Conrad Aiken: Great Circle

— Back Bay … Back Bay.

— Back Bay.

— Back Bay.

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch of the rang’d empire fall. Here is my — station. A taxi, please. And now the solid rain-drenched antipathy of Boston, the buildings in Copley Square all aloof and black, Trinity Church withdrawn and cowled in rain like a weeping nun, the Library staring down from an immense height with Florentine hauteur — what was this change, this difference, this withdrawal of friendliness? It was a new and hostile city. The people were foreigners, the wet streets were menacing, the bare trees brooded like skeletons over Commonwealth Avenue. We knew you, Andy. We know you not. We knew you, Andy. We know you not. Was this the guy that went to New York with bells on and now returns with horns? Give him a hand, boys, give the little fellow a great big hand. Drop a twig on him or a dead leaf, or maybe a brick. That’s the guy — that little feller in the Armstrong taxi, with the text of a textbook on Spanish literature in his suitcase. Tu pupila es azul. Y quando lloras —What was that dirty crack? No more of that. Cold shoulder him, boys — it’s nothing but El Diablo Mundo . The very spittin’ image with number eight shoes, a Harvard Coop hat, and deformed toenails. Cut him dead. What he’s got he deserves. He was askin’ for it. Give him the snake’s eye, Fairfield Street, Gloucester Street, Hereford Street, Massachusetts Avenue—! He’s made his bed, let his friend lie in it. Wot’s de flower bed between friends? Begonia. Look how nervous he is. He’s sticking his finger down his collar for no good reason. Not a thought to his navel. Say, if he had to pay the taxi by the heartbeat! Call the taxicologist, and we’ll have him stuffed. To the Peabody Museum with him, quam celerrime , we’ll show him up. Give him a birthday present. Ha! For Christ and the Church.

Horror preceded him into the Harvard Club, but evaded him among these friendly walls and stained-plaster Corinthian columns. Even here the familiar, the warm, the assuring, eyed him aslant, sneered when he turned his back. My dear Andy, it’s none of our business, but—! And what should stare him in the face but a row of telephone booths, five of them numbered, the sixth a pay station. A Greek Chorus. Stationary chorus. Call her up, Andy — give the poor girl a chance. Our ears are in Shepard Street. Warn her! Tell her you’re coming home after dinner! Tell her to ask Tom in for a drink! Make it easy for her, leave it all in darkness, in subterfuge, in evasion, in the hell of the forever unknown. Hello, darling! Is that you, Chuck? This is Andy. Yes, Andy — your premature Andy, back from the bright lights, back from the unearthly paradise, wizened little Tithonus returned from false heaven. But we won’t go into that, no, we’ll talk of something else. I meant nothing by it. Just my foolish little joke, that was all. Make the bed up, hang clean towels in the bathroom, run to the corner fruit store for another can of grapefruit juice, and start the cocktails.… No, impossible. This must not be evaded — whatever the issue, the situation must first of all be faced. No warnings, no signal, not even an inquiry at Tom’s apartment to find out if he were absent — in a melodrama one must above all be melodramatic. If later one prefers to turn it into a farce—

And who should be standing at the bar, eating little-neck clams as usual, but Jitter Peabody, that ruined scion of a noble race, half-shot too as always, leaning with supercilious languor against the bar, his long horse-face flushed with gin, his drooping mustache dripping clam juice on to his weak chin.

— Hello, One-eye!

— Mr. Peabody, I presume?

— You do presume.

— I suppose you wouldn’t join me in a little mild elbow lifting? The better the deed, the better the day.

— No, I’ve sworn off till I finish these sea fruits.

— Tom, you might take this flask, and empty it, and make as much old-fashioned out of it as it’ll make. And you might get me a dozen of these little pink little-necks. And two glasses.

— Good evening, Mr. Cather — yes, sir. That’ll go quite a little ways.

— What’ve you been doing, Jitter?

— None of your damned business.

— That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. Only the other fellow was politer.

— That must have been in New York — couldn’t have been in Boston.

— How did you guess it?

— I was in the train with you.

— The hell you say! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?

— I saw you, but I was asleep at the time. Only just waked up.

— Ah, I see. So you were in New York on business.

— Shhhhhh. Very private. I went down on the midnight and came back this afternoon.

— Alone?

— Legally speaking. I’d have stayed, but my fiancée expects me to dinner.

— Thanks, Tom. Come on, Jitter. I’m thirsty and heartbroken.

— What you need—! You damned walking textbook.

— We won’t go into that.

— No, you wouldn’t.

— Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

This turmoil must stop, and Jitter would help to stop it, Time out. Time out for a little peace, a little leisure, a little cool unhurried reflection, for a calm reshuffling of the pack of marked cards which is the mind. In the presence of a person so disorganized, it was easier oneself to become righteously or recognizably organized: one felt again vividly the numbered inches between the hat and the shoe. Think, you idiot! Think, don’t feel! Your brain depends upon it, the brief roman candle’s parabola of your sanity. Follow green arrow for shuttle train to Grand Central. Follow red arrow for trail to bottom of Grand Canyon. If one had been cornuted, was a chiropodist the thing? Or must one be chiropracted? Kindly remove the imaginary, but all too palpable, horns. A present from my best friend. Kind of him, but so inconvenient when one wears a hat, unless one is a horse. Let us order a striped calico bonnet, with holes for the ears.

— And so, Jitter, you’ve been spying on the Vincent Club again.

— Who told you?

— I won’t have any soup — I’ll begin with the fish.

— So will I.

— But just why you should have gone to all that trouble, to see Boston’s Best Bosomless Beacon Street and Back Bay Beauties clad only in their canvas shifts, I can’t imagine.

— My dear One-eye, that’s only the half of it.

— What was the other half — the better, I hope.

— You’re vulgar. You always were.…

A telephone was ringing. Bertha? University O!O!O! Put the salt neatly on the edge of your plate, my boy. Or fling it over your shoulder. An old Spanish custom, to avert the evil eye. The glass eye was the root of all evil. Green glass eyes on a plush tray — are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Tu pupila es azul . And when you cry, you cry with two eye sockets, but one eye. How much had this affected Bertha? And that heartless nickname! Jesus. It was no wonder. She had probably heard of him as One-eye Cather long before she had met him. With sympathy? Pathos? Horror? Or more likely a mixture of pity and disgust. Poor fellow — he can’t judge distances. Have you heard how he lost it? Such a shame.

— Drink up, Jitter — there’s another round.

— Say, what’s come over you?… anyway.

— Well, what do you mean by that?

Fool. You will now be accused of unnecessary sobriety.

— Aren’t you drinking a little too much for one of your habits?

— Don’t make me laugh.

Jitter pulled his mustaches mournfully, slouched back in his chair, narrowed his long low-lidded eyes.

— You always were a failure.

— Says you?

— Even your talk is a fake.