THE COMPLETE WORKS OF F. SCOTT FITZGERALD. Фрэнсис Скотт Фицджеральд

myself. And if I had I should die with my lips shut and the guard on my fountain pen — as the wisest men have done since — oh, since the failure of a certain matter — a strange matter, by the way. It concerned some sceptics who thought they were far-sighted, just as you and I. Let me tell you about them by way of an evening prayer before you all drop off to sleep.

      “Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief — that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:

      “‘Let’s join together and make a great book that will last forever to mock the credulity of man. Let’s persuade our more erotic poets to write about the delights of the flesh, and induce some of our robust journalists to contribute stories of famous amours. We’ll include all the most preposterous old wives’ tales now current. We’ll choose the keenest satirist alive to compile a deity from all the deities worshipped by mankind, a deity who will be more magnificent than any of them, and yet so weakly human that he’ll become a byword for laughter the world over — and we’ll ascribe to him all sorts of jokes and vanities and rages, in which he’ll be supposed to indulge for his own diversion, so that the people will read our book and ponder it, and there’ll be no more nonsense in the world.

      “‘Finally, let us take care that the book possesses all the virtues of style, so that it may last forever as a witness to our profound scepticism and our universal irony.’

      “So the men did, and they died.

      “But the book lived always, so beautifully had it been written, and so astounding the quality of imagination with which these men of mind and genius had endowed it. They had neglected to give it a name, but after they were dead it became known as the Bible.”

      When he concluded there was no comment. Some damp languor sleeping on the air of night seemed to have bewitched them all.

      “As I said, I started on the story of my education. But my highballs are dead and the night’s almost over, and soon there’ll be an awful jabbering going on everywhere, in the trees and the houses, and the two little stores over there behind the station, and there’ll be a great running up and down upon the earth for a few hours — Well,” he concluded with a laugh, “thank God we four can all pass to our eternal rest knowing we’ve left the world a little better for having lived in it.”

      A breeze sprang up, blowing with it faint wisps of life which flattened against the sky.

      “Your remarks grow rambling and inconclusive,” said Anthony sleepily. “You expected one of those miracles of illumination by which you say your most brilliant and pregnant things in exactly the setting that should provoke the ideal symposium. Meanwhile Gloria has shown her far-sighted detachment by falling asleep — I can tell that by the fact that she has managed to concentrate her entire weight upon my broken body.”

      “Have I bored you?” inquired Maury, looking down with some concern.

      “No, you have disappointed us. You’ve shot a lot of arrows but did you shoot any birds?”

      “I leave the birds to Dick,” said Maury hurriedly. “I speak erratically, in disassociated fragments.”

      “You can get no rise from me,” muttered Dick. “My mind is full of any number of material things. I want a warm bath too much to worry about the importance of my work or what proportion of us are pathetic figures.”

      Dawn made itself felt in a gathering whiteness eastward over the river and an intermittent cheeping in the near-by trees.

      “Quarter to five,” sighed Dick; “almost another hour to wait. Look! Two gone.” He was pointing to Anthony, whose lids had sagged over his eyes. “Sleep of the Patch family—”

      But in another five minutes, despite the amplifying cheeps and chirrups, his own head had fallen forward, nodded down twice, thrice….

      Only Maury Noble remained awake, seated upon the station roof, his eyes wide open and fixed with fatigued intensity upon the distant nucleus of morning. He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house. He was sorry for no one now — on Monday morning there would be his business, and later there would be a girl of another class whose whole life he was; these were the things nearest his heart. In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think.

      There was the sun, letting down great glowing masses of heat; there was life, active and snarling, moving about them like a fly swarm — the dark pants of smoke from the engine, a crisp “all aboard!” and a bell ringing. Confusedly Maury saw eyes in the milk train staring curiously up at him, heard Gloria and Anthony in quick controversy as to whether he should go to the city with her, then another clamor and she was gone and the three men, pale as ghosts, were standing alone upon the platform while a grimy coal-heaver went down the road on top of a motor truck, carolling hoarsely at the summer morning.

      Chapter III

       The Broken Lute

       Table of Contents

      It is seven-thirty of an August evening. The windows in the living room of the gray house are wide open, patiently exchanging the tainted inner atmosphere of liquor and smoke for the fresh drowsiness of the late hot dusk. There are dying flower scents upon the air, so thin, so fragile, as to hint already of a summer laid away in time. But August is still proclaimed relentlessly by a thousand crickets around the side-porch, and by one who has broken into the house and concealed himself confidently behind a bookcase, from time to time shrieking of his cleverness and his indomitable will.

      The room itself is in messy disorder. On the table is a dish of fruit, which is real but appears artificial. Around it are grouped an ominous assortment of decanters, glasses, and heaped ash-trays, the latter still raising wavy smoke-ladders into the stale air, the effect on the whole needing but a skull to resemble that venerable chromo, once a fixture in every “den,” which presents the appendages to the life of pleasure with delightful and awe-inspiring sentiment.

      After a while the sprightly solo of the supercricket is interrupted rather than joined by a new sound — the melancholy wail of an erratically fingered flute. It is obvious that the musician is practising rather than performing, for from time to time the gnarled strain breaks off and, after an interval of indistinct mutterings, recommences.

      Just prior to the seventh false start a third sound contributes to the subdued discord. It is a taxi outside. A minute’s silence, then the taxi again, its boisterous retreat almost obliterating the scrape of footsteps on the cinder walk. The doorbell shrieks alarmingly through the house.

      From the kitchen enters a small, fatigued Japanese, hastily buttoning a servant’s coat of white duck. He opens the front screen-door and admits a handsome young man of thirty, clad in the sort of well-intentioned clothes peculiar to those who serve mankind. To his whole personality clings a well-intentioned air: his glance about the room is compounded of curiosity and a determined optimism; when he looks at Tana the entire burden of uplifting the godless Oriental is in his eyes. His name is FREDERICK E. PARAMORE. He was at Harvard with ANTHONY, where because of the initials of their surnames they were constantly placed next to each other in classes. A fragmentary acquaintance developed — but since that time they have never met.

      Nevertheless, PARAMORE enters the room with a certain air of arriving for the evening.

      Tana is answering a question.

      TANA: (Grinning with ingratiation) Gone to Inn for dinnah. Be back half-hour. Gone since ha’ past six.

      PARAMORE: (Regarding the glasses on the table) Have they company?

      TANA: Yes.