The sound and the fury
“What’s that you got there?”
“Nothing. Pair of shoes I had half-soled. Not until tomorrow, you hear?”
“Sure. All right. Oh, by the way, did you get a letter off the table
this morning?”
“No.”
“It’s there. From Semiramis. Chauffeur brought it before ten o’clock.”
“All right. I’ll get it. Wonder what she wants now.”
“Another band recital, I guess. Tumpty ta ta Gerald blah. ‘A little
louder on the drum, Quentin.’ God, I’m glad I’m not a gentleman.” He
went on, nursing a book, a little shapeless, fatly intent. _The street
lamps_ do you think so because one of our forefathers was a governor and
three were generals and Mother’s weren’t
any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very
much better than any other live or dead man _Done in Mother’s mind
though. Finished. Finished. Then we were all poisoned_ you are confusing
sin and morality women dont do that your Mother is thinking of morality
whether it be sin or not has not occurred to her
Jason I must go away you keep the others I’ll take Jason and go where
nobody knows us so he’ll have a chance to grow up and forget all this
the others dont love me they have never loved anything with that streak
of Compson selfishness and false pride Jason was the only one my heart
went out to without dread
nonsense Jason is all right I was thinking that as soon as you feel
better you and Caddy might go up to French Lick
and leave Jason here with nobody but you and the darkies
she will forget him then all the talk will die away _found not death at
the salt licks_
maybe I could find a husband for her _not death at the salt licks_
The car came up and stopped. The bells were still ringing the half hour.
I got on and it went on again, blotting the half hour. No: the three
quarters. Then it would be ten minutes anyway. To leave Harvard _your
Mother’s dream for sold Benjy’s pasture for_
what have I done to have been given children like these Benjamin was
punishment enough and now for her to have no more regard for me her own
mother I’ve suffered for her dreamed and planned and sacrificed I went
down into the valley yet never since she opened her eyes has she given
me one unselfish thought at times I look at her I wonder if she can be
my child except Jason he has never given me one moment’s sorrow since I
first held him in my arms I knew then that he was to be my joy and my
salvation I thought that Benjamin was punishment enough for any sins I
have committed I thought he was my punishment for putting aside my pride
and marrying a man who held himself above me I dont complain I loved him
above all of them because of it because my duty though Jason pulling at
my heart all the while but I see now that I have not suffered enough I
see now that I must pay for your sins as well as mine what have you done
what sins have your high and mighty people visited upon me but you’ll
take up for them you always have found excuses for your own blood only
Jason can do wrong because he is more Bascomb than Compson while your
own daughter my little daughter my baby girl she is she is no better
than that when I was a girl I was unfortunate I was only a Bascomb I was
taught that there is no halfway ground that a woman is either a lady or
not but I never dreamed when I held her in my arms that any daughter of
mine could let herself dont you know I can look at her eyes and tell you
may think she’d tell you but she doesn’t tell things she is secretive
you dont know her I know things she’s done that I’d die before I’d have
you know that’s it go on criticise Jason accuse me of setting him to
watch her as if it were a crime while your own daughter can I know you
dont love him that you wish to believe faults against him you never have
yes ridicule him as you always have Maury you cannot hurt me any more
than your children already have and then I’ll be gone and Jason with no
one to love him shield him from this I look at him every day dreading to
see this Compson blood beginning to show in him at last with his sister
slipping out to see what do you call it then have you ever laid eyes on
him will you even let me try to find out who he is it’s not for myself I
couldn’t bear to see him it’s for your sake to protect you but who can
fight against bad blood you wont let me try we are to sit back with our
hands folded while she not only drags your name in the dirt but corrupts
the very air your children breathe Jason you must let me go away I
cannot stand it let me have Jason and you keep the others they’re not my
flesh and blood like he is strangers nothing of mine and I am afraid of
them I can take Jason and go where we are not known I’ll go down on my
knees and pray for the absolution of my sins that he may escape this
curse try to forget that the others ever were
If that was the three quarters, not over ten minutes now. One car had
just left, and people were already waiting for the next one. I asked,
but he didn’t know whether another one would leave before noon or not
because you’d think that interurbans. So the first one was another
trolley. I got on. You can feel noon. I wonder if even miners in the
bowels of the earth. That’s why whistles: because people that sweat, and
if just far enough from sweat you wont hear whistles and in eight
minutes you should be that far from sweat in Boston. Father said a man
is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get
tired, but then time is your misfortune Father said. A gull on an
invisible wire attached through space dragged. You carry the symbol of
your frustration into eternity. Then the wings are bigger Father said
only who can play a harp.
I could hear my watch whenever the car stopped, but not often they were
already eating _Who would play a_ Eating the business of eating inside
of you space too space and time confused Stomach saying noon brain
saying eat oclock All right I wonder what time it is what of it. People
were getting out. The trolley didn’t stop so often now, emptied by
eating.
Then it was past. I got off and stood in my shadow and after a while a
car came along and I got on and went back to the interurban station.
There was a car ready to leave, and I found a seat next the window and
it started and I watched it sort of frazzle out into slack tide flats,
and then trees. Now and then I saw the river and I thought how nice it
would be for them down at New London if the weather and Gerald’s shell
going solemnly up the glinting forenoon and I wondered what the old
woman would be wanting now, sending me a note before ten oclock in the
morning. What picture of Gerald I to be one of the _Dalton Ames oh
asbestos Quentin has shot_ background. Something with girls in it.
Women do have _always his voice above the gabble voice that breathed_ an
affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but
that some men are too innocent to protect themselves. Plain girls.
Remote cousins and family friends whom mere acquaintanceship invested
with a sort of blood obligation noblesse oblige. And she sitting there
telling us before their faces what a shame it was that Gerald should
have all the family looks because a man didn’t need it, was better off
without it but without it a girl was simply lost. Telling us about
Gerald’s women in a _Quentin has shot Herbert he shot his voice through
the floor of Caddy’s room_ tone of smug approbation. “When he was
seventeen I said to him one day ‘What a shame that you should have a
mouth like that it should be on a girls face’ and can you imagine _the
curtains leaning in on the twilight upon the odour of the apple tree her
head against the twilight her arms behind her head kimono-winged the
voice that breathed o’er eden clothes upon the bed by the nose seen
above the apple_ what he said? just seventeen, mind. ‘Mother’ he said
‘it often is.’ ” And him sitting there in attitudes regal watching two
or three of them through his eyelashes. They gushed like swallows
swooping his eyelashes. Shreve said he always had _Are you going to look
after Benjy and Father_
_The less you say about Benjy and Father the better when have you ever
considered them Caddy_
_Promise_
_You needn’t worry about them you’re getting out in good shape_
_Promise I’m sick you’ll have to promise_ wondered who invented that
joke but then he always had considered Mrs Bland a remarkably preserved
woman he said she was grooming Gerald to seduce a duchess sometime. She
called Shreve that fat Canadian youth twice she arranged a new room-mate
for me without consulting me at all, once for me to move out, once for
He opened the door in the twilight. His face looked like a pumpkin pie.
“Well, I’ll say a fond farewell. Cruel fate may part us, but I will
never love another. Never.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about cruel fate in eight yards of apricot silk and more
metal pound for pound than a galley slave and the sole owner and
proprietor of the unchallenged peripatetic john of the late
Confederacy.” Then he told me how she had gone to the proctor to have
him moved out and how the proctor had revealed enough low stubbornness
to insist on consulting Shreve first. Then she suggested that he send
for Shreve right off and do it, and he wouldnt do that, so after that
she was hardly civil to Shreve. “I make it a point never to speak
harshly of females,” Shreve said, “but that woman has got more ways like
a bitch than any lady in these sovereign states and dominions.” and now
Letter on the table by hand, command orchid scented coloured If she knew
I had passed almost beneath the window knowing it there without My
dear Madam I have not yet had an opportunity of receiving your
communication but I beg in advance to be excused today or yesterday and
tomorrow or when As I remember that the next one is to be how Gerald
throws his nigger downstairs and how the nigger plead to be allowed to
matriculate in the divinity school to be near marster marse gerald and
How he ran all the way to the station beside the carriage with tears in
his eyes when marse gerald rid away I will wait until the day for the
one about the sawmill husband came to the kitchen door with a shotgun
Gerald went down and bit the gun in two and handed it back and wiped his
hands on a silk handkerchief threw the handkerchief in the stove I’ve
only heard that one twice
_shot him through the_ I saw you come in here so I watched my chance and
came along thought we might get acquainted have a cigar
Thanks I dont smoke
No things must have changed up there since my day mind if I light up
Help yourself
Thanks I’ve heard a lot I guess your mother wont mind if I put the match
behind the screen will she a lot about you Candace talked about you all
the time up there at the Licks I got pretty jealous I says to myself
who is this Quentin anyway I must see what this animal looks like
because I was hit pretty hard see soon as I saw the little girl I dont
mind telling you it never occurred to me it was her brother she kept
talking about she couldnt have talked about you any more if you’d been
the only man in the world husband wouldnt have been in it you wont
change your mind and have a smoke
I dont smoke
In that case I wont insist even though it is a pretty fair weed cost me
twenty-five bucks a hundred wholesale friend in Havana yes I guess there
are lots of changes up there I keep promising myself a visit but I never
get around to it been hitting the ball now for ten years I cant get away
from the bank during school fellow’s habits change things that seem
important to an undergraduate you know tell me about things up there
I’m not going to tell Father and Mother if that’s what you are getting
at
Not going to tell not going to oh that that’s what you are talking about