The sound and the fury
detachment. Now and then his attention would return long enough to
enable him to feint the spoon and cause Ben to close his mouth upon the
empty air, but it was apparent that Luster’s mind was elsewhere. His
other hand lay on the back of the chair and upon that dead surface it
moved tentatively, delicately, as if he were picking an inaudible tune
out of the dead void, and once he even forgot to tease Ben with the
spoon while his fingers teased out of the slain wood a soundless and
involved arpeggio until Ben recalled him by whimpering again.
In the diningroom Dilsey moved back and forth. Presently she rang a
small clear bell, then in the kitchen Luster heard Mrs Compson and Jason
descending, and Jason’s voice, and he rolled his eyes whitely with
listening.
“Sure, I know they didn’t break it,” Jason said. “Sure, I know that.
Maybe the change of weather broke it.”
“I dont see how it could have,” Mrs Compson said. “Your room stays
locked all day long, just as you leave it when you go to town. None of
us ever go in there except Sunday, to clean it. I dont want you to think
that I would go where I’m not wanted, or that I would permit anyone else
to.”
“I never said you broke it, did I?” Jason said.
“I dont want to go in your room,” Mrs Compson said. “I respect anybody’s
private affairs. I wouldn’t put my foot over the threshold, even if I
had a key.”
“Yes,” Jason said, “I know your keys wont fit. That’s why I had the lock
changed. What I want to know is, how that window got broken.”
“Luster say he didn’t do hit,” Dilsey said.
“I knew that without asking him,” Jason said. “Where’s Quentin?” he
said.
“Where she is ev’y Sunday mawnin,” Dilsey said. “Whut got into you de
last few days, anyhow?”
“Well, we’re going to change all that,” Jason said. “Go up and tell her
breakfast is ready.”
“You leave her alone now, Jason,” Dilsey said. “She gits up fer
breakfast ev’y week mawnin, en Cahline lets her stay in bed ev’y Sunday.
You knows dat.”
“I cant keep a kitchen full of niggers to wait on her pleasure, much as
I’d like to,” Jason said. “Go and tell her to come down to breakfast.”
“Aint nobody have to wait on her,” Dilsey said. “I puts her breakfast in
de warmer en she—”
“Did you hear me?” Jason said.
“I hears you,” Dilsey said. “All I been hearin, when you in de house. Ef
hit aint Quentin er yo maw, hit’s Luster en Benjy. Whut you let him go
on dat way fer, Miss Cahline?”
“You’d better do as he says,” Mrs Compson said, “He’s head of the house
now. It’s his right to require us to respect his wishes. I try to do it,
and if I can, you can too.”
“’Taint no sense in him bein so bad tempered he got to make Quentin git
up jes to suit him,” Dilsey said. “Maybe you think she broke dat
window.”
“She would, if she happened to think of it,” Jason said. “You go and do
what I told you.”
“En I wouldn’t blame her none ef she did,” Dilsey said, going toward the
stairs. “Wid you naggin at her all de blessed time you in de house.”
“Hush, Dilsey,” Mrs Compson said, “It’s neither your place nor mine to
tell Jason what to do. Sometimes I think he is wrong, but I try to obey
his wishes for you alls’ sakes. If I’m strong enough to come to the
table, Quentin can too.”
Dilsey went out. They heard her mounting the stairs. They heard her a
long while on the stairs.
“You’ve got a prize set of servants,” Jason said. He helped his mother
and himself to food. “Did you ever have one that was worth killing? You
must have had some before I was big enough to remember.”
“I have to humour them,” Mrs Compson said. “I have to depend on them so
completely. It’s not as if I were strong. I wish I were. I wish I could
do all the house work myself. I could at least take that much off your
shoulders.”
“And a fine pigsty we’d live in, too,” Jason said. “Hurry up, Dilsey,”
he shouted.
“I know you blame me,” Mrs Compson said, “for letting them off to go to
church today.”
“Go where?” Jason said. “Hasn’t that damn show left yet?”
“To church,” Mrs Compson said. “The darkies are having a special Easter
service. I promised Dilsey two weeks ago that they could get off.”
“Which means we’ll eat cold dinner,” Jason said, “or none at all.”
“I know it’s my fault,” Mrs Compson said. “I know you blame me.”
“For what?” Jason said. “You never resurrected Christ, did you?”
They heard Dilsey mount the final stair, then her slow feet overhead.
“Quentin,” she said. When she called the first time Jason laid his knife
and fork down and he and his mother appeared to wait across the table
from one another, in identical attitudes; the one cold and shrewd, with
close-thatched brown hair curled into two stubborn hooks, one on either
side of his forehead like a bartender in caricature, and hazel eyes with
black-ringed irises like marbles, the other cold and querulous, with
perfectly white hair and eyes pouched and baffled and so dark as to
appear to be all pupil or all iris.
“Quentin,” Dilsey said, “Get up, honey. Dey waitin breakfast on you.”
“I cant understand how that window got broken,” Mrs Compson said. “Are
you sure it was done yesterday? It could have been like that a long
time, with the warm weather. The upper sash, behind the shade like
that.”
“I’ve told you for the last time that it happened yesterday,” Jason
said. “Dont you reckon I know the room I live in? Do you reckon I could
have lived in it a week with a hole in the window you could stick your
hand—” his voice ceased, ebbed, left him staring at his mother with
eyes that for an instant were quite empty of anything. It was as though
his eyes were holding their breath, while his mother looked at him, her
face flaccid and querulous, interminable, clairvoyant yet obtuse. As
they sat so Dilsey said,
“Quentin. Dont play wid me, honey. Come on to breakfast, honey. Dey
waitin fer you.”
“I cant understand it,” Mrs Compson said, “It’s just as if somebody had
tried to break into the house—” Jason sprang up. His chair crashed over
backward. “What—” Mrs Compson said, staring at him as he ran past her
and went jumping up the stairs, where he met Dilsey. His face was now in
shadow, and Dilsey said,
“She sullin. Yo ma aint unlocked—” But Jason ran on past her and along
the corridor to a door. He didn’t call. He grasped the knob and tried
it, then he stood with the knob in his hand and his head bent a little,
as if he were listening to something much further away than the
dimensioned room beyond the door, and which he already heard. His
attitude was that of one who goes through the motions of listening in
order to deceive himself as to what he already hears. Behind him Mrs
Compson mounted the stairs, calling his name. Then she saw Dilsey and
she quit calling him and began to call Dilsey instead.
“I told you she aint unlocked dat do’ yit,” Dilsey said.
When she spoke he turned and ran toward her, but his voice was quiet,
matter of fact. “She carry the key with her?” he said. “Has she got it
now, I mean, or will she have—”
“Dilsey,” Mrs Compson said on the stairs.
“Is which?” Dilsey said. “Whyn’t you let—”
“The key,” Jason said, “To that room. Does she carry it with her all the
time. Mother.” Then he saw Mrs Compson and he went down the stairs and
met her. “Give me the key,” he said. He fell to pawing at the pockets of
the rusty black dressing sacque she wore. She resisted.
“Jason,” she said, “Jason! Are you and Dilsey trying to put me to bed
again?” she said, trying to fend him off, “Cant you even let me have
Sunday in peace?”
“The key,” Jason said, pawing at her, “Give it here.” He looked back at
the door, as if he expected it to fly open before he could get back to
it with the key he did not yet have.
“You, Dilsey!” Mrs Compson said, clutching her sacque about her.
“Give me the key, you old fool!” Jason cried suddenly. From her pocket
he tugged a huge bunch of rusted keys on an iron ring like a mediaeval
jailer’s and ran back up the hall with the two women behind him.
“You, Jason!” Mrs Compson said. “He will never find the right one,” she
said, “You know I never let anyone take my keys, Dilsey,” she said. She
began to wail.
“Hush,” Dilsey said, “He aint gwine do nothin to her. I aint gwine let
him.”
“But on Sunday morning, in my own house,” Mrs Compson said, “When I’ve
tried so hard to raise them Christians. Let me find the right key,
Jason,” she said. She put her hand on his arm. Then she began to
struggle with him, but he flung her aside with a motion of his elbow and
looked around at her for a moment, his eyes cold and harried, then he
turned to the door again and the unwieldy keys.
“Hush,” Dilsey said, “You, Jason!”
“Something terrible has happened,” Mrs Compson said, wailing again, “I
know it has. You, Jason,” she said, grasping at him again. “He wont even
let me find the key to a room in my own house!”
“Now, now,” Dilsey said, “Whut kin happen? I right here. I aint gwine
let him hurt her. Quentin,” she said, raising her voice, “dont you be
skeered, honey, I’se right here.”
The door opened, swung inward. He stood in it for a moment, hiding the
room, then he stepped aside. “Go in,” he said in a thick, light voice.
They went in. It was not a girl’s room. It was not anybody’s room, and
the faint scent of cheap cosmetics and the few feminine objects and the
other evidences of crude and hopeless efforts to feminize it but added
to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped transience of
rooms in assignation houses. The bed had not been disturbed. On the
floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a little too pink; from a
half open bureau drawer dangled a single stocking. The window was open.
A pear tree grew there, close against the house. It was in bloom and the
branches scraped and rasped against the house and the myriad air,
driving in the window, brought into the room the forlorn scent of the
blossoms.
“Dar now,” Dilsey said, “Didn’t I told you she all right?”
“All right?” Mrs Compson said. Dilsey followed her into the room and
touched her.
“You come on and lay down, now,” she said. “I find her in ten minutes.”
Mrs Compson shook her off. “Find the note,” she said. “Quentin left a
note when he did it.”
“All right,” Dilsey said, “I’ll find hit. You come on to yo room, now.”
“I knew the minute they named her Quentin this would happen,” Mrs
Compson said. She went to the bureau and began to turn over the
scattered objects there—scent bottles, a box of powder, a chewed
pencil, a pair of scissors with one broken blade lying upon a darned
scarf dusted with powder and stained with rouge. “Find the note,” she
said.
“I is,” Dilsey said. “You come on, now. Me and Jason’ll find hit. You
come on to yo room.”
“Jason,” Mrs Compson said, “Where is he?” She went to the door. Dilsey
followed her on down the hall, to another door. It was closed. “Jason,”
she called through the door. There was no answer. She tried the knob,
then she called him again. But there was still no answer, for he was
hurling things backward out of the closet: garments, shoes, a suitcase.
Then he emerged carrying a sawn section of tongue-and-groove planking
and laid it down and entered the closet again and emerged with a metal
box. He set it on the bed and stood looking at the broken lock while he
dug a key ring from his pocket and selected a key, and for a time longer
he stood with the selected key in his hand, looking at the broken lock,
then he put the keys back in his pocket and carefully tilted the
contents of the box out upon the bed. Still carefully he sorted the
papers, taking them up one at a time and shaking them. Then he upended
the box and shook it too and slowly replaced the papers and stood again,
looking at the broken lock, with the box in his hands and his head bent.