The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [142]
“When the harvest moon was up last year, I had to take to my bed, and since then I have not risen from it... I am no longer a divine biped: I am no longer a joyous though slightly corpulent Hellene, smiling gaily down on the melancholy Nazarene. I am now only an etching of sorrow, an unhappy man—a poor sick Jew.”
Words that might have been tortured from Davey’s own consumptive being. For what was he, too, but an etching of sorrow, a poor, sick, and homeless Jew.
He turned the pages and came upon Monolog From A Mattress. He could visualize the Jewish poet, twisted in body, unhappy in mind, expressing crucified thoughts from his mat-tress grave. The deepest poignancy of his whole life trembled within him.
For the rest
That any son should be as sick as I,
No mother could believe.
It washed gloom into him. Might he not die on a mat-tress grave from con in the charity ward of a hospital if he did not die in a prairie or doorway. Just like Heine, who suffered so many years ago in Paris, exiled. He was like an exile from Chicago. He thought of Heine, “who has all the poet’s gifts but love,” Heine, “a twisted trunk in chilly isolation.” Day after day he lay:
Slightly propped up upon this mattress grave
In which I’ve been interred these few eight years.
So unhappy that he envied a dog! How many times hadn’t Davey Cohen, hungry, cold, knowing he was useless to the world, walked along the streets of strange towns, envying the dogs that people owned, knowing that the dogs were better fed than he, that some people thought more of them than any human being did of him. He thought of dusk coming upon the poet on his mattress grave, another day of life robbed from his twisted body. Outside, in the rain, dusk came too, robbing Davey of another miserable day. He read and re-read Heine’s monologue, and then, other poems. The library closed, and the hours had seemed like minutes.
Davey slipped the book under his coat, and left. Rain slapped his face. He was back in the world now. He felt himself an “etching of sorrow, an unhappy man—a poor sick Jew.” He coughed, a sharp sword-like pain slicing through his lungs. He spat blood.
He was hungry.
CHAPTER TEN
I
Studs Lonigan arose with the ringing of the alarm clock, and rode to work on a crowded surface-car which ran backwards. As if through a mist, he saw the familiar unremembered faces of the other passengers. A man with an indistinct face and the sleek uniform of an army officer stared at him with con-tempt. Studs tried to recall that somewhere he had seen that face before. He crossed the aisle and eyed the man with an expression that was both questioning and conciliatory.
“Say, Chauncey, we’re going backwards, and I got to be at work.”
“All the cars in Alaska go this way.”
In a shock of surprise, Studs saw from the window of the moving car that they were passing through expansive, flat fields of snow.
He returned to his seat, and his disappointment dissipated when he realized that he was an adventurer, journeying to fight for love and gold. And the army officer was Lieutenant Ames Dubois. With the pride of ingenuity, he outlined a plan of action. Ames would be returning to Gloria. After seeing her, he would lead his soldiers out on an expedition to shovel snow. And Gloria would be awaiting her lover, Studs Lonigan, in a little Alaska love-nest. She would be prepared for him, without a strip on, and she would give herself unto him, body and soul, until it hurt. Then she would show him where the gold was in them there Alaska hills, and he would become a billionaire. He would return to Fifty-eighth Street with his fortune, and he would go round to the poolroom of George the Greek, escorting glorious Gloria, who would wear pearls in her ears, diamonds on her fingers, and rings on her toes. And every night for a century, glorious Gloria, stripped, would give herself unto him, body and soul, until it hurt. He glanced across the aisle at Lieutenant Ames Dubois, thinking what a chump that boy was.