature and temperament. Told how they needed a larger life for their expression. How incapable Washington was of understanding that need. How it could not meet it. I pointed out that in lieu of proper channels, her emotions had overflowed into paths that dissipated them. I talked, beautifully I thought, about an art that would be born, an art that would open the way for women the likes of her. I asked her to hope, and build up an inner life against the coming of that day. I recited some of my own things to her. I sang, with a strange quiver in my voice, a promise-song. And then I began to wonder why her hand had not once returned a single pressure. My old-time feeling about her laziness came back. I spoke sharply. My policeman friend passed by. I said hello to him. As he went away, I began to visualize certain possibilities. An immediate and urgent passion swept over me. Then I looked at Avey. Her heavy eyes were closed. Her breathing was as faint and regular as a child’s in slumber. My passion died. I was afraid to move lest I disturb her. Hours and hours, I guess it was, she lay there. My body grew numb. I shivered. I coughed. I wanted to get up and whittle at the boxes of young trees. I withdrew my hand. I raised her head to waken her. She did not stir. I got up and walked around. I found my policeman friend and talked to him. We both came up, and bent over her. He said it would be all right for her to stay there just so long as she got away before the workmen came at dawn. A blanket was borrowed from a neighbor house. I sat beside her through the night. I saw the dawn steal over Washington. The Capitol dome looked like a gray ghost ship drifting in from sea. Avey’s face was pale, and her eyes were heavy. She did not have the gray crimson-splashed beauty of the dawn. I hated to wake her. Orphan-woman⁠ ⁠… + 

Beehive + 

Within this black hive to-night + 

There swarm a million bees; + 

Bees passing in and out the moon, + 

Bees escaping out the moon, + 

Bees returning through the moon, + 

Silver bees intently buzzing, + 

Silver honey dripping from the swarm of bees + 

Earth is a waxen cell of the world comb, + 

And I, a drone, + 

Lying on my back, + 

Lipping honey, + 

Getting drunk with silver honey, + 

Wish that I might fly out past the moon + 

And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower. + 

Storm Ending + 

Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads, + 

Great, hollow, bell-like flowers, + 

Rumbling in the wind, + 

Stretching clappers to strike our ears⁠ ⁠… + 

Full-lipped flowers + 

Bitten by the sun + 

Bleeding rain + 

Dripping rain like golden honey⁠— + 

And the sweet earth flying from the thunder. + 

Theater + 

Life of nigger alleys, of pool rooms and restaurants and near-beer saloons soaks into the walls of Howard Theater and sets them throbbing jazz songs. Black-skinned, they dance and shout above the tick and trill of white-walled buildings. At night, they open doors to people who come in to stamp their feet and shout. At night, road-shows volley songs into the mass-heart of black people. Songs soak the walls and seep out to the nigger life of alleys and near-beer saloons, of the Poodle Dog and Black Bear cabarets. Afternoons, the house is dark, and the walls are sleeping singers until rehearsal begins. Or until John comes within them. Then they start throbbing to a subtle syncopation. And the space-dark air grows softly luminous. + 

John is the manager’s brother. He is seated at the center of the theater, just before rehearsal. Light streaks down upon him from a window high above. One half his face is orange in it. One half his face is in shadow. The soft glow of the house rushes to, and compacts about, the shaft of light. John’s mind coincides with the shaft of light. Thoughts rush to, and compact about it. Life of the house and of the slowly awakening stage swirls to the body of John, and thrills it. John’s body is separate from the thoughts that pack his mind. + 

Stage-lights, soft, as if they shine through clear pink fingers. Beneath them, hid by the shadow of a set, Dorris. Other chorus girls drift in. John feels them in the mass. And as if his own body were the mass-heart of a black audience listening to them singing, he wants to stamp his feet and shout. His mind, contained above desires of his body, singles the girls out, and tries to trace origins and plot destinies. + 

A pianist slips into the pit and improvises jazz. The walls awake. Arms of the girls, and their limbs, which⁠ ⁠… jazz, jazz⁠ ⁠… by lifting up their tight street skirts they set free, jab the air and clog the floor in rhythm to the music. (Lift your skirts, Baby, and talk t papa!) Crude, individualized, and yet⁠ ⁠… monotonous⁠ ⁠… + 

John: Soon the director will herd you, my full-lipped, distant beauties, and tame you, and blunt your sharp thrusts in loosely suggestive movements, appropriate to Broadway. (O dance!) Soon the audience will paint your dusk faces white, and call you beautiful. (O dance!) Soon I⁠ ⁠… (O dance!) I’d like⁠ ⁠… + 

Girls laugh and shout. Sing discordant snatches of other jazz songs. Whirl with loose passion into the arms of passing showmen. + 

John: Too thick. Too easy. Too monotonous. Her whom I’d love I’d leave before she knew that I was with her. Her? Which? (O dance!) I’d like to⁠ ⁠… + 

Girls dance and sing. Men clap. The walls sing and press inward. They press the men and girls, they press John towards a center of physical ecstasy. Go to it, Baby! Fan yourself, and feed your papa! Put⁠ ⁠… nobody lied⁠ ⁠… and take⁠ ⁠… when they said I cried over you. No lie! The glitter and color of stacked scenes, the gilt and brass and crimson of the house, converge towards a center of physical ecstasy. John’s feet and torso and his blood press in. He wills thought to rid his mind of passion. + 

“All right, girls. Alaska. Miss Reynolds, please.” + 

The director wants to get the rehearsal through with. + 

The girls line up. John sees the front row: dancing ponies. The rest are in shadow. The leading lady fits loosely in the front. Lack-life, monotonous. “One, two, three⁠—” Music starts. The song is somewhere where it will not strain the leading lady’s throat. The dance is somewhere where it will not strain the girls. Above the staleness, one dancer throws herself into it. Dorris. John sees her. Her hair, crisp-curled, is bobbed. Bushy, black hair bobbing about her lemon-colored face. Her lips are curiously full, and very red. Her limbs in silk purple stockings are lovely. John feels them. Desires her. Holds off. + 

John: Stage-door johnny; chorus-girl. No, that would be all right. Dictie, educated, stuck-up; showgirl. Yep. Her suspicion would be stronger than her passion. It wouldnt work. Keep her loveliness. Let her go. + 

Dorris sees John and knows that he is looking at her. Her own glowing is too rich a thing to let her feel the slimness of his diluted passion. + 

“Who’s that?” she asks her dancing partner. + 

“Th manager’s brother. Dictie. Nothin doin, hon.” + 

Dorris tosses her head and dances for him until she feels she has him. Then, withdrawing disdainfully, she flirts with the director. + 

Dorris: Nothin doin? How come? Aint I as good as him? Couldnt I have got an education if I’d wanted one? Dont I know respectable folks, lots of em, in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago? Aint I had men as good as him? Better. Doctors an lawyers. Whats a manager’s brother, anyhow? + 

Two steps back, and two steps front. + 

“Say, Mame, where do you get that stuff?” + 

“Whatshmean, Dorris?” + 

“If you two girls cant listen to what I’m telling you, I know where I can get some who can. Now listen.” + 

Mame: Go to hell, you black bastard. + 

Dorris: Whats eatin at him, anyway? + 

“Now follow me in this, you girls. Its three counts to the right, three counts to the left, and then you shimmy⁠—” + 

John:⁠—and then you shimmy. I’ll bet she can. Some good cabaret, with rooms upstairs. And what in hell do you think you’d get from it? Youre going wrong. Here’s right: get her to herself⁠—(Christ, but how she’d bore you after the first five minutes)⁠—not if you get her right she wouldnt. Touch her, I mean. To herself⁠—in some room perhaps. Some cheap, dingy bedroom. Hell no. Cant be done. But the point is, brother John, it can be done. Get her to herself somewhere, anywhere. Go down in yourself⁠—and she’d be calling you all sorts of asses while you were in the process of going down. Hold em, bud. Cant be done. Let her go. (Dance and I’ll love you!) And keep her loveliness. + 

“All right now, Chicken Chaser. Dorris and girls. Where’s Dorris? I told you to stay on the stage, didnt I? Well? Now thats enough. All right. All right there, Professor? All right. One, two, three⁠—” + 

Dorris swings to the front. The line of girls, four deep, blurs within the shadow of suspended scenes. Dorris wants to dance. The director feels that and steps to one side. He smiles, and picks her for a leading lady, one of these days. Odd ends of stagemen emerge from the wings, and stare and clap. A crap game in the alley suddenly ends. Black faces crowd the rear stage doors. The girls, catching joy from Dorris, whip up within the footlights’ glow. They forget set steps; they find their own. The director forgets to bawl them out. Dorris dances. + 

John: Her head bobs to Broadway. Dance from yourself. Dance! O just a little more. + 

Dorris’ eyes burn across the space of seats to him. + 

Dorris: I bet he can love. Hell, he cant love. He’s too skinny. His lips are too skinny. He wouldnt love me anyway, only for that. But I’d get a pair of silk stockings out of it. Red silk. I got purple. Cut it, kid. You cant win him to respect you that away. He wouldnt anyway. Maybe he would. Maybe he’d love. I’ve heard em say that men who look like him (what does he look like?) will marry if they love. O will you love me? And give me kids, and a home, and everything? (I’d like to make your nest, and honest, hon, I wouldnt run out on you.) You will if I make you. Just watch me. + 

Dorris dances. She forgets her tricks. She dances. + 

Glorious songs are the muscles of her limbs. + 

And her singing is of canebrake loves and mangrove feastings. + 

The walls press in, singing. Flesh of a throbbing body, they press close to John and Dorris. They close them in. John’s heart beats tensely against her dancing body. Walls press his mind within his heart. And then, the shaft of light goes out the window high above him. John’s mind sweeps up to follow it. Mind pulls him upward into dream. + 

Dorris dances⁠ ⁠… + 

John dreams: + 

Dorris is dressed in a loose black gown splashed with lemon ribbons. Her feet taper long and slim from trim ankles. She waits for him just inside the stage door. John, collar and tie colorful and flaring, walks towards the stage door. There are no trees in the alley. But his feet feel as though they step on autumn leaves whose rustle has been pressed out of them by the passing of a million satin slippers. The air is sweet with roasting chestnuts, sweet with bonfires of old leaves. John’s melancholy is a deep thing that seals all senses but his eyes, and makes him whole. + 

Dorris knows that he is coming. Just at the right moment she steps from the door, as if there were no door. Her face is tinted like the autumn alley. Of old flowers, or of a southern canefield, her perfume. “Glorious Dorris.” So his eyes speak. And their sadness is too deep for sweet untruth. She barely touches his arm. They glide off with footfalls softened on the leaves, the old leaves powdered by a million satin slippers. + 

They are in a room. John knows nothing of it. Only, that the flesh and blood of Dorris are its walls. Singing walls. Lights, soft, as if they shine through clear pink fingers. Soft lights, and warm. + 

John reaches for a manuscript of his, and reads. Dorris, who has no eyes, has eyes to understand him. He comes to a dancing scene. The scene is Dorris. She dances. Dorris dances. Glorious Dorris. Dorris whirls, whirls, dances⁠ ⁠… + 

Dorris dances. + 

The pianist crashes a bumper chord. The whole stage claps. Dorris, flushed, looks quick at John. His whole face is in shadow. She seeks for her dance in it. She finds it a dead thing in the shadow which is his dream. She rushes from the stage. Falls down the steps into her dressing-room. Pulls her hair. Her eyes, over a floor of tears, stare at the whitewashed ceiling. (Smell of dry paste, and paint, and soiled clothing.) Her pal comes in. Dorris flings herself into the old safe arms, and cries bitterly. + 

“I told you nothin doin,” is what Mame says to comfort her. + 

Her Lips Are Copper Wire + 

whisper of yellow globes + 

gleaming on lamp-posts that sway + 

like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog + 

and let your breath be moist against me + 

like bright beads on yellow globes + 

telephone the power-house + 

that the main wires are insulate + 

(her words play softly up and down + 

dewy corridors of billboards) + 

then with your tongue remove the tape + 

and press your lips to mine + 

till they are incandescent + 

Calling Jesus + 

Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog that follows her, whimpering. She is large enough, I know, to find a warm spot for it. But each night when she comes home and closes the big outside storm door, the little dog is left in the vestibule, filled with chills till morning. Someone⁠ ⁠… eoho Jesus⁠ ⁠… soft as a cotton boll brushed against the milk-pod cheek of Christ, will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps upon clean hay cut in her dreams. + 

When you meet her in the daytime on the streets, the little dog keeps coming. Nothing happens at first, and then, when she has forgotten the streets and alleys, and the large house where she goes to bed of nights, a soft thing like fur begins to rub your limbs, and you hear a low, scared voice, lonely, calling, and you know that a cool something nozzles moisture in your palms. Sensitive things like nostrils, quiver. Her breath comes sweet as honeysuckle whose pistils bear the life of coming song. And her eyes carry to where builders find no need for vestibules, for swinging on iron hinges, storm doors. + 

Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog, that follows her, whimpering. I’ve seen it tagging on behind her, up streets where chestnut trees flowered, where dusty asphalt had been freshly sprinkled with clean water. Up alleys where niggers sat on low doorsteps before tumbled shanties and sang and loved. At night, when she comes home, the little dog is left in the vestibule, nosing the crack beneath the big storm door, filled with chills till morning. Someone⁠ ⁠… eoho Jesus⁠ ⁠… soft as the bare feet of Christ moving across bales of southern cotton, will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps: cradled in dream-fluted cane. + 

Box Seat + 

I + 

Houses are shy girls whose eyes shine reticently upon the dusk body of the street. Upon the gleaming limbs and asphalt torso of a dreaming nigger. Shake your curled wool-blossoms, nigger. Open your liver lips to the lean, white spring. Stir the root-life of a withered people. Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream. + 

Dark swaying forms of Negroes are street songs that woo virginal houses. + 

Dan Moore walks southward on Thirteenth Street. The low limbs of budding chestnut trees recede above his head. Chestnut buds and blossoms are wool he walks upon. The eyes of houses faintly touch him as he passes them. Soft girl-eyes, they set him singing. Girl-eyes within him widen upward to promised faces. Floating away, they dally wistfully over the dusk body of the street. Come on, Dan Moore, come on. Dan sings. His voice is a little hoarse. It cracks. He strains to produce tones in keeping with the houses’ loveliness. Cant be done. He whistles. His notes are shrill. They hurt him. Negroes open gates, and go indoors, perfectly. Dan thinks of the house he’s going to. Of the girl. Lips, flesh-notes of a forgotten song, plead with him⁠ ⁠… + 

Dan turns into a side-street, opens an iron gate, bangs it to. Mounts the steps, and searches for the bell. Funny, he cant find it. He fumbles around. The thought comes to him that someone passing by might see him, and not understand. Might think that he is trying to sneak, to break in. + 

Dan: Break in. Get an ax and smash in. Smash in their faces. I’ll show em. Break into an engine-house, steal a thousand horsepower fire truck. Smash in with the truck. I’ll show em. Grab an ax and brain em. Cut em up. Jack the Ripper. Baboon from the zoo. And then the cops come. “No, I aint a baboon. I aint Jack the Ripper. I’m a poor man out of work. Take your hands off me, you bull-necked bears. Look into my eyes. I am Dan Moore. I was born in a canefield. The hands of Jesus touched me. I am come to a sick world to heal it. Only the other day, a dope fiend brushed against me⁠—Dont laugh, you mighty, juicy, meat-hook men. Give me your fingers and I will peel them as if they were ripe bananas.” + 

Someone might think he is trying to break in. He’d better knock. His knuckles are raw bone against the thick glass door. He waits. No one comes. Perhaps they havent heard him. He raps again. This time, harder. He waits. No one comes. Someone is surely in. He fancies that he sees their shadows on the glass. Shadows of gorillas. Perhaps they saw him coming and dont want to let him in. He knocks. The tension of his arms makes the glass rattle. Hurried steps come towards him. The door opens. + 

“Please, you might break the glass⁠—the bell⁠—oh, Mr. Moore! I thought it must be some stranger. How do you do? Come in, wont you? Muriel? Yes. I’ll call her. Take your things off, wont you? And have a seat in the parlor. Muriel will be right down. Muriel! Oh Muriel! Mr. Moore to see you. She’ll be right down. You’ll pardon me, wont you? So glad to see you.” + 

Her eyes are weak. They are bluish and watery from reading newspapers. The blue is steel. It gimlets Dan while her mouth flaps amiably to him. + 

Dan: Nothing for you to see, old mussel-head. Dare I show you? If I did, delirium would furnish you headlines for a month. Now look here. Thats enough. Go long, woman. Say some nasty thing and I’ll kill you. Huh. Better damned sight not. Ta-ta, Mrs. Pribby. + 

Mrs. Pribby retreats to the rear of the house. She takes up a newspaper. There is a sharp click as she fits into her chair and draws it to the table. The click is metallic like the sound of a bolt being shot into place. Dan’s eyes sting. Sinking into a soft couch, he closes them. The house contracts about him. It is a sharp-edged, massed, metallic house. Bolted. About Mrs. Pribby. Bolted to the endless rows of metal houses. Mrs. Pribby’s house. The rows of houses belong to other Mrs. Pribbys. No wonder he couldn’t sing to them. + 

Dan: What’s Muriel doing here? God, what a place for her. Whats she doing? Putting her stockings on? In the bathroom. Come out of there, Dan Moore. People must have their privacy. Peeping-toms. I’ll never peep. I’ll listen. I like to listen. + 

Dan goes to the wall and places his ear against it. A passing street car and something vibrant from the earth sends a rumble to him. That rumble comes from the earth’s deep core. It is the mutter of powerful underground races. Dan has a picture of all the people rushing to put their ears against walls, to listen to it. The next world-savior is coming up that way. Coming up. A continent sinks down. The new-world Christ will need consummate skill to walk upon the waters where huge bubbles burst⁠ ⁠… Thuds of Muriel coming down. Dan turns to the piano and glances through a stack of jazz music sheets. “Ji-ji-bo, Ji-ji-bo!”⁠ ⁠… + 

“Hello, Dan, stranger, what brought you here?” + 

Muriel comes in, shakes hands, and then clicks into a high-armed seat under the orange glow of a floor-lamp. Her face is fleshy. It would tend to coarseness but for the fresh fragrant something which is the life of it. Her hair like an Indian’s. But more curly and bushed and vagrant. Her nostrils flare. The flushed ginger of her cheeks is touched orange by the shower of color from the lamp. + 

“Well, you havent told me, you havent answered my question, stranger. What brought you here?” + 

Dan feels the pressure of the house, of the rear room, of the rows of houses, shift to Muriel. He is light. He loves her. He is doubly heavy. + 

“Dont know, Muriel⁠—wanted to see you⁠—wanted to talk to you⁠—to see you and tell you that I know what you’ve been through⁠—what pain the last few months must have been⁠—” + 

“Lets dont mention that.” + 

“But why not, Muriel? I⁠—” + 

“Please.” + 

“But Muriel, life is full of things like that. One grows strong and beautiful in facing them. What else is life?” + 

“I dont know, Dan. And I dont believe I care. Whats the use? Lets talk about something else. I hear there’s a good show at the Lincoln this week.” + 

“Yes, so Harry was telling me. Going?” + 

“Tonight.” + 

Dan starts to rise. + 

“I didnt know. I dont want to keep you.” + 

“Its all right. You dont have to go till Bernice comes. And she wont be here till eight. I’m all dressed. I’ll let you know.” + 

“Thanks.” + 

Silence. The rustle of a newspaper being turned comes from the rear room. + 

Muriel: Shame about Dan. Something awfully good and fine about him. But he don’t fit in. In where? Me? Dan, I could love you if I tried. I dont have to try. I do. O Dan, dont you know I do? Timid lover, brave talker that you are. Whats the good of all you know if you dont know that? I wont let myself. I? Mrs. Pribby who reads newspapers all night wont. What has she got to do with me? She is me, somehow. No she’s not. Yes she is. She is the town, and the town wont let me love you, Dan. Dont you know? You could make it let me if you would. Why wont you? Youre selfish. I’m not strong enough to buck it. Youre too selfish to buck it, for me. I wish you’d go. You irritate me. Dan, please go. + 

“What are you doing now, Dan?” + 

“Same old thing, Muriel. Nothing, as the world would have it. Living, as I look at things. Living as much as I can without⁠—” + 

“But you cant live without money, Dan. Why dont you get a good job and settle down?” + 

Dan: Same old line. Shoot it at me, sister. Hell of a note, this loving business. For ten minutes of it youve got to stand the torture of an intolerable heaviness and a hundred platitudes. Well, damit, shoot on. + 

“To what? my dear. Rustling newspapers?” + 

“You mustnt say that, Dan. It isnt right. Mrs. Pribby has been awfully good to me.” + 

“Dare say she has. Whats that got to do with it?” + 

“Oh, Dan, youre so unconsiderate and selfish. All you think of is yourself.” + 

“I think of you.” + 

“Too much⁠—I mean, you ought to work more and think less. Thats the best way to get along.” + 

“Mussel-heads get along, Muriel. There is more to you than that⁠—” + 

“Sometimes I think there is, Dan. But I dont know. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to do something with myself. Something real and beautiful, I mean. But whats the good of trying? I’ve tried to make people, everyone I come in contact with, happy⁠—” + 

Dan looks at her, directly. Her animalism, still unconquered by zoo-restrictions and keeper-taboos, stirs him. Passion tilts upward, bringing with it the elements of an old desire. Muriel’s lips become the flesh-notes of a futile, plaintive longing. Dan’s impulse to direct her is its fresh life. + 

“Happy, Muriel? No, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death. Not happy, Muriel. Say that you have tried to make them create. Say that you have used your own capacity for life to cradle them. To start them upward-flowing. Or if you cant say that you have, then say that you will. My talking to you will make you aware of your power to do so. Say that you will love, that you will give yourself in love⁠—” + 

“To you, Dan?” + 

Dan’s consciousness crudely swerves into his passions. They flare up in his eyes. They set up quivers in his abdomen. He is suddenly over-tense and nervous. + 

“Muriel⁠—” + 

The newspaper rustles in the rear room. + 

“Muriel⁠—” + 

Dan rises. His arms stretch towards her. His fingers and his palms, pink in the lamplight, are glowing irons. Muriel’s chair is close and stiff about her. The house, the rows of houses locked about her chair. Dan’s fingers and arms are fire to melt and bars to wrench and force and pry. Her arms hang loose. Her hands are hot and moist. Dan takes them. He slips to his knees before her. + 

“Dan, you mustnt.” + 

“Muriel⁠—” + 

“Dan, really you mustnt. No, Dan. No.” + 

“Oh, come, Muriel. Must I⁠—” + 

“Shhh. Dan, please get up. Please. Mrs. Pribby is right in the next room. She’ll hear you. She may come in. Dont, Dan. She’ll see you⁠—” + 

“Well then, lets go out.” + 

“I cant. Let go, Dan. Oh, wont you please let go.” + 

Muriel tries to pull her hands away. Dan tightens his grip. He feels the strength of his fingers. His muscles are tight and strong. He stands up. Thrusts out his chest. Muriel shrinks from him. Dan becomes aware of his crude absurdity. His lips curl. His passion chills. He has an obstinate desire to possess her. + 

“Muriel, I love you. I want you, whatever the world of Pribby says. Damn your Pribby. Who is she to dictate my love? I’ve stood enough of her. Enough of you. Come here.” + 

Muriel’s mouth works in and out. Her eyes flash and waggle. She wrenches her hands loose and forces them against his breast to keep him off. Dan grabs her wrists. Wedges in between her arms. Her face is close to him. It is hot and blue and moist. Ugly. + 

“Come here now.” + 

“Dont, Dan. Oh, dont. What are you killing?” + 

“Whats weak in both of us and a whole litter of Pribbys. For once in your life youre going to face whats real, by God⁠—” + 

A sharp rap on the newspaper in the rear room cuts between them. The rap is like cool thick glass between them. Dan is hot on one side. Muriel, hot on the other. They straighten. Gaze fearfully at one another. Neither moves. A clock in the rear room, in the rear room, the rear room, strikes eight. Eight slow, cool sounds. Bernice. Muriel fastens on her image. She smooths her dress. She adjusts her skirt. She becomes prim and cool. Rising, she skirts Dan as if to keep the glass between them. Dan, gyrating nervously above the easy swing of his limbs, follows her to the parlor door. Muriel retreats before him till she reaches the landing of the steps that lead upstairs. She smiles at him. Dan sees his face in the hall mirror. He runs his fingers through his hair. Reaches for his hat and coat and puts them on. He moves towards Muriel. Muriel steps backward up one step. Dan’s jaw shoots out. Muriel jerks her arm in warning of Mrs. Pribby. She gasps and turns and starts to run. Noise of a chair scraping as Mrs. Pribby rises from it, ratchets down the hall. Dan stops. He makes a wry face, wheels round, goes out, and slams the door. + 

II + 

People come in slowly⁠ ⁠… mutter, laughs, flutter, whishadwash, “I’ve changed my work-clothes⁠—”⁠ ⁠… and fill vacant seats of Lincoln Theater. Muriel, leading Bernice who is a cross between a washerwoman and a blue-blood lady, a washer-blue, a washer-lady, wanders down the right aisle to the lower front box. Muriel has on an orange dress. Its color would clash with the crimson box-draperies, its color would contradict the sweet rose smile her face is bathed in, should she take her coat off. She’ll keep it on. Pale purple shadows rest on the planes of her cheeks. Deep purple comes from her thick-shocked hair. Orange of the dress goes well with these. Muriel presses her coat down from around her shoulders. Teachers are not supposed to have bobbed hair. She’ll keep her hat on. She takes the first chair, and indicates that Bernice is to take the one directly behind her. Seated thus, her eyes are level with, and near to, the face of an imaginary man upon the stage. To speak to Berny she must turn. When she does, the audience is square upon her. + 

People come in slowly⁠ ⁠… “⁠—for my Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. O glory God! O shout Amen!”⁠ ⁠… and fill vacant seats of Lincoln Theater. Each one is a bolt that shoots into a slot, and is locked there. Suppose the Lord should ask, where was Moses when the light went out? Suppose Gabriel should blow his trumpet! The seats are slots. The seats are bolted houses. The mass grows denser. Its weight at first is impalpable upon the box. Then Muriel begins to feel it. She props her arm against the brass box-rail, to ward it off. Silly. These people are friends of hers: a parent of a child she teaches, an old school friend. She smiles at them. They return her courtesy, and she is free to chat with Berny. Berny’s tongue, started, runs on, and on. O washer-blue! O washer-lady! + 

Muriel: Never see Dan again. He makes me feel queer. Starts things he doesnt finish. Upsets me. I am not upset. I am perfectly calm. I am going to enjoy the show. Good show. I’ve had some show! This damn tame thing. O Dan. Wont see Dan again. Not alone. Have Mrs. Pribby come in. She was in. Keep Dan out. If I love him, can I keep him out? Well then, I dont love him. Now he’s out. Who is that coming in? Blind as a bat. Dingbat. Looks like Dan. He mustnt see me. Silly. He cant reach me. He wont dare come in here. He’d put his head down like a goring bull and charge me. He’d trample them. He’d gore. He’d rape! Berny! He won’t dare come in here. + 

“Berny, who was that who just came in? I havent my glasses.” + 

“A friend of yours, a good friend so I hear. Mr. Daniel Moore, Lord.” + 

“Oh. He’s no friend of mine.” + 

“No? I hear he is.” + 

“Well, he isnt.” + 

Dan is ushered down the aisle. He has to squeeze past the knees of seated people to reach his own seat. He treads on a man’s corns. The man grumbles, and shoves him off. He shrivels close beside a portly Negress whose huge rolls of flesh meet about the bones of seat-arms. A soil-soaked fragrance comes from her. Through the cement floor her strong roots sink down. They spread under the asphalt streets. Dreaming, the streets roll over on their bellies, and suck their glossy health from them. Her strong roots sink down and spread under the river and disappear in bloodlines that waver south. Her roots shoot down. Dan’s hands follow them. Roots throb. Dan’s heart beats violently. He places his palms upon the earth to cool them. Earth throbs. Dan’s heart beats violently. He sees all the people in the house rush to the walls to listen to the rumble. A new-world Christ is coming up. Dan comes up. He is startled. The eyes of the woman dont belong to her. They look at him unpleasantly. From either aisle, bolted masses press in. He doesnt fit. The mass grows agitant. For an instant, Dan’s and Muriel’s eyes meet. His weight there slides the weight on her. She braces an arm against the brass rail, and turns her head away. + 

Muriel: Damn fool; dear Dan, what did you want to follow me here for? Oh cant you ever do anything right? Must you always pain me, and make me hate you? I do hate you. I wish someone would come in with a horsewhip and lash you out. I wish someone would drag you up a back alley and brain you with the whip-butt. + 

Muriel glances at her wristwatch. + 

“Quarter of nine. Berny, what time have you?” + 

“Eight-forty. Time to begin. Oh, look Muriel, that woman with the plume; doesnt she look good! They say she’s going with, oh, whats his name. You know. Too much powder. I can see it from here. Here’s the orchestra now. O fine! Jim Clem at the piano!” + 

The men fill the pit. Instruments run the scale and tune. The saxophone moans and throws a fit. Jim Clem, poised over the piano, is ready to begin. His head nods forward. Opening crash. The house snaps dark. The curtain recedes upward from the blush of the footlights. Jazz overture is over. The first act is on. + 

Dan: Old stuff. Muriel⁠—bored. Must be. But she’ll smile and she’ll clap. Do what youre bid, you she-slave. Look at her. Sweet, tame woman in a brass box seat. Clap, smile, fawn, clap. Do what youre bid. Drag me in with you. Dirty me. Prop me in your brass box seat. I’m there, am I not? because of you. He-slave. Slave of a woman who is a slave. I’m a damned sight worse than you are. I sing your praises, Beauty! I exalt thee, O Muriel! A slave, thou art greater than all Freedom because I love thee. + 

Dan fidgets, and disturbs his neighbors. His neighbors glare at him. He glares back without seeing them. The man whose corns have been trod upon speaks to him. + 

“Keep quiet, cant you, mister. Other people have paid their money besides yourself to see the show.” + 

The man’s face is a blur about two sullen liquid things that are his eyes. The eyes dissolve in the surrounding vagueness. Dan suddenly feels that the man is an enemy whom he has long been looking for. + 

Dan bristles. Glares furiously at the man. + 

“All right. All right then. Look at the show. I’m not stopping you.” + 

“Shhh,” from someone in the rear. + 

Dan turns around. + 

“Its that man there who started everything. I didnt say a thing to him until he tried to start something. What have I got to do with whether he has paid his money or not? Thats the manager’s business. Do I look like the manager?” + 

“Shhhh. Youre right. Shhhh.” + 

“Dont tell me to shhh. Tell him. That man there. He started everything. If what he wanted was to start a fight, why didnt he say so?” + 

The man leans forward. + 

“Better be quiet, sonny. I aint said a thing about fight, yet.” + 

“Its a good thing you havent.” + 

“Shhhh.” + 

Dan grips himself. Another act is on. Dwarfs, dressed like prizefighters, foreheads bulging like boxing gloves, are led upon the stage. They are going to fight for the heavyweight championship. Gruesome. Dan glances at Muriel. He imagines that she shudders. His mind curves back into himself, and picks up tail-ends of experiences. His eyes are open, mechanically. The dwarfs pound and bruise and bleed each other, on his eyeballs. + 

Dan: Ah, but she was some baby! And not vulgar either. Funny how some women can do those things. Muriel dancing like that! Hell. She rolled and wabbled. Her buttocks rocked. She pulled up her dress and showed her pink drawers. Baby! And then she caught my eyes. Dont know what my eyes had in them. Yes I do. God, dont I though! Sometimes I think, Dan Moore, that your eyes could burn clean⁠ ⁠… burn clean⁠ ⁠… burn clean!⁠ ⁠… + 

The gong rings. The dwarfs set to. They spar grotesquely, playfully, until one lands a stiff blow. This makes the other sore. He commences slugging. A real scrap is on. Time! The dwarfs go to their corners and are sponged and fanned off. Gloves bulge from their wrists. Their wrists are necks for the tight-faced gloves. The fellow to the right lets his eyes roam over the audience. He sights Muriel. He grins. + 

Dan: Those silly women arguing feminism. Here’s what I should have said to them. “It should be clear to you women, that the proposition must be stated thus: + 

Me, horizontally above her. + 

Action: perfect strokes downward oblique. + 

Hence, man dominates because of limitation. + 

Or, so it shall be until women learn their stuff. + 

So framed, the proposition is a mental-filler, Dentist, I want gold teeth. It should become cherished of the technical intellect. I hereby offer it to posterity as one of the important machine-age designs. P.S. It should be noted, that because it is an achievement of this age, its growth and hence its causes, up to the point of maturity, antedate machinery. Ery⁠ ⁠…” + 

The gong rings. No fooling this time. The dwarfs set to. They clinch. The referee parts them. One swings a cruel uppercut and knocks the other down. A huge head hits the floor. Pop! The house roars. The fighter, groggy, scrambles up. The referee whispers to the contenders not to fight so hard. They ignore him. They charge. Their heads jab like boxing-gloves. They kick and spit and bite. They pound each other furiously. Muriel pounds. The house pounds. Cut lips. Bloody noses. The referee asks for the gong. Time! The house roars. The dwarfs bow, are made to bow. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led from the stage. + 

Dan: Strange I never really noticed him before. Been sitting there for years. Born a slave. Slavery not so long ago. He’ll die in his chair. Swing low, sweet chariot. Jesus will come and roll him down the river Jordan. Oh, come along, Moses, you’ll get lost; stretch out your rod and come across. Let my people go! Old man. Knows everyone who passes the corners. Saw the first horsecars. The first Oldsmobile. And he was born in slavery. I did see his eyes. Never miss eyes. But they were bloodshot and watery. It hurt to look at them. It hurts to look in most people’s eyes. He saw Grant and Lincoln. He saw Walt⁠—old man, did you see Walt Whitman? Did you see Walt Whitman! Strange force that drew me to him. And I went up to see. The woman thought I saw crazy. I told him to look into the heavens. He did, and smiled. I asked him if he knew what that rumbling is that comes up from the ground. Christ, what a stroke that was. And the jabbering idiots crowding around. And the crossing-cop leaving his job to come over and wheel him away⁠ ⁠… + 

The house applauds. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led back. But no encore. Must give the house something. The attendant comes out and announces that Mr. Barry, the champion, will sing one of his own songs, “for your approval.” Mr. Barry grins at Muriel as he wabbles from the wing. He holds a fresh white rose, and a small mirror. He wipes blood from his nose. He signals Jim Clem. The orchestra starts. A sentimental love song, Mr. Barry sings, first to one girl, and then another in the audience. He holds the mirror in such a way that it flashes in the face of each one he sings to. The light swings around. + 

Dan: I am going to reach up and grab the girders of this building and pull them down. The crash will be a signal. Hid by the smoke and dust Dan Moore will arise. In his right hand will be a dynamo. In his left, a god’s face that will flash white light from ebony. I’ll grab a girder and swing it like a walking-stick. Lightning will flash. I’ll grab its black knob and swing it like a crippled cane. Lightning⁠ ⁠… Someone’s flashing⁠ ⁠… someone’s flashing⁠ ⁠… Who in hell is flashing that mirror? Take it off me, godam you. + 

Dan’s eyes are half blinded. He moves his head. The light follows. He hears the audience laugh. He hears the orchestra. A man with a high-pitched, sentimental voice is singing. Dan sees the dwarf. Along the mirror flash the song comes. Dan ducks his head. The audience roars. The light swings around to Muriel. Dan looks. Muriel is too close. Mr. Barry covers his mirror. He sings to her. She shrinks away. Nausea. She clutches the brass box-rail. She moves to face away. The audience is square upon her. Its eyes smile. Its hands itch to clap. Muriel turns to the dwarf and forces a smile at him. With a showy blare of orchestration, the song comes to its close. Mr. Barry bows. He offers Muriel the rose, first having kissed it. Blood of his battered lips is a vivid stain upon its petals. Mr. Barry offers Muriel the rose. The house applauds. Muriel flinches back. The dwarf steps forward, diffident; threatening. Hate pops from his eyes and crackles like a brittle heat about the box. The thick hide of his face is drawn in tortured wrinkles. Above his eyes, the bulging, tight-skinned brow. Dan looks at it. It grows calm and massive. It grows profound. It is a thing of wisdom and tenderness, of suffering and beauty. Dan looks down. The eyes are calm and luminous. Words come from them⁠ ⁠… Arms of the audience reach out, grab Muriel, and hold her there. Claps are steel fingers that manacle her wrists and move them forward to acceptance. Berny leans forward and whispers: + 

“Its all right. Go on⁠—take it.” + 

Words form in the eyes of the dwarf: + 

Do not shrink. Do not be afraid of me. + 

Jesus + 

See how my eyes look at you. + 

the Son of God + 

I too was made in His image. + 

was once⁠— + 

I give you the rose. + 

Muriel, tight in her revulsion, sees black, and daintily reaches for the offering. As her hand touches it, Dan springs up in his seat and shouts: + 

“Jesus was once a leper!” + 

Dan steps down. + 

He is as cool as a green stem that has just shed its flower. + 

Rows of gaping faces strain towards him. They are distant, beneath him, impalpable. Squeezing out, Dan again treads upon the corn-foot man. The man shoves him. + 

“Watch where youre going, mister. Crazy or no, you aint going to walk over me. Watch where youre going there.” + 

Dan turns, and serenely tweaks the fellow’s nose. The man jumps up. Dan is jammed against a seat-back. A slight swift anger flicks him. His fist hooks the other’s jaw. + 

“Now you have started something. Aint no man living can hit me and get away with it. Come on on the outside.” + 

The house, tumultuously stirring, grabs its wraps and follows the men. + 

The man leads Dan up a black alley. The alley-air is thick and moist with smells of garbage and wet trash. In the morning, singing niggers will drive by and ring their gongs⁠ ⁠… Heavy with the scent of rancid flowers and with the scent of fight. The crowd, pressing forward, is a hollow roar. Eyes of houses, soft girl-eyes, glow reticently upon the hubbub and blink out. The man stops. Takes off his hat and coat. Dan, having forgotten him, keeps going on. + 

Prayer + 

My body is opaque to the soul. + 

Driven of the spirit, long have I sought to temper it unto the spirit’s longing, + 

But my mind, too, is opaque to the soul. + 

A closed lid is my soul’s flesh-eye. + 

O Spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger, + 

Direct it to the lid of its flesh-eye. + 

I am weak with much giving. + 

I am weak with the desire to give more. + 

(How strong a thing is the little finger!) + 

So weak that I have confused the body with the soul, + 

And the body with its little finger. + 

(How frail is the little finger.) + 

My voice could not carry to you did you dwell in stars, + 

O Spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger⁠ ⁠… + 

Harvest Song + 

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. + 

But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. + 

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. + 

I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger. + 

My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time. + 

I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack’d fields of other harvesters. + 

It would be good to see them⁠ ⁠… crook’d, split, and iron-ring’d handles of the scythes. It would be good to see them, dust-caked and blind. I hunger. + 

(Dusk is a strange fear’d sheath their blades are dull’d in.) + 

My throat is dry. And should I call, a cracked grain like the oats⁠ ⁠… eoho⁠— + 

I fear to call. What should they hear me, and offer me their grain, oats, or wheat, or corn? I have been in the fields all day. I fear I could not taste it. I fear knowledge of my hunger. + 

My ears are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time. + 

I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry. + 

It would be good to hear their songs⁠ ⁠… reapers of the sweet-stalk’d cane, cutters of the corn⁠ ⁠… even though their throats cracked and the strangeness of their voices deafened me. + 

I hunger. My throat is dry. Now that the sun has set and I am chilled, I fear to call. (Eoho, my brothers!) + 

I am a reaper. (Eoho!) All my oats are cradled. But I am too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain. It has no taste to it. My throat is dry⁠ ⁠… + 

O my brothers, I beat my palms, still soft, against the stubble of my harvesting. (You beat your soft palms, too.) My pain is sweet. Sweeter than the oats or wheat or corn. It will not bring me knowledge of my hunger. + 

Bona and Paul + 

I + 

On the school gymnasium floor, young men and women are drilling. They are going to be teachers, and go out into the world⁠ ⁠… thud, thud⁠ ⁠… and give precision to the movements of sick people who all their lives have been drilling. One man is out of step. In step. The teacher glares at him. A girl in bloomers, seated on a mat in the corner because she has told the director that she is sick, sees that the footfalls of the men are rhythmical and syncopated. The dance of his blue-trousered limbs thrills her. + 

Bona: He is a candle that dances in a grove swung with pale balloons. + 

Columns of the drillers thud towards her. He is in the front row. He is in no row at all. Bona can look close at him. His red-brown face⁠— + 

Bona: He is a harvest moon. He is an autumn leaf. He is a nigger. Bona! But dont all the dorm girls say so? And dont you, when you are sane, say so? Thats why I love⁠—Oh, nonsense. You have never loved a man who didnt first love you. Besides⁠— + 

Columns thud away from her. Come to a halt in line formation. Rigid. The period bell rings, and the teacher dismisses them. + 

A group collects around Paul. They are choosing sides for basketball. Girls against boys. Paul has his. He is limbering up beneath the basket. Bona runs to the girl captain and asks to be chosen. The girls fuss. The director comes to quiet them. He hears what Bona wants. + 

“But, Miss Hale, you were excused⁠—” + 

“So I was, Mr. Boynton, but⁠—” + 

“⁠—you can play basketball, but you are too sick to drill.” + 

“If you wish to put it that way.” + 

She swings away from him to the girl captain. + 

“Helen, I want to play, and you must let me. This is the first time I’ve asked and I dont see why⁠—” + 

“Thats just it, Bona. We have our team.” + 

“Well, team or no team, I want to play and thats all there is to it.” + 

She snatches the ball from Helen’s hands, and charges down the floor. + 

Helen shrugs. One of the weaker girls says that she’ll drop out. Helen accepts this. The team is formed. The whistle blows. The game starts. Bona, in center, is jumping against Paul. He plays with her. Out-jumps her, makes a quick pass, gets a quick return, and shoots a goal from the middle of the floor. Bona burns crimson. She fights, and tries to guard him. One of her teammates advises her not to play so hard. Paul shoots his second goal. + 

Bona begins to feel a little dizzy and all in. She drives on. Almost hugs Paul to guard him. Near the basket, he attempts to shoot, and Bona lunges into his body and tries to beat his arms. His elbow, going up, gives her a sharp crack on the jaw. She whirls. He catches her. Her body stiffens. Then becomes strangely vibrant, and bursts to a swift life within her anger. He is about to give way before her hatred when a new passion flares at him and makes his stomach fall. Bona squeezes him. He suddenly feels stifled, and wonders why in hell the ring of silly gaping faces that’s caked about him doesnt make way and give him air. He has a swift illusion that it is himself who has been struck. He looks at Bona. Whir. Whir. They seem to be human distortions spinning tensely in a fog. Spinning⁠ ⁠… dizzy⁠ ⁠… spinning⁠ ⁠… Bona jerks herself free, flushes a startling crimson, breaks through the bewildered teams, and rushes from the hall. + 

II + 

Paul is in his room of two windows. + 

Outside, the South-Side L track cuts them in two. + 

Bona is one window. One window, Paul. + 

Hurtling Loop-jammed L trains throw them in swift shadow. + 

Paul goes to his. Gray slanting roofs of houses are tinted lavender in the setting sun. Paul follows the sun, over the stockyards where a fresh stench is just arising, across wheat lands that are still waving above their stubble, into the sun. Paul follows the sun to a pine-matted hillock in Georgia. He sees the slanting roofs of gray unpainted cabins tinted lavender. A Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. Her breasts are ample for the suckling of a song. She weans it, and sends it, curiously weaving, among lush melodies of cane and corn. Paul follows the sun into himself in Chicago. + 

He is at Bona’s window. + 

With his own glow he looks through a dark pane. + 

Paul’s roommate comes in. + 

“Say, Paul, I’ve got a date for you. Come on. Shake a leg, will you?” + 

His blonde hair is combed slick. His vest is snug about him. + 

He is like the electric light which he snaps on. + 

“Whatdoysay, Paul? Get a wiggle on. Come on. We havent got much time by the time we eat and dress and everything.” + 

His bustling concentrates on the brushing of his hair. + 

Art: What in hell’s getting into Paul of late, anyway? Christ, but he’s getting moony. Its his blood. Dark blood: moony. Doesnt get anywhere unless you boost it. You’ve got to keep it going⁠— + 

“Say, Paul!” + 

—or it’ll go to sleep on you. Dark blood; nigger? Thats what those jealous she-hens say. Not Bona though, or she⁠ ⁠… from the South⁠ ⁠… wouldnt want me to fix a date for him and her. Hell of a thing, that Paul’s dark: you’ve got to always be answering questions. + 

“Say, Paul, for Christ’s sake leave that window, cant you?” + 

“Whats it, Art?” + 

“Hell, I’ve told you about fifty times. Got a date for you. Come on.” + 

“With who?” + 

Art: He didnt use to ask; now he does. Getting up in the air. Getting funny. + 

“Heres your hat. Want a smoke? Paul! Here. I’ve got a match. Now come on and I’ll tell you all about it on the way to supper.” + 

Paul: He’s going to Life this time. No doubt of that. Quit your kidding. Some day, dear Art, I’m going to kick the living slats out of you, and you wont know what I’ve done it for. And your slats will bring forth Life⁠ ⁠… beautiful woman⁠ ⁠… + 

Pure Food Restaurant. + 

“Bring me some soup with a lot of crackers, understand? And then a roast-beef dinner. Same for you, eh, Paul? Now as I was saying, you’ve got a swell chance with her. And she’s game. Best proof: she dont give a damn what the dorm girls say about you and her in the gym, or about the funny looks that Boynton gives her, or about what they say about, well, hell, you know, Paul. And say, Paul, she’s a sweetheart. Tall, not puffy and pretty, more serious and deep⁠—the kind you like these days. And they say she’s got a car. And say, she’s on fire. But you know all about that. She got Helen to fix it up with me. The four of us⁠—remember the last party? Crimson Gardens! Boy!” + 

Paul’s eyes take on a light that Art can settle in. + 

III + 

Art has on his patent-leather pumps and fancy vest. A loose fall coat is swung across his arm. His face has been massaged, and over a close shave, powdered. It is a healthy pink the blue of evening tints a purple pallor. Art is happy and confident in the good looks that his mirror gave him. Bubbling over with a joy he must spend now if the night is to contain it all. His bubbles, too, are curiously tinted purple as Paul watches them. Paul, contrary to what he had thought he would be like, is cool like the dusk, and like the dusk, detached. His dark face is a floating shade in evening’s shadow. He sees Art, curiously. Art is a purple fluid, carbon-charged, that effervesces besides him. He loves Art. But is it not queer, this pale purple facsimile of a red-blooded Norwegian friend of his? Perhaps for some reason, white skins are not supposed to live at night. Surely, enough nights would transform them fantastically, or kill them. And their red passion? Night paled that too, and made it moony. Moony. Thats what Art thought of him. Bona didnt, even in the daytime. Bona, would she be pale? Impossible. Not that red glow. But the conviction did not set his emotion flowing. + 

“Come right in, wont you? The young ladies will be right down. Oh, Mr. Carlstrom, do play something for us while you are waiting. We just love to listen to your music. You play so well.” + 

Houses, and dorm sitting-rooms are places where white faces seclude themselves at night. There is a reason⁠ ⁠… + 

Art sat on the piano and simply tore it down. Jazz. The picture of Our Poets hung perilously. + 

Paul: I’ve got to get the kid to play that stuff for me in the daytime. Might be different. More himself. More nigger. Different? There is. Curious, though. + 

The girls come in. Art stops playing, and almost immediately takes up a petty quarrel, where he had last left it, with Helen. + 

Bona, black-hair curled staccato, sharply contrasting with Helen’s puffy yellow, holds Paul’s hand. She squeezes it. Her own emotion supplements the return pressure. And then, for no tangible reason, her spirits drop. Without them, she is nervous, and slightly afraid. She resents this. Paul’s eyes are critical. She resents Paul. She flares at him. She flares to poise and security. + 

“Shall we be on our way?” + 

“Yes, Bona, certainly.” + 

The Boulevard is sleek in asphalt, and, with arc-lights and limousines, aglow. Dry leaves scamper behind the whir of cars. The scent of exploded gasoline that mingles with them is faintly sweet. Mellow stone mansions overshadow clapboard homes which now resemble Negro shanties in some southern alley. Bona and Paul, and Art and Helen, move along an island-like, far-stretching strip of leaf-soft ground. Above them, worlds of shadow-planes and solids, silently moving. As if on one of these, Paul looks down on Bona. No doubt of it: her face is pale. She is talking. Her words have no feel to them. One sees them. They are pink petals that fall upon velvet cloth. Bona is soft, and pale, and beautiful. + 

“Paul, tell me something about yourself⁠—or would you rather wait?” + 

“I’ll tell you anything you’d like to know.” + 

“Not what I want to know, Paul; what you want to tell me.” + 

“You have the beauty of a gem fathoms under sea.” + 

“I feel that, but I dont want to be. I want to be near you. Perhaps I will be if I tell you something. Paul, I love you.” + 

The sea casts up its jewel into his hands, and burns them furiously. To tuck her arm under his and hold her hand will ease the burn. + 

“What can I say to you, brave dear woman⁠—I cant talk love. Love is a dry grain in my mouth unless it is wet with kisses.” + 

“You would dare? right here on the Boulevard? before Arthur and Helen?” + 

“Before myself? I dare.” + 

“Here then.” + 

Bona, in the slim shadow of a tree trunk, pulls Paul to her. Suddenly she stiffens. Stops. + 

“But you have not said you love me.” + 

“I cant⁠—yet⁠—Bona.” + 

“Ach, you never will. Youre cold. Cold.” + 

Bona: Colored; cold. Wrong somewhere. + 

She hurries and catches up with Art and Helen. + 

IV + 

Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. People⁠ ⁠… University of Chicago students, members of the stock exchange, a large Negro in crimson uniform who guards the door⁠ ⁠… had watched them enter. Had leaned towards each other over ash-smeared tablecloths and highballs and whispered: What is he, a Spaniard, an Indian, an Italian, a Mexican, a Hindu, or a Japanese? Art had at first fidgeted under their stares⁠ ⁠… what are you looking at, you godam pack of owl-eyed hyenas?⁠ ⁠… but soon settled into his fuss with Helen, and forgot them. A strange thing happened to Paul. Suddenly he knew that he was apart from the people around him. Apart from the pain which they had unconsciously caused. Suddenly he knew that people saw, not attractiveness in his dark skin, but difference. Their stares, giving him to himself, filled something long empty within him, and were like green blades sprouting in his consciousness. There was fullness, and strength and peace about it all. He saw himself, cloudy, but real. He saw the faces of the people at the tables round him. White lights, or as now, the pink lights of the Crimson Gardens gave a glow and immediacy to white faces. The pleasure of it, equal to that of love or dream, of seeing this. Art and Bona and Helen? He’d look. They were wonderfully flushed and beautiful. Not for himself; because they were. Distantly. Who were they, anyway? God, if he knew them. He’d come in with them. Of that he was sure. Come where? Into life? Yes. No. Into the Crimson Gardens. A part of life. A carbon bubble. Would it look purple if he went out into the night and looked at it? His sudden starting to rise almost upset the table. + 

“What in hell⁠—pardon⁠—whats the matter, Paul?” + 

“I forgot my cigarettes⁠—” + 

“Youre smoking one.” + 

“So I am. Pardon me.” + 

The waiter straightens them out. Takes their order. + 

Art: What in hell’s eating Paul? Moony aint the word for it. From bad to worse. And those godam people staring so. Paul’s a queer fish. Doesnt seem to mind⁠ ⁠… He’s my pal, let me tell you, you horn-rimmed owl-eyed hyena at that table, and a lot better than you whoever you are⁠ ⁠… Queer about him. I could stick up for him if he’d only come out, one way or the other, and tell a feller. Besides, a roommate has a right to know. Thinks I wont understand. Said so. He’s got a swell head when it comes to brains, all right. God, he’s a good straight feller, though. Only, moony. Nut. Nuttish. Nuttery. Nutmeg⁠ ⁠… “What’d you say, Helen?” + 

“I was talking to Bona, thank you.” + 

“Well, its nothing to get spiffy about.” + 

“What? Oh, of course not. Please lets dont start some silly argument all over again.” + 

“Well.” + 

“Well.” + 

“Now thats enough. Say, waiter, whats the matter with our order? Make it snappy, will you?” + 

Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The drinks come. Four highballs. Art passes cigarettes. A girl dressed like a bareback rider in flaming pink, makes her way through tables to the dance floor. All lights are dimmed till they seem a lush afterglow of crimson. Spotlights the girl. She sings. “Liza, Little Liza Jane.” + 

Paul is rosy before his window. + 

He moves, slightly, towards Bona. + 

With his own glow, he seeks to penetrate a dark pane. + 

Paul: From the South. What does that mean, precisely, except that you’ll love or hate a nigger? Thats a lot. What does it mean except that in Chicago you’ll have the courage to neither love or hate. A priori. But it would seem that you have. Queer words, arent these, for a man who wears blue pants on a gym floor in the daytime. Well, never matter. You matter. I’d like to know you whom I look at. Know, not love. Not that knowing is a greater pleasure; but that I have just found the joy of it. You came just a month too late. Even this afternoon I dreamed. Tonight, along the Boulevard, you found me cold. Paul Johnson, cold! Thats a good one, eh, Art, you fine old stupid fellow, you! But I feel good! The color and the music and the song⁠ ⁠… A Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. O song!⁠ ⁠… And those flushed faces. Eager brilliant eyes. Hard to imagine them as unawakened. Your own. Oh, they’re awake all right. “And you know it too, dont you Bona?” + 

“What, Paul?” + 

“The truth of what I was thinking.” + 

“I’d like to know I know⁠—something of you.” + 

“You will⁠—before the evening’s over. I promise it.” + 

Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The bareback rider balances agilely on the applause which is the tail of her song. Orchestral instruments warm up for jazz. The flute is a cat that ripples its fur against the deep-purring saxophone. The drum throws sticks. The cat jumps on the piano keyboard. Hi diddle, hi diddle, the cat and the fiddle. Crimson Gardens⁠ ⁠… hurrah!⁠ ⁠… jumps over the moon. Crimson Gardens! Helen⁠ ⁠… O Eliza⁠ ⁠… rabbit-eyes sparkling, plays up to, and tries to placate what she considers to be Paul’s contempt. She always does that⁠ ⁠… Little Liza Jane⁠ ⁠… Once home, she burns with the thought of what she’s done. She says all manner of snidy things about him, and swears that she’ll never go out again when he is along. She tries to get Art to break with him, saying, that if Paul, whom the whole dormitory calls a nigger, is more to him than she is, well, she’s through. She does not break with Art. She goes out as often as she can with Art and Paul. She explains this to herself by a piece of information which a friend of hers had given her: men like him (Paul) can fascinate. One is not responsible for fascination. Not one girl had really loved Paul; he fascinated them. Bona didnt; only thought she did. Time would tell. And of course, she didnt. Liza⁠ ⁠… She plays up to, and tries to placate, Paul. + 

“Paul is so deep these days, and I’m so glad he’s found someone to interest him.” + 

“I dont believe I do.” + 

The thought escapes from Bona just a moment before her anger at having said it. + 

Bona: You little puffy cat, I do. I do! + 

Dont I, Paul? her eyes ask. + 

Her answer is a crash of jazz from the palm-hidden orchestra. Crimson Gardens is a body whose blood flows to a clot upon the dance floor. Art and Helen clot. Soon, Bona and Paul. Paul finds her a little stiff, and his mind, wandering to Helen (silly little kid who wants every highball spoon her hands touch, for a souvenir), supple, perfect little dancer, wishes for the next dance when he and Art will exchange. + 

Bona knows that she must win him to herself. + 

“Since when have men like you grown cold?” + 

“The first philosopher.” + 

“I thought you were a poet⁠—or a gym director.” + 

“Hence, your failure to make love.” + 

Bona’s eyes flare. Water. Grow red about the rims. She would like to tear away from him and dash across the clotted floor. + 

“What do you mean?” + 

“Mental concepts rule you. If they were flush with mine⁠—good. I dont believe they are.” + 

“How do you know, Mr. Philosopher?” + 

“Mostly a priori.” + 

“You talk well for a gym director.” + 

“And you⁠—” + 

“I hate you. Ou!” + 

She presses away. Paul, conscious of the convention in it, pulls her to him. Her body close. Her head still strains away. He nearly crushes her. She tries to pinch him. Then sees people staring, and lets her arms fall. Their eyes meet. Both, contemptuous. The dance takes blood from their minds and packs it, tingling, in the torsos of their swaying bodies. Passionate blood leaps back into their eyes. They are a dizzy blood clot on a gyrating floor. + 

They know that the pink-faced people have no part in what they feel. Their instinct leads them away from Art and Helen, and towards the big uniformed black man who opens and closes the gilded exit door. The cloakroom girl is tolerant of their impatience over such trivial things as wraps. And slightly superior. As the black man swings the door for them, his eyes are knowing. Too many couples have passed out, flushed and fidgety, for him not to know. The chill air is a shock to Paul. A strange thing happens. He sees the Gardens purple, as if he were way off. And a spot is in the purple. The spot comes furiously towards him. Face of the black man. It leers. It smiles sweetly like a child’s. Paul leaves Bona and darts back so quickly that he doesnt give the doorman a chance to open. He swings in. Stops. Before the huge bulk of the Negro. + 

“Youre wrong.” + 

“Yassur.” + 

“Brother, youre wrong.” + 

“I came back to tell you, to shake your hand, and tell you that you are wrong. That something beautiful is going to happen. That the Gardens are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. That I came into the Gardens, into life in the Gardens with one whom I did not know. That I danced with her, and did not know her. That I felt passion, contempt and passion for her whom I did not know. That I thought of her. That my thoughts were matches thrown into a dark window. And all the while the Gardens were purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. I came back to tell you, brother, that white faces are petals of roses. That dark faces are petals of dusk. That I am going out and gather petals. That I am going out and know her whom I brought here with me to these Gardens which are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk.” + 

Paul and the black man shook hands. + 

When he reached the spot where they had been standing, Bona was gone. + 