The sound and the fury
_I dont know too many will you look after Benjy and Father_
_You dont know whose it is then does he know_
_Dont touch me will you look after Benjy and Father_
I began to feel the water before I came to the bridge. The bridge was of
grey stone, lichened, dappled with slow moisture where the fungus crept.
Beneath it the water was clear and still in the shadow, whispering and
clucking about the stone in fading swirls of spinning sky. _Caddy that_
_I’ve got to marry somebody_ Versh told me about a man mutilated
himself. He went into the woods and did it with a razor, sitting in a
ditch. A broken razor flinging them backward over his shoulder the same
motion complete the jerked skein of blood backward not looping. But
that’s not it. It’s not not having them. It’s never to have had them
then I could say O That That’s Chinese I dont know Chinese. And Father
said it’s because you are a virgin: dont you see? Women are never
virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.
It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he
said So is virginity and I said you dont know. You cant know and he said
Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is second-hand.
Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but
not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time
after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow
as the motion of sleep. They dont touch one another, no matter how
knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the
bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too,
out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory. And after awhile
the flat irons would come floating up. I hid them under the end of the
bridge and went back and leaned on the rail.
I could not see the bottom, but I could see a long way into the motion
of the water before the eye gave out, and then I saw a shadow hanging
like a fat arrow stemming into the current. Mayflies skimmed in and out
of the shadow of the bridge just above the surface. _If it could just be
a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then
you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing
and the horror beyond the clean flame_ The arrow increased without
motion, then in a quick swirl the trout lipped a fly beneath the surface
with that sort of gigantic delicacy of an elephant picking up a peanut.
The fading vortex drifted away down stream and then I saw the arrow
again, nose into the current, wavering delicately to the motion of the
water above which the May flies slanted and poised. _Only you and me
then amid the pointing and the horror walled by the clean flame_
The trout hung, delicate and motionless among the wavering shadows.
Three boys with fishing poles came onto the bridge and we leaned on the
rail and looked down at the trout. They knew the fish. He was a
neighbourhood character.
“They’ve been trying to catch that trout for twenty-five years. There’s
a store in Boston offers a twenty-five dollar fishing rod to anybody
that can catch him.”
“Why dont you all catch him, then? Wouldnt you like to have a
twenty-five dollar fishing rod?”
“Yes,” they said. They leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout. “I
sure would,” one said.
“I wouldnt take the rod,” the second said. “I’d take the money instead.”
“Maybe they wouldnt do that,” the first said. “I bet he’d make you take
the rod.”
“Then I’d sell it.”
“You couldnt get twenty-five dollars for it.”
“I’d take what I could get, then. I can catch just as many fish with
this pole as I could with a twenty-five dollar one.” Then they talked
about what they would do with twenty-five dollars. They all talked at
once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of
unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible
fact, as people will when their desires become words.
“I’d buy a horse and wagon,” the second said.
“Yes you would,” the others said.
“I would. I know where I can buy one for twenty-five dollars. I know the
man.”
“Who is it?”
“That’s all right who it is. I can buy it for twenty-five dollars.”
“Yah,” the others said, “He dont know any such thing. He’s just
talking.”
“Do you think so?” the boy said. They continued to jeer at him, but he
said nothing more. He leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout
which he had already spent, and suddenly the acrimony, the conflict, was
gone from their voices, as if to them too it was as though he had
captured the fish and bought his horse and wagon, they too partaking of
that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of
silent superiority. I suppose that people, using themselves and each
other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to
a still tongue, and for a while I could feel the other two seeking
swiftly for some means by which to cope with him, to rob him of his
horse and wagon.
“You couldnt get twenty-five dollars for that pole,” the first said. “I
bet anything you couldnt.”
“He hasnt caught that trout yet,” the third said suddenly, then they
both cried:
“Yah, wha’d I tell you? What’s the man’s name? I dare you to tell. There
aint any such man.”
“Ah, shut up,” the second said. “Look, Here he comes again.” They leaned
on the rail, motionless, identical, their poles slanting slenderly in
the sunlight, also identical. The trout rose without haste, a shadow in
faint wavering increase; again the little vortex faded slowly
downstream. “Gee,” the first one murmured.
“We dont try to catch him anymore,” he said. “We just watch Boston folks
that come out and try.”
“Is he the only fish in this pool?”
“Yes. He ran all the others out. The best place to fish around here is
down at the Eddy.”
“No it aint,” the second said. “It’s better at Bigelow’s Mill two to
one.” Then they argued for a while about which was the best fishing and
then left off all of a sudden to watch the trout rise again and the
broken swirl of water suck down a little of the sky. I asked how far it
was to the nearest town. They told me.
“But the closest car line is that way,” the second said, pointing back
down the road. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. Just walking.”
“You from the college?”
“Yes. Are there any factories in that town?”
“Factories?” They looked at me.
“No,” the second said. “Not there.” They looked at my clothes. “You
looking for work?”
“How about Bigelow’s Mill?” the third said. “That’s a factory.”
“Factory my eye. He means a sure enough factory.”
“One with a whistle,” I said. “I havent heard any one oclock whistles
yet.”
“Oh,” the second said. “There’s a clock in the Unitarian steeple. You
can find out the time from that. Havent you got a watch on that chain?”
“I broke it this morning.” I showed them my watch. They examined it
gravely.
“It’s still running,” the second said. “What does a watch like that
cost?”
“It was a present,” I said. “My father gave it to me when I graduated
from high school.”
“Are you a Canadian?” the third said. He had red hair.
“Canadian?”
“He dont talk like them,” the second said. “I’ve heard them talk. He
talks like they do in minstrel shows.”
“Say,” the third said, “Aint you afraid he’ll hit you?”
“Hit me?”
“You said he talks like a coloured man.”
“Ah, dry up,” the second said. “You can see the steeple when you get
over that hill there.”
I thanked them. “I hope you have good luck. Only dont catch that old
fellow down there. He deserves to be let alone.”
“Cant anybody catch that fish,” the first said. They leaned on the rail,
looking down into the water, the three poles like three slanting threads
of yellow fire in the sun. I walked upon my shadow, tramping it into the
dappled shade of trees again. The road curved, mounting away from the
water. It crossed the hill, then descended winding, carrying the eye,
the mind on ahead beneath a still green tunnel, and the square cupola
above the trees and the round eye of the clock but far enough. I sat
down at the roadside. The grass was ankle deep, myriad. The shadows on
the road were as still as if they had been put there with a stencil,
with slanting pencils of sunlight. But it was only a train, and after a
while it died away beyond the trees, the long sound, and then I could
hear my watch and the train dying away, as though it were running
through another month or another summer somewhere, rushing away under
the poised gull and all things rushing. Except Gerald. He would be sort
of grand too, pulling in lonely state across the noon, rowing himself
right out of noon, up the long bright air like an apotheosis, mounting
into a drowsing infinity where only he and the gull, the one
terrifically motionless, the other in a steady and measured pull and
recover that partook of inertia itself, the world punily beneath their
shadows on the sun. Caddy that blackguard that blackguard Caddy
Their voices came over the hill, and the three slender poles like
balanced threads of running fire. They looked at me passing, not
slowing.
“Well,” I said, “I dont see him.”
“We didnt try to catch him,” the first said. “You cant catch that fish.”
“There’s the clock,” the second said, pointing. “You can tell the time
when you get a little closer.”
“Yes,” I said, “All right.” I got up. “You all going to town?”
“We’re going to the Eddy for chub,” the first said.
“You cant catch anything at the Eddy,” the second said.
“I guess you want to go to the mill, with a lot of fellows splashing and
scaring all the fish away.”
“You cant catch any fish at the Eddy.”
“We wont catch none nowhere if we dont go on,” the third said.
“I dont see why you keep on talking about the Eddy,” the second said.
“You cant catch anything there.”
“You dont have to go,” the first said. “You’re not tied to me.”
“Let’s go to the mill and go swimming,” the third said.
“I’m going to the Eddy and fish,” the first said. “You can do as you
please.”
“Say, how long has it been since you heard of anybody catching a fish at
the Eddy?” the second said to the third.
“Let’s go to the mill and go swimming,” the third said. The cupola sank
slowly beyond the trees, with the round face of the clock far enough
yet. We went on in the dappled shade. We came to an orchard, pink and
white. It was full of bees; already we could hear them.
“Let’s go to the mill and go swimming,” the third said. A lane turned
off beside the orchard. The third boy slowed and halted. The first went
on, flecks of sunlight slipping along the pole across his shoulder and
down the back of his shirt. “Come on,” the third said. The second boy
stopped too. _Why must you marry somebody Caddy_
_Do you want me to say it do you think that if I say it it wont be_
“Let’s go up to the mill,” he said. “Come on.”
The first boy went on. His bare feet made no sound, falling softer than
leaves in the thin dust. In the orchard the bees sounded like a wind
getting up, a sound caught by a spell just under crescendo and
sustained. The lane went along the wall, arched over, shattered with
bloom, dissolving into trees. Sunlight slanted into it, sparse and
eager. Yellow butterflies flickered along the shade like flecks of sun.
“What do you want to go to the Eddy for?” the second boy said. “You can
fish at the mill if you want to.”
“Ah, let him go,” the third said. They looked after the first boy.
Sunlight slid patchily across his walking shoulders, glinting along the
pole like yellow ants.
“Kenny,” the second said. _Say it to Father will you I will am my
fathers Progenitive I invented him created I him Say it to him it will
not be for he will say I was not and then you and I since
philoprogenitive_