The sound and the fury
Caddy unbuttoned Jason. He began to cry.
“You want to get whipped.” Dilsey said. Jason hushed.
_Quentin, Mother said in the hall._
_What, Quentin said beyond the wall. We heard Mother lock the door. She
looked in our door and came in and stooped over the bed and kissed me on
the forehead._
_When you get him to bed, go and ask Dilsey if she objects to my having
a hot water bottle, Mother said. Tell her that if she does, I’ll try to
get along without it. Tell her I just want to know._
_Yessum, Luster said. Come on. Get your pants off._
Quentin and Versh came in. Quentin had his face turned away. “What are
you crying for.” Caddy said.
“Hush.” Dilsey said. “You all get undressed, now. You can go on home,
Versh.”
_I got undressed and I looked at myself, and I began to cry. Hush,
Luster said. Looking for them aint going to do no good. They’re gone.
You keep on like this, and we aint going have you no more birthday. He
put my gown on. I hushed, and then Luster stopped, his head toward the
window. Then he went to the window and looked out. He came back and took
my arm. Here she come, he said. Be quiet, now. We went to the window and
looked out. It came out of Quentin’s window and climbed across into the
tree. We watched the tree shaking. The shaking went down the tree, than_
_it came out and we watched it go away across the grass. Then we
couldn’t see it. Come on, Luster said. There now. Hear them horns. You
get in that bed while my foots behaves._
There were two beds. Quentin got in the other one. He turned his face to
the wall. Dilsey put Jason in with him. Caddy took her dress off.
“Just look at your drawers.” Dilsey said. “You better be glad your ma
aint seen you.”
“I already told on her.” Jason said.
“I bound you would.” Dilsey said.
“And see what you got by it.” Caddy said. “Tattletale.”
“What did I get by it.” Jason said.
“Whyn’t you get your nightie on.” Dilsey said. She went and helped Caddy
take off her bodice and drawers. “Just look at you.” Dilsey said. She
wadded the drawers and scrubbed Caddy behind with them. “It done soaked
clean through onto you.” she said. “But you wont get no bath this night.
Here.” She put Caddy’s nightie on her and Caddy climbed into the bed and
Dilsey went to the door and stood with her hand on the light. “You all
be quiet now, you hear.” she said.
“All right.” Caddy said. “Mother’s not coming in tonight.” she said. “So
we still have to mind me.”
“Yes.” Dilsey said. “Go to sleep, now.”
“Mother’s sick.” Caddy said. “She and Damuddy are both sick.”
“Hush.” Dilsey said. “You go to sleep.”
The room went black, except the door. Then the door went black. Caddy
said, “Hush, Maury,” putting her hand on me. So I stayed hushed. We
could hear us. We could hear the dark.
It went away, and Father looked at us. He looked at Quentin and Jason,
then he came and kissed Caddy and put his hand on my head.
“Is Mother very sick.” Caddy said.
“No.” Father said. “Are you going to take good care of Maury.”
“Yes.” Caddy said.
Father went to the door and looked at us again. Then the dark came back,
and he stood black in the door, and then the door turned black again.
Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I
could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were
buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it
always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep.
JUNE SECOND, 1910
When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between
seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch.
It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I
give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather
excrutiating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of
all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than
it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may
remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment
and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is
ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to
man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of
philosophers and fools.
It was propped against the collar box and I lay listening to it. Hearing
it, that is. I dont suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch
or a clock. You dont have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a
long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind
unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t hear. Like
Father said down the long and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus
walking, like. And the good Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death,
that never had a sister.
Through the wall I heard Shreve’s bed-springs and then his slippers on
the floor hishing. I got up and went to the dresser and slid my hand
along it and touched the watch and turned it face-down and went back to
bed. But the shadow of the sash was still there and I had learned to
tell almost to the minute, so I’d have to turn my back to it, feeling
the eyes animals used to have in the back of their heads when it was on
top, itching. It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will
regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn
away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.
And so as soon as I knew I couldn’t see it, I began to wonder what time
it was. Father said that constant speculation regarding the position of
mechanical hands on an arbitrary dial which is a symptom of
mind-function. Excrement Father said like sweating. And I saying All
right. Wonder. Go on and wonder.
If it had been cloudy I could have looked at the window, thinking what
he said about idle habits. Thinking it would be nice for them down at
New London if the weather held up like this. Why shouldn’t it? The month
of brides, the voice that breathed _She ran right out of the mirror, out
of the banked scent. Roses. Roses. Mr and Mrs Jason Richmond Compson
announce the marriage of._ Roses. Not virgins like dogwood, milkweed. I
said I have committed incest, Father I said. Roses. Cunning and serene.
If you attend Harvard one year, but dont see the boat-race, there should
be a refund. Let Jason have it. Give Jason a year at Harvard.
Shreve stood in the door, putting his collar on, his glasses glinting
rosily, as though he had washed them with his face. “You taking a cut
this morning?”
“Is it that late?”
He looked at his watch. “Bell in two minutes.”
“I didn’t know it was that late.” He was still looking at the watch, his
mouth shaping. “I’ll have to hustle. I cant stand another cut. The dean
told me last week—” He put the watch back into his pocket. Then I quit
talking.
“You’d better slip on your pants and run,” he said. He went out.
I got up and moved about, listening to him through the wall. He entered
the sitting-room, toward the door.
“Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Not yet. Run along. I’ll make it.”
He went out. The door closed. His feet went down the corridor. Then I
could hear the watch again. I quit moving around and went to the window
and drew the curtains aside and watched them running for chapel, the
same ones fighting the same heaving coat-sleeves, the same books and
flapping collars flushing past like debris on a flood, and Spoade.
Calling Shreve my husband. Ah let him alone, Shreve said, if he’s got
better sense than to chase after the little dirty sluts, whose business.
In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie
about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was
men invented virginity not women. Father said it’s like death, only a
state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn’t
matter and he said, That’s what’s so sad about anything: not only
virginity, and I said, Why couldn’t it have been me and not her who is
unvirgin and he said, That’s why that’s sad too; nothing is even worth
the changing of it, and Shreve said if he’s got better sense than to
chase after the little dirty sluts and I said Did you ever have a
sister? Did you? Did you?
Spoade was in the middle of them like a terrapin in a street full of
scuttering dead leaves, his collar about his ears, moving at his
customary unhurried walk. He was from South Carolina, a senior. It was
his club’s boast that he never ran for chapel and had never got there on
time and had never been absent in four years and had never made either
chapel or first lecture with a shirt on his back and socks on his feet.
About ten oclock he’d come in Thompson’s, get two cups of coffee, sit
down and take his socks out of his pocket and remove his shoes and put
them on while the coffee cooled. About noon you’d see him with a shirt
and collar on, like anybody else. The others passed him running, but he
never increased his pace at all. After a while the quad was empty.
A sparrow slanted across the sunlight, onto the window ledge, and cocked
his head at me. His eye was round and bright. First he’d watch me with
one eye, then flick! and it would be the other one, his throat pumping
faster than any pulse. The hour began to strike. The sparrow quit
swapping eyes and watched me steadily with the same one until the chimes
ceased, as if he were listening too. Then he flicked off the ledge and
was gone.
It was a while before the last stroke ceased vibrating. It stayed in the
air, more felt than heard, for a long time. Like all the bells that ever
rang still ringing in the long dying light-rays and Jesus and Saint
Francis talking about his sister. Because if it were just to hell; if
that were all of it. Finished. If things just finished themselves.
Nobody else there but her and me. If we could just have done something
so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us. _I have committed
incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames_ And when he put
Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. When he put the pistol in my hand
I didn’t. That’s why I didn’t. He would be there and she would and I
would. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. If we could have just done
something so dreadful and Father said That’s sad too, people cannot do
anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they
cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today and I said, You
can shirk all things and he said, Ah can you. And I will look down and
see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of
wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the
lonely and inviolate sand. Until on the Day when He says Rise only the
flat-iron would come floating up. It’s not when you realise that nothing
can help you—religion, pride, anything—it’s when you realise that you
dont need any aid. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. Dalton Ames. If I could
have been his mother lying with open body lifted laughing, holding his
father with my hand refraining, seeing, watching him die before he
lived. _One minute she was standing in the door_
I went to the dresser and took up the watch, with the face still down. I
tapped the crystal on the corner of the dresser and caught the fragments
of glass in my hand and put them into the ashtray and twisted the hands
off and put them in the tray. The watch ticked on. I turned the face up,
the blank dial with little wheels clicking and clicking behind it, not
knowing any better. Jesus walking on Galilee and Washington not telling
lies. Father brought back a watch-charm from the Saint Louis Fair to
Jason: a tiny opera glass into which you squinted with one eye and saw a
skyscraper, a ferris wheel all spidery, Niagara Falls on a pinhead.
There was a red smear on the dial. When I saw it my thumb began to