John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

They both sat in the front seat of the Ford and dropped their coats in the back. They went once round the Speedway but the asphalt was like a griddle. The trees and the brown stagnant river stewed in late afternoon murk like meat and vegetables in a pot. The heat from the engine suffocated them. Jerry, his face red, talked incessantly about war brewing in Europe and how it would be the end of civilization and the signal for a general workingclass revolution and how he didn’t care and anything that got him out of Washington, where he was drinking himself silly with his brains addled by the heat and the Congressional Record, would be gravy to him, and how tired he was of women who didn’t want anything but to get money out of him or parties or marriage or some goddam thing or other and how cool and soothing it was to talk to Janey who wasn’t like that.

It was too hot so they put off driving till later and went to the Willard to get something to eat. He insisted on going to the Willard because he said he had his pockets full of money and would just spend it anyhow and Janey was very much awed because she’d never been in a big hotel before and felt she wasn’t dressed for it and said she was afraid she’d disgrace him and he laughed and said it couldn’t be done. They sat in the big long gilt dining room and Jerry said it looked like a millionaire morgue and the waiter was very polite and Janey couldn’t find what she wanted to eat on the big bill-of-fare and took a salad. Jerry made her take a gin fizz because he said it was cooling; it made her feel lightheaded and tall and gawky. She followed his talk breathless the way she used to tag along after Joe and Alec down to the carbarns when she was little.

After supper they drove round some more and Jerry got quiet and she felt constrained and couldn’t think of what to say. They went way out Rhode Island Avenue and circled round back by the Old Soldiers’ Home. There was no air anywhere and the staring identical streetlights went by on either side, lighting segments of monotonous unrustling trees. Even out on the hills there was not a breath stirring.

Out in the dark roads beyond the streetlamps it was better. Janey lost all sense of direction and lay back breathing in an occasional patch of freshness from a cornfield or a copse of woods. In a spot where a faint marshy dampness almost cool drifted across the road Jerry suddenly stopped the car and leaned over and kissed her. Her heart began to beat very fast. She wanted to tell him not to, but she couldn’t.

“I didn’t mean to, but I can’t help it,” he whispered. “It’s living in Washington undermines the will… Or maybe I’m in love with you, Janey. I don’t know… Let’s sit in the back seat where it’s cooler.” Weakness started in the pit of her stomach and welled up through her. As she stepped out he caught her in his arms. She let her head droop on his shoulder, her lips against his neck. His arms were burning hot round her shoulders, she could feel his ribs through his shirt pressing against her. Her head started going round in a reek of tobacco and liquor and male sweat. His legs began pressing up to hers. She yanked herself away and got into the back seat. She was trembling. He was right after her. “No, no,” she said. He sat down beside her with his arm round her waist. “Lez have a cigarette,” he said in a shaky voice.

Smoking gave her something to do, made her feel even with him. The two granulated red ends of the cigarettes glowed side by side.

“Do you mean you like me, Jerry?” “I’m crazy about you, kid.” “Do you mean you…?” “Want to marry you… Why the hell not? I dunno… Suppose we were engaged?” “You mean you want me to marry you?” “If you like… But don’t you understand the way a feller feels… a night like this… the smell of the swamp… God, I’d give anything to have you.”

They’d smoked out their cigarettes. They sat a long time without saying a word. She could feel the hairs on his bare arm against her bare arm.

“I’m worried about my brother Joe… He’s in the navy, Jerry, and I’m afraid he’s going to desert or something… I think you’d like him. He’s a wonderful baseball player.”

“What made you think of him? Do you feel that way towards me? Love’s a swell thing; goddam it, don’t you realize it’s not the way you feel towards your brother?”

He put his hand on her knee. She could feel him looking at her in the dark. He leaned over and kissed her very gently. She liked his lips gentle against hers that way. She was kissing them. She was falling through centuries of swampy night. His hot chest was against her breasts bearing her down. She would cling to him bearing her down through centuries of swampy night. Then all at once in a cold spasm she felt sick, choking for breath like drowning. She began to fight him. She got her leg up and pushed him hard in the groin with her knee.

He let go of her and got out of the car. She could hear him walking up and down the road in the dark behind her. She was trembling and scared and sick. After a while he got in, switched on the light and drove on without looking at her. He was smoking a cigarette and little sparks came from it as he drove.

When he got to the corner of M Street below the Williams house in Georgetown he stopped and got out and opened the door for her. She got out not knowing what to say, afraid to look at him.

“I suppose you think I ought to apologize to you for being a swine,” he said.

“Jerry, I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’ll be damned if I will… I thought we were friends. I might have known there wouldn’t be a woman in this muck hole with a human spark in her… I suppose you think you ought to hold out for the wedding bells. Go ahead; that’s your business. I can get what I want with any nigger prostitute down the street here… Good night.” Janey didn’t say anything. He drove off. She went home and went to bed.

All that August her father was dying, full of morphine, in the Georgetown hospital. The papers came out every day with big headlines about war in Europe, Liége, Louvain, Mons. Dreyfus and Carroll’s was in a fever. Big lawsuits over munitions patents were on. It began to be whispered about that the immaculate Mr. Dreyfus was an agent of the German government. Jerry came to see Janey one noon to apologize for having been so rude that night and to tell her that he had a job as a war correspondent and was leaving in a week for the front. They had a good lunch together. He talked about spies and British intrigue and pan-Slavism and the assassination of Jaurès and the socialist revolution and laughed all the time and said everything was well on its way to ballyhack. She thought he was wonderful and wanted to say something about their being engaged and felt very tender towards him and scared he’d be killed, but suddenly it was time for her to go back to the office and neither of them had brought the matter up. He walked back to the Riggs Building with her and said good-bye and gave her a big kiss right there in front of everybody and ran off promising he’d write from New York. At that moment Alice came up on her way to Mrs. Robinson’s and Janey found herself telling her that she was engaged to be married to Jerry Burnham and that he was going to Europe to the war as a war correspondent.

When her father died in early September it was a great relief to all concerned. Only, coming back from Oak Hill Cemetery all the things she’d wanted as a girl came back to her, and the thought of Alec, and everything seemed so unhappy that she couldn’t stand it. Her mother was very quiet and her eyes were very red and she kept saying that she was so glad that there’d be room on the lot for her to be buried in Oak Hill too. She’d have hated for him to be buried in any other cemetery than Oak Hill. It was so beautiful and all the nicest people in Georgetown were buried there.