The sound and the fury
celestial derivation of his own species at such a fine heat then Mother
would cry and say that Father believed his people were better than hers
that he was ridiculing Uncle Maury to teach us the same thing she
couldnt see that Father was teaching us that all men are just
accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps
where all previous dolls had been thrown away the sawdust flowing from
what wound in what side that not for me died not. It used to be I
thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a
kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of
Grandfather’s desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room
where it was I always thought of them as being together somewhere all
the time waiting for old Colonel Sartoris to come down and sit with them
waiting on a high place beyond cedar trees Colonel Sartoris was on a
still higher place looking out across at something and they were waiting
for him to get done looking at it and come down Grandfather wore his
uniform and we could hear the murmur of their voices from beyond the
cedars they were always talking and Grandfather was always right
The three quarters began. The first note sounded, measured and tranquil,
serenely peremptory, emptying the unhurried silence for the next one and
that’s it if people could only change one another forever that way merge
like a flame swirling up for an instant then blown cleanly out along the
cool eternal dark instead of lying there trying not to think of the
swing until all cedars came to have that vivid dead smell of perfume
that Benjy hated so. Just by imagining the clump it seemed to me that I
could hear whispers secret surges smell the beating of hot blood under
wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in
pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and
see evil done for a little while its not always and i it doesnt have to
be even that long for a man of courage and he do you consider that
courage and i yes sir dont you and he every man is the arbiter of his
own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more
importance than the act itself than any act otherwise you could not be
in earnest and i you dont believe i am serious and he i think you are
too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldn’t have felt driven
to the expedient of telling me you have committed incest otherwise and i
i wasnt lying i wasnt lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of
natural human folly into a horror and then exorcise it with truth and i
it was to isolate her out of the loud world so that it would have to
flee us of necessity and then the sound of it would be as though it had
never been and he did you try to make her do it and i i was afraid to i
was afraid she might and then it wouldnt have done any good but if i
could tell you we did it would have been so and then the others wouldnt
be so and then the world would roar away and he and now this other you
are not lying now either but you are still blind to what is in yourself
to that part of general truth the sequence of natural events and their
causes which shadows every mans brow even benjys you are not thinking of
finitude you are contemplating an apotheosis in which a temporary state
of mind will become symmetrical above the flesh and aware both of itself
and of the flesh it will not quite discard you will not even be dead and
i temporary and he you cannot bear to think that someday it will no
longer hurt you like this now were getting at it you seem to regard it
merely as an experience that will whiten your hair overnight so to speak
without altering your appearance at all you wont do it under these
conditions it will be a gamble and the strange thing is that man who is
conceived by accident and whose every breath is a fresh cast with dice
already loaded against him will not face that final main which he knows
before hand he has assuredly to face without essaying expedients ranging
all the way from violence to petty chicanery that would not deceive a
child until someday in very disgust he risks everything on a single
blind turn of a card no man ever does that under the first fury of
despair or remorse or bereavement he does it only when he has realised
that even the despair or remorse or bereavement is not particularly
important to the dark diceman and i temporary and he it is hard
believing to think that a love or a sorrow is a bond purchased without
design and which matures willynilly and is recalled without warning to
be replaced by whatever issue the gods happen to be floating at the time
no you will not do that until you come to believe that even she was not
quite worth despair perhaps and i i will never do that nobody knows what
i know and he i think youd better go on up to cambridge right away you
might go up into maine for a month you can afford it if you are careful
it might be a good thing watching pennies has healed more scars than
jesus and i suppose i realise what you believe i will realise up there
next week or next month and he then you will remember that for you to go
to harvard has been your mothers dream since you were born and no
compson has ever disappointed a lady and i temporary it will be better
for me for all of us and he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues
but let no man prescribe for another mans wellbeing and i temporary and
he was the saddest word of all there is nothing else in the world its
not despair until time its not even time until it was
The last note sounded. At last it stopped vibrating and the darkness was
still again. I entered the sitting room and turned on the light. I put
my vest on. The gasoline was faint now, barely noticeable, and in the
mirror the stain didnt show. Not like my eye did, anyway. I put on my
coat. Shreve’s letter crackled through the cloth and I took it out and
examined the address, and put it in my side pocket. Then I carried the
watch into Shreve’s room and put it in his drawer and went to my room
and got a fresh handkerchief and went to the door and put my hand on the
light switch. Then I remembered I hadnt brushed my teeth, so I had to
open the bag again. I found my toothbrush and got some of Shreve’s paste
and went out and brushed my teeth. I squeezed the brush as dry as I
could and put it back in the bag and shut it, and went to the door
again. Before I snapped the light out I looked around to see if there
was anything else, then I saw that I had forgotten my hat. I’d have to
go by the postoffice and I’d be sure to meet some of them, and they’d
think I was a Harvard Square student making like he was a senior. I had
forgotten to brush it too, but Shreve had a brush, so I didnt have to
open the bag any more.
APRIL SIXTH, 1928
Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say. I says you’re lucky if her
playing out of school is all that worries you. I says she ought to be
down there in that kitchen right now, instead of up there in her room,
gobbing paint on her face and waiting for six niggers that cant even
stand up out of a chair unless they’ve got a pan full of bread and meat
to balance them, to fix breakfast for her. And Mother says,
“But to have the school authorities think that I have no control over
her, that I cant—”
“Well,” I says, “You cant, can you? You never have tried to do anything
with her,” I says, “How do you expect to begin this late, when she’s
seventeen years old?”
She thought about that for a while.
“But to have them think that . . . I didn’t even know she had a report
card. She told me last fall that they had quit using them this year. And
now for Professor Junkin to call me on the telephone and tell me if
she’s absent one more time, she will have to leave school. How does she
do it? Where does she go? You’re down town all day; you ought to see her
if she stays on the streets.”
“Yes,” I says, “If she stayed on the streets. I dont reckon she’d be
playing out of school just to do something she could do in public,” I
says.
“What do you mean?” she says.
“I dont mean anything,” I says. “I just answered your question.” Then
she begun to cry again, talking about how her own flesh and blood rose
up to curse her.
“You asked me,” I says.
“I dont mean you,” she says. “You are the only one of them that isn’t a
reproach to me.”
“Sure,” I says, “I never had time to be. I never had time to go to
Harvard like Quentin or drink myself into the ground like Father. I had
to work. But of course if you want me to follow her around and see what
she does, I can quit the store and get a job where I can work at night.
Then I can watch her during the day and you can use Ben for the night
shift.”
“I know I’m just a trouble and a burden to you,” she says, crying on the
pillow.
“I ought to know it,” I says. “You’ve been telling me that for thirty
years. Even Ben ought to know it now. Do you want me to say anything to
her about it?”
“Do you think it will do any good?” she says.
“Not if you come down there interfering just when I get started,” I
says. “If you want me to control her, just say so and keep your hands
off. Everytime I try to, you come butting in and then she gives both of
us the laugh.”
“Remember she’s your own flesh and blood,” she says.
“Sure,” I says, “that’s just what I’m thinking of—flesh. And a little
blood too, if I had my way. When people act like niggers, no matter who
they are the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger.”
“I’m afraid you’ll lose your temper with her,” she says.
“Well,” I says, “You haven’t had much luck with your system. You want me
to do anything about it, or not? Say one way or the other; I’ve got to
get on to work.”
“I know you have to slave your life away for us,” she says. “You know if
I had my way, you’d have an office of your own to go to, and hours that
became a Bascomb. Because you are a Bascomb, despite your name. I know
that if your father could have forseen—”
“Well,” I says, “I reckon he’s entitled to guess wrong now and then,
like anybody else, even a Smith or a Jones.” She begun to cry again.
“To hear you speak bitterly of your dead father,” she says.
“All right,” I says, “all right. Have it your way. But as I haven’t got
an office, I’ll have to get on to what I have got. Do you want me to say
anything to her?”
“I’m afraid you’ll lose your temper with her,” she says.
“All right,” I says, “I wont say anything, then.”
“But something must be done,” she says. “To have people think I permit
her to stay out of school and run about the streets, or that I cant
prevent her doing it. . . . Jason, Jason,” she says, “How could you. How
could you leave me with these burdens.”
“Now, now,” I says, “You’ll make yourself sick. Why dont you either lock
her up all day too, or turn her over to me and quit worrying over her?”
“My own flesh and blood,” she says, crying. So I says,
“All right. I’ll tend to her. Quit crying, now.”
“Dont lose your temper,” she says. “She’s just a child, remember.”
“No,” I says, “I wont.” I went out, closing the door.
“Jason,” she says. I didn’t answer. I went down the hall. “Jason,” she
says beyond the door. I went on down stairs. There wasn’t anybody in the
diningroom, then I heard her in the kitchen. She was trying to make
Dilsey let her have another cup of coffee. I went in.
“I reckon that’s your school costume, is it?” I says. “Or maybe today’s
a holiday?”
“Just a half a cup, Dilsey,” she says. “Please.”
“No, suh,” Dilsey says, “I aint gwine do it. You aint got no business
wid mo’n one cup, a seventeen year old gal, let lone whut Miss Cahline
say. You go on and git dressed for school, so you kin ride to town wid
Jason. You fixin to be late again.”