Conrad Aiken: Great Circle

A surprise: the bridge was jammed with cars: something must have happened. From curb to curb they were packed, their black tops glistening with rain. Newcomers, joining the slowly moving mass, honked, hooted, skirled their Klaxons, yipped and snarled; but farther on, halfway across the bridge, with its double row of lights, beautifully arched into the night, a string of brilliantly lit streetcars marooned among them, the mass of sedans and taxis seemed to be motionless and silent.

The driver slid back a glass panel.

— This looks like a long job. Will I go the other way?

— No, go ahead, plenty of time.

The motor humming, the clutch engaging and disengaging, they crept forward, weaving a slow passageway among the creeping vehicles. All faces were turned forward, intent, curious, artificially bright over dashboard lights, like illuminated death masks. A hand, holding a cigar, hung out of a window, was held sparkling for a moment in the beam of a searchlight, waved lazily, and withdrew. People sitting upright in back seats, hatted and cloaked, motionless as waxwork specimens, their hands on the window ledges or crossed on their knees. And as they advanced, as they crossed the drawbridge, passed the first of the streetcars, the silence deepened, grew ominous, began to speak a meaning into which all this procession was irresistibly drawn. They were moving into the orbit of something more powerful than themselves — their own purposes, aims, directions, ideas, were suffering a fascinated change — they could no longer go at what speed they liked, or where they liked, but moved, like the lemmings, to the dark sea of their unknown desire. Ahead, to the left, the lights of Riverbank Court, high up, lightly shrouded through the fine rain, appeared to be looking downward at something, as if the dark focus of all this attention were somewhere below them.

— Smash-up, looks like, said the driver.

— It does.

And why not, in the name of God? We specialize in smash-ups. If there’s anything we dearly love, it’s a nice little smash-up. We serve them hourly. And what more appropriate than this bridge, where Longfellow had once octosyllabically sentimentalized, and he himself, Andrew Cather, One-eye Cather, had won a bet of twenty-five cents by walking from Cambridge to Boston on the outside of the railing? X marks the spot. And here, too, the driver of the ice wagon, deep in thought on a summer’s day, had suddenly been catapulted off his high perch, over this same railing, twenty feet down with his cigarette still in his mouth, and drowned. Perfect example of the inscrutability of fate. Because the driver of the car behind the ice wagon had got dust in his eye—! But now the stream of cars was moving a little more quickly — the string of bright street cars had drawn ahead and crossed Memorial Drive — the policeman in his little tower could be seen frantically waving a white-gloved hand — and as at last the taxi swung to the left he saw the dark police boat on the dark rain-stilled water, with a solitary lantern in the bow, and two dark figures leaning waterward over the stern. Ah! they were dragging. Somebody was down there, somebody who this morning had had an egg for breakfast, and a cup of coffee, was down there, aimlessly drifting, his mouth wide open and his hands clenched.

— Draw up where you can, and we’ll have a look at this.

— Yes, sir.

On foot, they dodged through the creeping parade of cars and joined the silent crowd at the water’s edge, three policemen stood on the float. The police boat, which had gone slowly upstream and turned, was now slowly coming back, and it could be seen that the two men in the stern held ropes.

— Who was it?

— An old man.

— They ain’t sure.

— Somebody saw him step off the float at six o’clock. They been dragging three hours.

— Well, he don’t have to worry about his income tax.

The crowd was hushed, all the faces stared downward at the water. The boat turned once more, moved out a little toward midstream, became invisible save for the lantern. The put-put of the exhaust came slowly and intermittently through the night.

— It’ll take them all night. Let’s get going.

— Hell of a job for a night like this.

In the taxi again, he lit a cigarette, and noticed that his hands were trembling. Good God, was this a symbol, a kind of warning? Cling to life, you poor bastard — have your eggs and coffee for breakfast — and be damned glad you’re alive. Is it you down there, with your mouth open? Have you lost your felt hat? Has your watch stopped? Are you cold? What did you do with your money, and the incriminating letter in your pocket? Did you tell the Chinese laundry that they needn’t bother to finish ironing your blue shirt? Did you write to Deirdre in Pawtucket and tell her you wouldn’t be home for the week end? Did you did you did you did you? And if not, why not? And what did you want to die for anyway? Was it love or was it money? Speculation leads to peculation. The rain quickened on the taxi roof, he reached under his raincoat for the flask, unscrewed the silver stopper, and took a drink, a burning little gush of raw juniper-tasting gin, another, a third. No use trying to be sober. The scene would require reckless hilarity, a certain amount of blindness and denseness. Cheerfulness. No good being too sensitive. Let the imagination loose, let it run, let it fly. Give it a couple of alcoholic wings. What ho, Bertha, what ho, Tom, I’m home again with a boxing glove. I had a dozen little-necks with Jitter Peabody, and a flock of cocktails, and then, only pausing for three hours on the Harvard Bridge, I drowned myself, hat in hand. I am still there, lodged in the deep water against one of the piers, bowing, hat in hand, my mouth open in the act of saying Good evening, Madam. Do you see the water that drips from my shoes? The Charles River, my dears: I am newly come from the dead. This is my bright little doppelgänger , my alter ego, who stands before you and screeches with laughter at finding you thus together. Did you both brush your teeth before you went to bed, like good little children? Papa spank. Naughty naughty. You should never, never go to bed without first brushing the teeth. There’s a new toothbrush with black bristles, I especially recommend it for smartness, particularly in cases of mourning. So tactful. Like that story of the young woman in the Paris drugstore— Ah oui, Madame, quelle delicatesse! Madame is a widow! You remember? Tom? Bertha? So run along now and do it and after that I’ll tell you both a nice little bedtime story and you can go to bed again, with visions of sugarplums dancing in your little heads, and in the morning I’ll be Santa Claus and bring you your breakfast in bed. Madam will have a nice little grapefruit? Or a pruin? A few wild oats and cream? My dear Andy—

And this was that street. Yes, that street. Where, a month ago, after the first rumor, after the first quarrel, the first quarrel about the first rumor, he had walked blindly in the snow, under that very arc lamp, along this path, past the power station, the power station where years and years ago there had been a little tank swarming with turtles and alligators and gold fish. Here was the agony in the garden, the public garden. Why must one do such things? Why must one be hurt? Why need one so helplessly surrender? Better have a drink, old fellow. A few minutes more and the taxi will have reached Harvard Square, and there’ll be no chance, unless you prefer to tilt your flask in the rain-dark Common. He lifted and tipped the silver flask, the fiery trickle sluiced his tongue, ran down under his tongue against his teeth, burned the gums, burned the uvula, streaked the throat with flame. A month ago — he had been dead, and then alive again, and was now again dying. It was here that the first forsythia bushes would light their little yellow lights a few weeks hence, here that the young couples would lie on the scented grass in the early summer, the children playing at the water’s edge, where now were broken slabs of scabby ice. Crowds after the football games. Crews practicing in the spring, the coxswains barking through megaphones, the canoes, the motor-launches. And here once with Bertha — under the birch trees beyond the Newell boat-house — at midnight, looking across the velvet darkness of the river toward the lights—“No—” she had said—“no — no — no.” And “Yes—” he had answered, “yes — yes — yes.” The bells, the pleas of water, the slow sleepy seethe of new leaves, the beginning of the world, the quiet beginning. Oh, God, that do’st with toothpicks take the world apart and gladly break the mechanism of the spring for schoolboy glee in such a thing!